Five Inexpensive Ways to Market Your Book

In today's guest post, Susan Daffron shares five ways to promote your book while spending next to nothing.

Marketing your book can be daunting. You have so many choices, you could do so many things, and you could spend a whole lot of money. But promoting your book doesn't have to cost a fortune. If you don't have a big book marketing budget, here are five extremely inexpensive things you can do to get the word out about your book.

1. Outsource the "little stuff."

Many book-marketing tasks require collateral material like banners or simple graphics. If you're not an artist and don't have good design tools, doing little blog badges or even working with your book cover graphics can take way longer than it should. For small tasks, check out Fiverr.com. Amazingly enough, everything costs just $5. 

2. Create simple videos.

Many people avoid video and YouTube because they're worried about the technology or they don't like what they look like. However, it's easy to create a video that doesn't require fancy technology or your face. For example, I experimented with a Book Publishing Dog Walk Q&A video. The video is me walking my dog Fiona through the forest (it's fun to watch her little tail bob along). You don't see me and I didn't have to worry about sounding out of breath as I toddled through the forest because I did the voice over separately. A video I did for my Vegan Success cookbook didn't even involve a video camera. I used still photos and transitions with a voice over. It's not as hard as you might think.

3. Do audio recordings.

Like video, audio isn't as difficult as you might expect. I do a podcast/radio show for the PetLifeRadio.com network. I have a little device called a QuickTap from JKAudio that plugs into my phone, so I can record interviews with people at animal shelters and rescues about the pets they have available for adoption. Alternatively, you can get a radio show on BlogTalk radio. You can do one 30-minute show per week for free.

4. Communicate via email.

Periodically you hear that email is dead. Except it's not. You still send and receive email don't you? Email newsletters are a great way to communicate with people on a particular topic. On your website either give away a freebie like an ecourse or PDF or just let people subscribe to your blog posts. One way or another, you'll develop a mailing list of people you can communicate with when something happens related to your book. Remember to post links to those posts or newsletters in social media.

5. Advertise on your own websites.

This idea is so obvious, I'm not sure why more people don't do it. If you have a blog, put an advertisement for your book on the blog. Or at the end of your articles, include a little teaser text ad for your book. Sure banner ads don't get many click-throughs, but even if you only got one book sale per month from your ad, that's 12 books you wouldn't have sold. And it costs you exactly nothing.

The most expensive idea on this list costs all of $5; the rest are $0. When it comes to book marketing, every little bit helps. All these activities work together to increase awareness about you and your book. And in the end, that means more book sales.

If you'd like to learn more about marketing your book and the business of book publishing, get inspiration and advice at the Self-Publishers Online Conference. The fourth annual event is May 8-10, 2012. Use the code Savvy12 and get a 10% discount!

About the Author

Susan Daffron, aka The Book Consultant owns a book and software publishing company. She spends most of her time writing, laying out books in InDesign, or taking her five dogs out for romps in the forest. She also teaches people how to write and publish profitable client-attracting books and puts on the Self-Publishers Online conference every May.

 

Comments

[Marcia Richards]

Great ideas! I'd like to repost this article on my this Friday, if that's okay with you. Thanks!

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Marcia, you are welcome to reprint this article on your blog. Please see my reprint policies at http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/permission-to-reprint.html
Thanks,
dana

[Jordyn]

I really like the audio recordings idea. Plus, if you host in on Sound Cloud or something similar after it's finished, it's very easy for others to embed the snippets on their blog and/or link to it.

[Judith Briles]

Wonderful ideas. Blogging continues to be powerful in advertising to potential readers. Your investment is also less compared to doing traditional means. Do social media marketing too. All it takes is to create an account and update useful information to your readers thrice each week.

[Karen Glenn]

Another way to market your book is to get reviews from top reviewers on Amazon. To find out how, visit www.indiepubnews.com

[Marlene Wynn]

Hi Dana...I'm already working on a video for my Kickstarter project to raise funds to publish my book. Like you said, it's not going to have a lot of my face (which is good, as I don't photograph well!) but will have my voice. When we're ready to post, it will go on my website, youtube, and my facebook page. Hopefully, it will get a good amount of traffic! Any suggestions as to how to get it noticed other than what I'm going to do? I really want this to work, and I've put in huge amounts of time and love into this!

[Dana Lynn Smith]

Marlene, I'd suggest creating a mini-marketing campaign to promote the Kickstarter project page and video. Ask everyone you know to share it with their own friends/family; do an online press release; try to get interviewed or get an article published on blogs or elsewhere about your book and this unique form of fundraising, etc.

P.S. For those who don't know, Kickstarter.com is a crowd sourcing site that helps creative types get their projects funded through small donations.