image by Tumisu
This is the second entry in the series in which I share the progress and tasks of my book-marketing plan for my second book coming out mid August. The first entry last week began with my setup tasks.
Tasks Performed This Past Week
- I contacted 26 promising people to help me as influencers for Gift of the Magpie. So far, 14 have agreed to help me.
image by Tumisu
Suggestion for Influencers
- I sent email letters to my influencers, welcoming and thanking them and detailing 18 possible tasks they can do to help me. I suggested a mix, because some are strong in social media and others are not. I listed such things as:
- Announce the book on their social media places and on emails to friends.
- Write an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, other bookstore sites, and include it in their emails to friends.
- Follow my Amazon page.
- Post the back cover blurb and the endorsements written for my book on their emails and social media spots.
- Tweet and/or post to Facebook book quotes I send them.
- Announce my giveaways and when the book is free or on sale.
- Interview me on their blogs.
- Know I’m available for speaking events.
- Ask their local libraries to order the book.
- Suggest my book to their book clubs.
- Feature my cover temporarily on their Facebook header.
- Distribute bookmarks.
Contacts for Announcements
• I created address labels for invitations to my local book launch party.
• I added email addresses collected from events held for my first book to my email list to announce my second book on the release date.
Designing and Ordering Promotional Materials
• I designed and ordered my bookmarks and business cards.
• I asked my publisher for the ISBN and other book information to design my postcards. I will give them to bookstores and libraries and send them as invitations to my book launch party. Bookstores and libraries appreciate the postcard because it has all the information they need to order books: Cover, title, ISBN, and my contact information.
Guest Blogs and Parties
• I drafted two more posts for blogs on which I’ll be a guest. I now have four posts drafted out of seven guest blog invitations.
• I prepared an agenda for the upcoming meeting with my helpers for the local book launch party.
Keeping Me Straight
image by Pexels
• I updated my Excel Marketing spreadsheet – this is invaluable in keeping all my marketing efforts straight and remembering important information.
º I added new tasks and subtasks. On each, I included contact person, cost, task due date, date I’ll work on the task (I added these dates to my calendar too), and other notes.
º Updated notes, needs, and progress on tasks already entered into the worksheet.
Over the next several weeks, as I record my efforts and progress for Gift of the Magpie, I’ll also include tips. I hope you’ll follow along and share your tips and thoughts too.
Diary of a book marketing experience—Entry 2: influencers and other promotion activities. Click to tweet.
Published authors please share with us. Which promotion activity was most helpful in giving your book exposure and sales?
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This is so helpful. Thank you!
Hey Jane, everyone has their own experience, but I’m hoping this will give others ideas and encouragement when what they try doesn’t work out.
Great stuff, Zoe. But I’m so disheartened at begging people to buy my books, and after a not-very-successful “career”, I become more and more cynical and even resentful at the lack of promo from publishers. Yet they keep the much bigger part of royalties and expect us to do everything. The “marketing director” at one small press decided she just isn’t going to send out our books to reviewer sites any more because, darn, there haven’t been a lot of reviews coming out lately. So now they expect the authors to do that, too. Yet boy, do they ever want new submissions! How about helping “grow” the authors they already have? Sounding grumpy, sorry.
Tanya, I hear you. The marketing IS frustrating at times. I find the more I learn and understand marketing tools the easier it becomes. With my limited experience, I’ve seen some partnering on the marketing and training, which helps. What helps me is doing the research, deciding what I’m going to do in my time and money budget, plugging to learn how to do those limited things, and then not worrying about the rest. For example, I disliked asking people to be influencers.I asked people that I thought were outgoing, comfortable with social media, or both. Most were honored and excited to be a part of the process. I was pleasantly shocked.
Thanks. Every bit is helpful, especially for someone struggling to think where to start.
Patcie, I can identify from my experience from my first book, and I’m still learning on my second. What’s key is to not get too stressed. Yes, we step out of our comfort zone, learn some new things, and bravely put our hard work out there, but we don’t have to do it all.