Self promotion

[Shiela Stewart]

Well, I;ve been an author now for nearly a year and I'm still strugging with promoting my work. And from what I hear, I'm not the only one.
What I have done so far though is this:

I've placed my book covers on Review and other publication websites.
I've joined half a billion groups.
I've had a book signing in my home town
I have my books in the Romantic Times Magazine
I've done chats and Blogs and interviews
I have a newsletter
I donate books to charity
Sent books to Iraq
Sent books and prizes to Romantic Times Conference and other awards benefits.

So, having done all that, what else is there I could be doing to promotoe myself and my books?

Fire away with the ideas please.

[Abe F. March]

Shiela,
first of all I was so impressed with all the work you've done that I immediately sent a request to you as a friend.
I'm not sure what advice I could offer. You've covered most all the bases, however here are just some thoughts of mine.
Whenever we give or donate a book, it is naturally a lost sale. Donating a book to a library (as I have done) means anyone can check out the book and therefore will not need to buy it. A book given to friends will usually wind up being circulated amongst them without any purchase necessary. And, concerning friends, I have found them to be the least likely to buy since they "expect" a freebie, and I realized a long time ago that "something for nothing is worth nothing." If a person pays for a book, they will read it. Otherwise it usually collects dust.

I suppose it boils down to purpose. Are you looking to increase sales or simply gain broad name recognition? If it is name recognition then you are doing the things that will bring that.

[Shiela Stewart]

Hi Abraham, nice to meet you, glad to have you as a friend.

I've already been through that route of, "but I'm family, you have to give me a free copy." I held firm to making them pay for it. If I gavce everyone one of my friends and family a free book, I would never make money.

It's nice to know I'm doing something right. :)

[Abe F. March]

Shiela,
Learning by our mistakes can be costly. That is a huge benefit from a forum such as this where experiences can be shared. For the most part, advice that you receive will be credible since it has been proven.

[Shiela Stewart]

I made a costly mistake with my first release by ordering wayyy too much promo material. I still have most of it.
Live and learn.

[Shelagh Watkins]

Hi Shiela,

Of the half a billion groups you have joined, I hope you enjoy being a member of this one!

I agree with Abe and his experience very much reflects my own.

Whenever someone asks a question, I google. I'm a reasearcher; it's what I do. So, what did I search on and what did I find?

My first search was "how to become a successful romance writer author" -- this pulled up 1,310,000 pages.

I narrowed the search to "how to become a successful author" -- this pulled up 9,580 pages

When I narrowed to "how to become a successful romance writer" I pulled uo 411 pages

But when I narrowed to "how to become a successful romance author" I pulled up zero pages.

So, how did I make sense of all this information? As far as the "how to become" guides are concerned, there is a wealth of information attracting would-be authors to write books and novels.

BUT no information offering help and guidance about how published romance authors can succeed.

For what its worth, my advice is: write another novel; use the platform you have created to increase your readership.

... and good luck with everthing you do!

~Shelagh

[Shiela Stewart]

Hi Shelagh, great to meet you.

Yes, I am definitely loving being a member here. :)
Well, I don;t know about your advice about writing more novels. That's a tough one. LOL I have two more novels due out early 2008 and several more on the go. I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

[Mary J. Dressel]

Shiela,

Read my most recent blog post. I think we are doing the same thing. No wonder we keep running into each other! Nice to see you here. The post is entitled, How Much is Too Much Promotion.

[Shiela Stewart]

I will definitely check out your post. Thanks Mary. And thank you for pointing me int he direction of this group. :)

[Peter N. Jones]

Have you tweaked your Amazon page so that it comes up higher in the search rankings?
Do you blog (not being blogged about)?
Do you comment on other relevant blogs about your work?
Do you use Google Alerts?
Do you leave flyers on bulletin boards, community boards, grocery stores?
Did you make a shirt with your book cover and wear it around?
Have you optimized your website (promoting your book) for search engines?

These are just some more ideas off the top of my head, but maybe you already covered them.

Marketing is a never ending process...

Cheers,

Peter

__________________________________
Director and Editor: Bauu Institute and Press
Editor: Indigenous Issues Today
Publisher: New Great Books

[Shiela Stewart]

Hi Peter,

I'm not sure what you mean by tweaking my Amazon page?
Yes, I have a blog and I blog on other authors sites. And, on my blog I host other authors as well as my own work.
What exactly is Google alerts? I'm rather frustrated with Google. They still have my old old website to which I have deleted at Google several times and uploaded my new website. But the old ones are still there.
Yes, I've left flyers and ads on local community places and I've also had a book signing with my book and name advertised.
yes, i have several T-shirts with my book son them. I also made t-shirts of my books to give away at local functions.
Yep, my website has not only my newest release but all my books as well.

So it looks like I'm doing all the right things. Good to know. :)

Shiela

[Peter N. Jones]

Yes, it does sound like you are doing all of the right things. Google Alerts is a service of Google that is free. You sign up for alerts of the keywords you are targeting. Then, each day Google sends you a list of all of the sites, blogs, and webpages that have that keyword. This way, you know which blogs are talking about your topic.

Google probably has your old website in its cache. Until you build enough links pointing to your new site, the old one will still come up. I'm assuming the URL is different. If it is the same, them submit your site via Google Webmaster tools. That will get Google to crawl your site asap and update it on their end.

____________________________________
Director and Editor: Bauu Institute and Press
Editor: Indigenous Issues Today
Publisher: New Great Books

[Gijo George]

The best way to build links to your website is by writing a set of articles with links to your sites and publish them in an ezine. This way you will get good one way links to your website.