Help Me!? I Want to Promote My Self-Published Book
As much as we all love our books, there is one thing that we don’t like to talk about and that is promotion. I mean, we have great books and we want to sell them, or at least we all think our books are great until proven otherwise.
The better question should be, how should you promote your book without sounding horrible?
I think the answer is in this email which one of my writing friends sent to me. Now it is a bit tongue in cheek but there is a bit of truth to it.
“To promote your self-published book, spend money, and give book away for free. Then spend more money and talk about your book as if it is the one and only thing you care about. You are self-published, and you need to get the word out. Then spend more money. Get the business cards, the posters, and give these away. Everything is free on your credit card”
I don’t think this answer is entirely incorrect- except for the credit card comment. To promote your book, especially one which is self-published, you’ll have to give away a lot of them simply to get the word out or hopefully to get some reviews.
Word of mouth and people are keys to your success and the more people know the more chance you will be able to see success with your self-published book. Publishing with Amazon’s CreateSpace is also an advantage since you can distribute right with Amazon, with no extra fuss.
When you promote your book you will have to spend a lot of time simply being okay with a review not being published on time, or having it put on a blog or simply having someone not writing one at all. It is a part of promotion. The more you can do via word of mouth the better the chance you will have to see more success. Never give up.
You might hear some people, bloggers or potential readers complain to you that it is a self-published book, or if you created a publishing company, and then they might complain that it does not look like a “regular book.”
Your business cards might not turn out the way you thought they would, or if you give them out they get lost in a person’s wallet.
Still want to promote your book?
Even if you traditionally publish your book, you still need to promote it. I think this is critical if you plan to publish another book.
If you have one book out for people to read, it is particularly important to promote your new and existing work when another book is coming out soon.
If I want to promote my self-published book I need to follow the same as if I have any other sort of book; it needs to be well written and then marketing should be planned out so that there is demand for that book and the upcoming book. This isn’t a case of crying, “Help me,” but rather one of learning a new way to promote your self-published books.
