This May, I published my first novel. I’m a highbrow assets legal professional with no formal background in product development, advertising, and marketing, so I knew that growing the ebook’s profile might be an assignment. In this essay, I’ll proportion with you a few techniques that labored for me. Marketing is greater artwork than technological know-how, so the guidelines replicate my personal opinion and experience. I’ll also mention a few sources I found helpful, but in so doing, please understand that I’m not receiving anything of cost from third parties for pointing out their services or publications. This is not an infomercial.
The first decision you want to make is whether you are drawing near publishing beyond time or as a commercial enterprise. Suppose you are extreme about getting the broadest exposure for yourself and your ebook. In that case, you should recognize that literary critics and the buying public will not distinguish between your paintings and commercially successful, established expert writers. Frankly, if the choice is to pay $22 for your ebook or $22 for Martin Amis’ brand new novel, why must the brand new writer accept a handicap?
Dedicated Website: An internet site established around branding your new ebook is one of the best, if not the handiest, marketing techniques to be had by the author. When a potential consumer pulls up Amazon’s website, with over one million titles available for buy, what percentage will your name pass their reveal? You want a conduit to direct the reader to your Amazon product page, and the simplest conduit is a website committed to exploring your ebook. The website allows you to pitch the ebook and yourself as a writer. It also allows the writer to interact with the reader to establish a rapport with a potential consumer.
Set up an internet site committed to the ebook properly before the date. There are many things in an advertising campaign that require retaining professionals. You can do Much of the advertising, but putting in a professional, nice website to compete with sites set up using conglomerate publishers, their web admins, and teams of image designers isn’t always considered one of them.
Having been immersed in a generation for the past 20+ years, I’m very at ease manipulating software programs and hardware; despite this intensity of expertise, website design at this stage isn’t something I could adopt. Unless you’re a professional in website design talented with Dreamweaver, I strongly inspire you to lease the nice character budget to carry out this challenging, important venture.
Some marketing professionals recommend using the writer’s name as the registered area name, e.g., ScottTurow.com. This is a logical method for authors who are household names. It is a mistake for first-time authors until you’re an established persona in a distinct, inventive medium or career. Reason: nobody knows who you are, so how might they realize to look for you on the way to discover your website?
If you sell your ebook title as the domain name instead of your name as a writer, there could be greater symbiosis among advertising and marketing endeavors, as every tool in your arsenal is targeted at publicizing the book’s name. The exception might be if your book’s title is non-memorable, lengthy, or otherwise difficult to sell. Developing precise key phrases that search engine bots become aware of, and catalog in indexing new Internet content for a unique ebook identity is less complicated than for a writer’s now not-so-precise call. Unique and exclusive keywords and lengthy tail phrases are critical in successfully ranking your website and raising its profile.
Audit the websites of hit authors in the identical genre for ideas on structuring your website and assessing the opposition. Sites run through marquee name authors are what you are up towards in accomplishing a hit product placement: it’s for the usual in opposition to which your website online could be measured. An internet site installation three to 6 months before publication is the most effective way to generate pre-launch interest for your ebook. Include a weblog on the site, even if you maintain a separate weblog, to keep the content sparkling.
The more common a domain’s updates, the better its ranking on search engine indexes, which is the closing aim. If humans cannot locate your site, they will not find your book. The website must encompass a website offering a quick summary of the book, author bio, press launch page, and how to touch the writer. Requiring registration on the web page to participate in an integrated forum is also helpful. You then have an automatic list of all people searching for products/services in your book while it is published.
Essays: One clean way to get the word out on the digital street you have expertise in your book’s genre or subject matter is to post quick essays online. Ezinearticles is the main host web page and resource for essays, which fastened-lance authors use. It will offer you the best exposure. However, there are similar sites available the writer should discover. The essay’s body should give the reader something of substance and value and no longer be an infomercial on your ebook. To reference the book is high-quality, but the cognizance ought to be on a subject not at once associated with pitching your identity to the reader.
The essay duration should, ideally, be between 250 and 700 phrases. Shorter articles are more likely to be syndicated. At 2,000 words, this essay runs afoul of that rule. However, there are always exceptions. The essay must always contain a resource box at the end with the author’s call and ebook title, and get in touch with records, which include his website cope with. If the essay is popular on the host website, there is a good danger it will likely be syndicated with the aid of third-party publishers, further growing your audience. The cost of such essays can’t be overstated as a tool to emblem your call and your new ebook.
Blog: When I started formulating my advertising marketing campaign, I understood that blogs had been passed and had reached market saturation. Both assumptions are real; however, oddly, blogs are a compelling advertising and marketing device. Like your website, the weblog must be updated frequently, including paintings closer to a high ranking on popular search engines. In my opinion, WordPress, an open-source software suite of equipment and web host, is the most effective platform for attaining a huge audience. There is a mastering curve here, but plenty of it is intuitive if you possess common software fluency. Building a WordPress Blog by Scott McNulty (Peachpit Press 2009) is a terrific primer.
