10 ideas for Successful Promotion

So you’ve made your ebook, it has a great cover, it’s well edited and your friends are busy helping you out with recommendations and reviews. The first few days of sales on Amazon, the Nook and the iBookstore have been great, better than you dared hope, and you go to bed each night smiling at your good fortune, patting yourself on the back for a job well done. But then, you watch the sales reports and figures are slowly dropping away, dwindling into single figures.  So what’s next? More hard work I'm afraid. Here are some ideas:

1. Write a short story and give it away free, but promote your main book at the end, and in the short story description, and in your biography.
2. Give your book away for 1 week. Promote the pants off it on Twitter, Facebook, Google plus and Pinterest.
3. Collect your best reviews together and make a website out of them. Buy a cheap domain based on the name of your book, use the cover image as the landing page, then set up a click through to a single page with all the great reviews and a link to the Amazon, B&N and iBookstore page with your book.
4. Write thirty marketing stings of 120 character descriptions of your main characters, plots, themes and locations. Use the last 20 characters to link to the Facebook page of your book (you do have one of these don’t you?). Spend one month tweeting with these stings.
5. With your smartphone (or your children’s, or friends!) make a short video of your workplace, room, study. Pan around the room describing the books, paintings, computers and other detritus, connecting everything to the writing of your book. Post this on your Youtube channel (you do have one don’t you?) and link to it on Facebook, Twitter etc.
6. Set up a blog and write it in the style of one of your characters. Wordpress or Blogger are both free. Pretend to be your main character and commentate on news and trending events. Facebook and Tweet about this.
7. Depending on your subject matter, set up a blog or forum on the subject of your book. Make sure you think this through and give real advice or links, or help so that readers can gain something genuinely useful.
8. Find an extract from your book which is self-contained, perhaps 2000-4000 words and send it to the editor of online magazines which feature your sort of writing. When you’ve identified the magazines, makes sure you follow all the subscribers and followers of the magazine and focus on the content of the extract in your tweets.
9. Use emails. You have friends and work colleagues. Send them an apologetic but simple email asking for their support in promoting and selling your book. Include a small jpg, png or gif file of the cover as visual stimulus. Make the email creative and interesting, don't just beg!
10. Use Pinterest. Create a board which shows the places in your book. Find images on Google (with proper credits to the original website) and your own photographs. Use short snappy captions. Add a link to each image, leading either to your Facebook page or directly to your Amazon book page.

So, it's all about social media engagement: be creative and give ‘em something free. 

Coming soon: Print on Demand: a Useful Complement to eBooks?