Eric at Northshire Bookstore
As I indicated in an earlier post, I have already begun my journey toward mastering what was once foreign to me: marketing my book. I cannot really say that I have mastered it yet, but I can say that I have jumped in with both feet, and I’m making good progress. I’ve been busy posting to my Facebook page, my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and my own website, and I held my book launch in New York City last month. Luckily, with the help SOOP provides its authors, I have not been traveling this long and bumpy road alone.
To suggest that the world of author-driven marketing is easy would be misleading at best, but it must be done if we want people to learn about the books we write, and more importantly, to entice people to read them. So now that you have your social media accounts set up and your blogs up and running, you must post to them on a regular basis. I suggest at least once a month on your blog and LinkedIn, at least once a week on Facebook, and if you can, daily on Twitter.
I honestly don’t fully understand Twitter, but I have picked up a couple of thousand followers since getting started in February. I make it a point to post something every day: not always about my book, but about other things I have written and am interested in. If you do the same, before you know it you might see people re-tweeting your tweets about your book. Through these and your other social media postings, you can make good headway in building out your author platform. The returns aren’t always instantaneous, but you can begin to direct your growing list of followers to your blog, to where your book is sold online, or to a local bookstore that carries your book.
Marketing your book should have an offline component, as well. Independent bookstores do support local authors, so arrange to meet with the owner or representative of a bookstore near you, and convince them to carry your book. They will of course take a percentage of the sale, but you can still come out ahead, and it is great advertising. The other thing that bookstores can do is to arrange book readings and signings. In fact, on August 22nd The Bookstore Plus in Lake Placid, New York will be hosting a book reading and signing for me from 6:00 – 7:30 pm at the Lake Placid Public Library. My book is also being carried by Northshire Books in Saratoga Springs, New York.
My next major marketing effort is going to be in support of the recent release of the Kindle version of Life at 12 College Road, available now for your Kindle and Kindle app!
In a later post I will let you know how things went — and how they are going.
Eric
It’s not always the earth-shattering events that are most significant in our hectic lives. More often, it’s the small things, many long forgotten, that touch and shape us most deeply. Our memories of these events might bring smiles, or anger, or even a desire to forget. But every one of them helps to make us who we are today — and in some ways, who we will become tomorrow. Join Eric Mondschein at the unhurried pace of a cup of coffee for a surprising and powerful journey in which laughter inevitably mingles with tears, sorrow turns to joy, and loss almost becomes bearable.
Life at 12 College Road is available at Amazon.com!
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