I spend a lot of time doing different promotional things to make sure I’m doing my part in marketing my book.
I purchase bookmarks and business cards. I make appearances and sign books. I do a lot of things online.
And then, sometimes, you find out that the most effective marketing is purely accidental.
My mother called me one day to say someone had stopped her at the YMCA to tell her that they didn’t know I wrote books…and they’d gone out to buy them.
They’d found out because my college had run a few paragraphs about me in the alumnae section of their magazine that goes out every quarter to alums.
The next day I heard from another alumna from my college—who didn’t know me. She tweeted me on Twitter that she didn’t realize we’d gone to the same school until she got the alumnae magazine. She was planning on buying my books.
Then I was at the church, volunteering last week, and the other mother in the kitchen with me remembered me from the alumni magazine and started talking to me about my books.
You’d think that I’d gone to a big school…but I went to a small, private, liberal arts school in Clinton, South Carolina. With enrollment at 1,100 students.
And yet, for that month, I think it was the most exceptional bit of marketing out of everything else I tried.
And I hadn’t even run the blurb.
The English department at the college had somehow made the connection, found a bio of me online and a picture, and run the update in the magazine.
My lesson in this? I’m thinking that we should all be thinking outside the box. Sometimes we’ve already got connections to potential readers—from our past—and those can be easier to tap than developing new connections (although those are important, too.) And not be too shy—who knows what opportunities we’re missing?
I think, though, that sometimes it’s harder for us to market to our connections. It seems more like selling. I’m not fond of selling, either. But I like the idea of things like updating my alumni magazine from time to time.
Here are some good resources for the reluctant marketer:
Conquering Book Marketing Fear—7 Tips for the Introverted Writer
How Authors Can Participate in Marketing Even When They Don’t Like Selling
A post I wrote for Hart Johnson’s blog on marketing tips I’ve learned
Marketing for the non-fiction author
A blog series on marketing lessons
Have you got any tips for painless promotion? How do you feel about marketing, in general?
Whoever thought a mention in an alumni magazine would get you a couple of sales? And for you making that first sale is all that matters- the quality of your stories will ensure people keep picking up the other books in the series.
Elizabeth – Thanks so much for these links! It is amazing, isn’t it, how marketing can happen so unexpectedly. I’m going to have to consider alumni information for my own marketing; I’ve not explored that one as well as I could.
I’ve sold books to my new dentist’s office staff, and to one of the nurses when I visited my new doctor’s office. But whether word of mouth will sell more books from those venues remains to be seen.
I also got my first, “Is it available for the Kindle?” instead of “is it in the bookstore?” the other day. Nice to be able to answer ‘yes’.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
Those little company and organization newsletters can be very nice for publicity. They’re always looking for material, and like a small town newspaper, they really like to feature what people are up to.
I’ll check out the links. Its great to see something written about us. I check Google a few times a week (in additional to Google Alerts) to see if someone is writing something about me.
Stephen Tremp
I believe it! I always read my alumni magazine, and I’d be on board to buy someone’s books who went to my school. So cool that happened for you, Elizabeth!
Thanks for the links!
Ha! That is great to get some unintentional press that really reaches people! Makes me think I ought to let the J-School at UO know where I am… But I DID have on my radar a ‘local girl makes good’ type press release for my home town.
Thanks for all the links–I actually saved this post under my ‘critical posts’ file as I know I will want all this stuff when I get a little closer, but my memory doesn’t have the capacity to absorb it just yet…
Excellent. I’m bookmarking this because one day I’ll need it.
Rayna–Thanks so much! I think it’s the everyday marketing that’s sometimes something that doesn’t come to mind that quickly.
Margot–Definitely something to check into. :)
Terry–And sometimes it just doesn’t occur to me to say anything..or I just don’t say anything about the writing. Obviously, we should be doing it, though.
I think there will be more and more questions about books on the Kindle as time goes on!
Stephen–Google alerts are really useful, too. It’s nice to know what’s being said about you.
The Daring Novelist–Which is something I’d never really thought about! And none of us like tooting our own horn, but it really does make sense to do it sometimes.
Laura–It was definitely a surprise…just not something I’d have thought to do. But it does work out well!
Hart–I think those “Local Girl Makes Good” stories do really well in the newspapers. :)
I know, my memory is the same way!
Carol–Yes, you will! Hope you have a great weekend.
Great tools and links. Thanks!
CD
What a pleasasnt surprise that must have been. Like most authors, I’d much rather write than market, so I plan to check out each of the links. Thanks.
Hey, accidental counts too, lol. Good tips here, also, Liz. I market mostly online, but do some appearances, signings, etc., too. For the past couple years I rented booths at the Farmer’s Markets around here. Sounds like a weird combination, but folks shopping for fresh organic foods are also those who tend to like to read books and will support a local author.