Where Is The Best Place to Promote Your Book?

Not Twitter.  Not Facebook.  Not on Google Plus.  Not with family or friends.  No, these aren’t places you should (overly) promote your book on.

These are places, and people, you can have comments and chats with about you and your book, but they aren’t the best place to promote your book.  They are a starting point, but not the end point. If you only have, as the saying goes, all your eggs in one basket, how are you going to survive?  especially when there is a demand for so many books, and they range from self-published, to big time authors.

If this is the case, and you self-publish a book, or have several books you’ve been writing/ self-published, it doesn’t matter much if you can’t sell them.  The logical answer would be to write some more and push your book through Facebook or Twitter.  Or hope that people will find your book somehow or somewhere on Amazon.

The problem is most books have a “life.”  Most books, with a bit of help can have long term sales, but you will have to continue writing others to get more life out of them.  My first book, In Search of The Lost Ones was published in 2011, and there are still sales, now more since I have monthly or bi-monthly book signings.  As for the e-book, it is respectable, but not anything of “wow” factor like sales.  It can be because a book, and an author can smile and talk to a reader and create a meaning for them to buy it.

Books signings are one of the best places to promote my book- in a book store with people passing by and me getting to know them as readers.  The reason why some books don’t sell is because the authors are promoting them in the wrong places at the wrong time.  Some authors, are great on Twitter and I can imagine that Taylor Fulks who wrote My Prison Without Bars: The Journey of a Damaged Woman to Someplace Normal has a strong following, but she doesn’t promote her book, rather she promotes other authors, who then “tweet” her book.  The problem most new authors don’t see is she has been on Twitter since 2012, and has over 18,000 followers.  She also is active on other social media sites, and the followers she does have, are willing to go the extra mile for her, because she went the extra mile for them.

Most authors don’t have that sort of following, but she has this draw, and allows people to find her book- but even then it’s still not a “hot seller” it’s typical of many books, it possibly gets a couple of book sales a week, the chances are fairly high she still has another few books she could write and publish.

The best place to promote you book beyond an author book signing?

Your own blog, and if you do this correctly, and don’t overly promote, you can find more success.  This blog has been around for a while, and many people come to read a post, or ask for book reviews, and I try to accommodate them as well.  However, writing comes first in this blog, and book sales are a part of writing.  The more books sold, the more time I have to write.

Writing is a bit like dancing, you promote your book because you love your book.  The person who reads your book is your partner.  Together you have the chance to create something magical- but you have to work together, and you have to be real.

Being a person first, an author next, and a book promoter last will give people confidence in your work- those are the “dance” steps.  It’s about networking and working on being mature, and professional in how you think about your book.  Most books won’t make you millions, maybe not even a couple of thousand, but with time and energy there will be success.  You have to define yours and make that part of your publishing goal.