Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Pat Bertram
Posted by pumpupyourbook on November 13, 2009
Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.
Today’s guest blogger is Pat Bertram, author of Daughter Am I, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and More Deaths Than One.
Guest Post:
Writing a book was hard. Editing it was harder, and finding a publisher even harder. Waiting for it to be released after acceptance was murderous, and now promoting the book is . . .
Ha! Bet you thought I was going to say it was hardest of all — most authors find promoting to be an arduous task, but not me. I enjoy it. What’s not to like? I get to meet wonderful people and have wonderful conversations. I get to write articles about anything I want and post them all over the internet. And I get to party.
My books are still so new that they haven’t developed momentum, but I do believe that both blogging and social networking are incredible tools for book promotion. Generally, I make sure that I post an article to my blog three or four times a week, but lately I’ve been posting every day to promote my Daughter Am I blog tour. I stop by Facebook every day and Goodreads almost every day to see what’s going on and to update my status. I participate in discussions. I host a live discussion about writing and the writing life every Thursday at 9:00pm ET on Gather.com. You can find me at the featured article on the No Whine, Just Champagne group page: http://nowhine.gather.com Stop by any Thursday. I’d love to hear from you!
Many people have told me recently that they admire my ability to promote myself without being obnoxious, but the truth is, I learned how to do it from other authors. Or rather I learned how not to do it from them. Sometimes I get dozens of emails in a day from authors asking me to buy their books. I don’t read such emails. Do you? I didn’t think so. That’s why I don’t send them. Why waste the effort on something that so many people find dreary?
If you’re on Facebook (and of course you are), I’m sure you get several event invitations every day. An unknown author has a book released. An unknown author is guest blogging. An unknown author is giving away a book. Do you respond to such anonymous events? Probably not. You want fun. And so do your potential readers. So, when I do an event, I make sure it’s an event. A party.
I’ve thrown three successful online parties so far. My “HALLELUJAH! MY NOVELS HAVE FINALLY BEEN PUBLISHED! LET’SPARTY!” party lasted a week and was full of games, gifts, videos, puzzles. Sure it took time to set it up, but it was fun for people. Or at least it gave the illusion of fun, which is the same thing when it comes to the Internet.
In May, I threw a “PAT BERTRAM IS TWO YEARS OLD TODAY” party to celebrate the second birthday of my online persona. The idea was just quirky enough that it drew attention. I don’t know that I sold any books because of it, but a lot more people are aware of me now, and that’s a good beginning.
Most recently I celebrated the release of my third novel with a “DAUGHTER AM I HAS FINALLY BEEN PUBLISHED! LET’S PARTY!!” party.
I still have a long way to go before I figure out how to turn networking connections into customers, but meantime, I am meeting some incredible people, and I am having fun. I hope you are, too.
Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.
Website: http://patbertram.com
Blog: http://ptbertram.wordpress.com
Blog: http://marketingfloozy.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/patbertram
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/patbertram
claire datnow said
Interesting and informative. keep the energy flowing.
Pat Bertram said
Thanks, Claire.
Barbara Sinor said
Hi Pat,
My fifth book will be released in April and I am looking into a Blog Tour. What kind of success in selling books have you had in the area? I believe I can set the tour up myself and not pay hundreds of dollars to someone else to do the leg work. What do you think?
Pat Bertram said
Barbara, you can set it up yourself — I did — but be prepared for one heck of a lot of work! Just finding the bloggers you would like to host your tour and querying them is time consuming, to say nothing of writing the articles (each needs to be different)and replying to comments. I didn’t see any relationship between time expended and sales, but that’s not the only reason to do a tour. It’s about meeting people, making conncections, introducing your book to people who might not otherwise see it.
Barbara Sinor said
Thanks for the feedback Pat. I guess getting a book in the public’s eye is more difficult these days when small publishers don’t do as much marketing as we like. I am constantly meeting new people online–I do believe it helps also. Thank you again for your reply!
http://www.drsinor.com
pumpupyourbook said
Exactly, Pat…and welcome to Book Marketing Buzz! You CAN set a tour up yourself…companies such as mine, Pump Up Your Book Promotion, are geared toward those who either don’t want to or don’t have time to. We get a lot of authors who are on deadlines so we put their tour together for them. We get a lot of publicists who want to give their authors online promotion…their authors want that publicity and the publicists are swamped and head our way. But…if you have built up a solid community and know how to correctly query blog hosts (many put publicists before authors querying them off the street so you might want to start hobnobbing now) and you do have the time, anyone who has the knowledge and time can do it..it’s not rocket scientist, but it does teach you a lot about time management and people skills, lol. Hope you have much success with your tour, Pat…you’re doing great!
Pat Bertram said
I discovered the hard way that many bloggers put publicists first, and many others don’t seem to respond to “stranger” requests, so I’m going to start researching now for my next blog tour, which means reading and commenting on the blogs long before I query them. Unless I get rich, of course, in which case I’ll have you do it for me! Either way, I’m going to start planning my guest articles months in advance. The hardest part has been coming up with ideas and writing articles when I’m tired.
pumpupyourbook said
LOL, I’ve even had them turn me down or never get back to me, so you just pick yourself up by the boot straps and go on to the next one. But you’re on the right track…start way before your tour starts. What I did before I started Pump Up was put myself on a trial run to see what it was like. Before that, I had built up somewhat of a community by doing just what you said you were going to do…going in and commenting, making friends, networking, and generally showing them I cared about what they were writing about. I didn’t do it because of anything other than I was trying to build up my community of blogging friends…it’s nice to feel we’re not alone blogging and that someone is reading our blogs, so that was what I did. Later, all this came in handy because many of them hosted me. So that’s what everyone should be doing before their book even comes out…so you’re on the right track!
West Of Mars — Win A Book! » Blog Archive » Guest Post: Pat Bertram said
[...] And then, she’s talking about promoting your book (something every author needs to have a hand in anymore) over at Book Marketing Buzz. [...]
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