Monthly Archives: August 2021

How You Can Promote Books Without Spending Money

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Forget relying totally on paid book ads. Explore these ways to promote books without spending money.

First, let’s acknowledge what you have done. After all, book marketing is tireless work. It starts with writing a riveting novel or a hard hitting, informative non-fiction book. Kudos to you if you have knocked out this part of the book marketing process. Take time to celebrate. Then, roll up your sleeves and prepare to work, announcing your books to readers.

Taking the Book Publicist Route – This One Will Cost You

If you want to punt book marketing efforts to someone else, you could pay a marketing agency or publicist to do to that work for you. But taking that route will cost you. In fact, Writer’s Digest shares that the average book publicist rate is $100 an hour. Also, to get traction from a book publicist’s work, you may need to hire the publicist for three to four months prior to book publication and another three months post publication.

On average, you can expect to spend $5,000 to $10,000 for a book publicist. Take this path, and you’ll definitely want to vet a publicist or a marketing agency thoroughly. After all, you want to get your money’s worth from every book marketing effort that you invest in.

And, if you do pay for book marketing, check to see that the book publicist or marketing agency has deep experience marketing (and selling) books. For instance, check their references. Even more, check that they have influential media and book industry contacts. This helps them land you newspaper, magazine, radio and television interviews.

Free Ways to Promote Books Without Spending Money

Ensure they have gained 5,000 or more sales for other books that they’ve marketed. At the minimum, an effective marketer should have generated 1,000 book sales in a year. If not, they might not have the best skills. Before you sign a book marketing contract, speak with authors who have worked with the book publicist or book marketing agency you’re interested in inking a deal with. Do your homework.

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That’s a good first step if you choose to pay someone to promote your books. Just don’t miss out on free promotion tools. Are you ready? I’m going to share several ways to promote your books, marketing techniques that won’t cost you a cent.

Fortunately, you could knock out a few of the below steps over a few weekends. I didn’t add this one to the list because it’s not free. But you definitely want to have a sharp official author website. Media contacts will visit your website to learn more about you.

In fact, add your website URL to postcards, magnetic automobile stickers, your email signature and all printed material related to your books. Other steps include:

Marketing Tools to Promote Books Without Spending Money

  • Add a book blog to your official author website – You could use a CMS like WordPress to do this. However, if you do add a blog to your official author website, write and publish a new post to your blog weekly, if not more. Include SEO phrases in blog posts in a natural, easy-to-read way.
  • Schedule podcast interviews – Check directories like Interview Guest Directory (interviewguestsdirectory.com) to find podcast that interview authors for free. Schedule interviews with these podcasts. iTunes, Google Podcasts and Blog Talk Radio are other places that you can look for podcasts to interview on, letting listeners know that you have new books for sale.
  • Get on the radio – Similar to podcasts, reach out to radio stations that interview authors. As a tip, contact DJs who cover topics similar to the topic your book focuses on.
  • Use television – Share content from your nonfiction books with viewers at your local public broadcasting station. Also, reach out to local, regional and national television stations if your book has a holiday theme, relates to current events, etc.

More Tools You Can Use Without Spending Money

Take advantage of author newsletter book ad swaps – Exchange book ads with other authors. For example, you could advertise an author’s book in your newsletter and, in exchange, have that author advertise your book in her or his newsletter. Also:

  • Share book designs on social media – Use free book design services at places like BookBrush (bookbrush.com) and Canva to create designs to share on social media. Post about your books on social media to build your audience of potential book buyers.
  • Work with book directories – Add your book literary directories. This directory has free and paid listings (https://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2014/07/author-directory-sites-the-complete-list)
  • Start a literary video channel – Launch your own author video channel on platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Akin to operating a book blog, update your video channel weekly.
  • Launch a literary newsletter – Tools like Constant Contact, MailChimp, Emma and Benchmark make it easy to create and distribute literary newsletters. While these tools aren’t free, they do cut down on the time it takes to create and distribute newsletters. Yet, you can also create a literary newsletter using Word or PowerPoint and distribute manually to your email list for free, but this takes work and more time.
  • HARO (helpareporter.com) – Help a Reporter Out (HARO) list websites and media outlets that are looking for people to interview for articles, etc. Some HARO contacts include books in their catalogs.
  • Search paid book marketing sites – Some paid book marketing sites offer free marketing services. You might have to look for them. For example, BookDoggy (bookdoggy.com) will feature your book in their newsletter and on their website for free. All you have to do is include a BookDoggy ad in your literary newsletter that has 3,000+ subscribers.