The weblog differs from your internet site in that it is meant to feature daily ponderings, essays not referring to your book and different writings that allow the reader to hook up with who you are as someone. If used efficiently, the weblog facilitates building a relationship between reader and creator that natural advertising automobiles, consisting of a book’s website, can not achieve. I could also enormously suggest registering a domain name separate and unique from your book’s website on your weblog instead of using WordPress’s network website. This approach lets in more search engine optimization (SEO) and allows the blogger to fully take advantage of the strength of the WordPress blog equipment and plug-ins. The use of the latter on the WordPress web page is extraordinarily confined.
Podiobooks.Com: Most humans, even liberal-minded artists, want to be paid for their work product; therefore, it goes towards human nature to offer away one’s prose or verse. Now is the time to set aside that instinct and fully include your inner Karl Marx. Podiobooks.Com has yielded NYT acclaimed authors with the most important publishing deals out of entire unknowns. If your ebook in audio shape generates sufficient interest on the popular Podiobooks internet site, it could nicely launch your expert career as an author. The volunteers who can be tasked with the website’s online administration are themselves writers, and their hands-on method for each submission is astonishing. The site has been diagnosed as a fashion place using the Grey Lady herself, in addition to Time Magazine.
If the New York Times regards Podibooks as a serious resource, so must you. Some terrific expert voice-over artists can translate your book into audio shape. If you are not comfy reading aloud your paintings or no longer have a robust speaking voice, I will inspire you to don’t forget this as an option; albeit, it’s highly priced, with charges within the $1500 – $three 000 range relying on the period of ebook and popularity of the artist retained. Sounds expensive, and it is, but it truly is the value of a respectable studio microphone. At the very least, put money into a Shure SM58 mic, and small mic pre-amppreampoid mics have an advantage over a mic pre, as they do not produce a robust sign now.
Video Trailer: This is a hot new trend in book advertising and a fairly powerful one. The video trailer does not contrast with the preview for motion photographs seen in theaters. It’s a multimedia presentation of the synopsis or topic of your ebook. Like maximum new and famous offerings, it’s also a marketplace zone with incompetents and opportunists. Carefully vet all of us retained to do that work for you: ask for a curriculum vitae and a portfolio of their work.
What formal schooling do they’ve in video manufacturing, and what’s their forte? How lengthy have they completed settlement work inside the publishing area? Do they carry out all the paintings in-house or act out them? I’m a gearhead (a technophile with hardware information), so I regularly ask about the studio system used and the production facility. Much can be completed these days with a Mac Pro Workstation and Final Cut Studio or Adobe Creative Suite. Still, you want information, a sound isolation booth, professional mics, and mic preamps to receive an aggressive industrial product.
Price factors for this service vary from a few hundred bucks to several thousand. There is — or has to be — an instantaneous correlation between fee point and videographer revel in and assets. The correlation usually extends beyond that to the contractor’s capability to correctly place and publicize the video. It is crucial because the fine of the finished video trailer is the placement of that trailer. For example, with one’s website or weblog, the trailer’s visibility is critical to its effectiveness. Suppose the trailer’s distribution is constrained to populist sites like YouTube, Spike, and Atom. In that case, there may be no way to achieve an area of interest in marketing– to narrow your audience to the desired target marketplace of ebook buyers and fewer niche readers in a selected style.
Much of what you are paying for with the higher services is product placement. Like your ebook, a video trailer has little software if it does not reach a target market. Book Surge (booksurge.Com) is one of the few prints on call for (POD) publishers that offers a powerful video trailer placement provider. They are uniquely located to do so, as Amazon.com may completely own them. When you pay for trailer production via Book Surge, they’re capable of assuring the placement of that video on your ebook’s Amazon product web page. Something no other publisher or publicist can provide, save for the fundamental publishing conglomerates.
Virtual Book Tours: VBT has become a popular and cheaper opportunity for authors who have paid thousands to publicists with a modest return on their investment dollars. With books now being the number one commodity of online transactions, it is the most helpful way to manage the publicity ty of your ebook’s website and related web presence. Here, a longtime community is a whole lot. Few new authors have the prevailing relationships with unique literary hobby websites, forums, and blogs to publicize their ebook and their names as authors efficiently. You want these 1/3-celebration websites to speak about your ebook, its author, and the link returned for your website. As crucial as branding your ebook is branding your call.
If your call is recognizable among readers, they’re twice as likely to find your ebook online or at a brick-and-mortar reseller. Since there is significantly less overhead for the publicist in promoting a writer online, the client’s fee is less than partnering with a traditional publicist. The professional in poting books online should be capable of comfy writer interviews, ebook opinions, and featured articles — like this one — on sites frequented by prospective casebook consumers cause of the sheer quantity of ebook sales online today, a VBT is a no-brainer. However, it needs to be preceded, for my part, by having the aforementioned promotional gear in place to maximize the impact and attain of the VBT publicist’s efforts. Even huge publishing homes require authors to advertise their books and update websites and blogs proactively. This is even momore authentic for the brand new author, wherein it will require rather more legwork to set up each author and his frame of labor as worthy of the reader’s cash and time.