Stay Encouraged

Whether you’re marketing books to land on the New York Times bestseller list, Essence top selling books or Amazon bestsellers, you’ll have to invest time. The same applies if you only want to sell a few thousand copies of your book.

The point is to keep introducing your books to new readers. That’s not all. To increase your book sales, you’ll need to keep your book in front of readers who are already familiar with your work. This is when blogging, starting a podcast and creating a literary newsletter can really pay off.

Another way to grow your book sales without spending money is to write new books. In fact, authors with 12 or more books in their catalog tend to sell more books than authors with less than 8 published books. Stay encouraged. Keep advancing. Keep writing!

Success Means Staying Motivated Through Failures

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Staying motivated through failures is a must if you want to experience ongoing success. You’ll need tools and techniques to stay motivated because the path to success is not a straight line. In fact, there are twists and turns so sharp, you might question why you ever believed you could achieve a certain goal.

Clarity as a Prerequisite to Staying Motivated Through Failures

On the other hand, if you’ve already started working your vision, exercised courage and are going after your destiny, you know that failure is part of the success road. However, knowing you’ll make mistakes and face challenges doesn’t make the journey easier. That’s why, to achieve ongoing success, you have to really want what you say you want.

By itself, this clarity makes staying motivated through failures possible. For you, clarity might come after you receive a vision, an inner short-clip-of-sorts, that details what you should do while you’re in this world.

Or you might be inspired to pursue arts, science, entertainment, sports, education, ministry or technology from watching a movie or reading a book. Either way, you’d clearly know, absolutely know, what you came here to do.

Starting Out on the Road to Success

Soon, you’re rolling up your sleeves, perhaps telling family and friends about your success dream. If you’re not careful, you might quit your day job, visions of you racking up sales at your “dream job” filling your imagination.

Sounds so good. Feels great. But, in this world, there are surprises, disappointments, lessons to be learned and setbacks, particularly as you pursue your destiny. For example, you might have a stellar business launch, perhaps attracting the attention of major media outlets, only to have sales arrive so fast that you struggle to fill orders on time.

This is what happened to some booksellers who got press during COVID lockdowns. Book orders came in so fast, it was tough for bookstores to fill the orders, especially considering that mail operated with limited staff due to the virus.

That’s when “success” pivots into setbacks (or failures) and lessons learned. You could circumvent these failures through research. For instance, in this case, as a bookseller you could research contracts with wholesalers who generally fill book orders within 24 hours. You could also research overnight shipping options, shortcutting the time it takes to get books from your store to customers. Even so, there be more unexpected events ahead.

When The Unexpected Happens – Staying Motivated Through Failures

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Besides being unprepared for significant uptick in sales, other failures you could encounter on the success road include:

  • Falling out-of-bounds with industry policies and regulations (being pulled in five or more directions could cause you to lose focus on a policy which could, over time, find you running afoul of regulations)
  • Hiring the wrong staff (do this and you could end up completing projects yourself because the people you hired don’t have the skills to do what you hired them to do)
  • Taking on more than you have the bandwidth to successfully pull off
  • Not generating enough sales to cover your overhead
  • Investing money in marketing and promotion efforts only to go into debt because your sales never match, let alone surpass, marketing and promotion investments
  • Sacrificing sleep to keep creating, marketing and distributing products and services

Staying Motivated Through Failures – How Much Should You Sacrifice for Success

Most of all, you might spend less time with family and friends just so you can pursue your dream. This is like wresting with an addiction. You keep telling yourself that you’ll spend time with your kids, partner or friends in a week, in a month, over the holidays.

You get the point.

Before you know it, your kids are grown and you haven’t spent much time with them (remember the song by Sandy and Harry Chapin – “The Cat’s In The Cradle”) . Another painful failure that you could encounter on the road to success is the delay of what you want happening.

Now, this is where the rubber meets the road when it comes to staying motivated through failures. It’s not easy to stay motivated when you’re working hard, making sizable investments and not getting what you want.

So, what do you do?

Staying Motivated Through Failures on the Road to Success

How can you motivate yourself when little seems to be going right? How can you keep your spirits lifted when, despite your efforts, you keep facing failures?

To start, remember that you’ll never achieve the success you want if you quit. Also, remember that success is never owned. In fact, although success is a choice, it’s not like a coat.

You can’t own and hang success in a closet. So, in addition to remembering that success is never owned, be open to change. After all, what got you success, including quantum success, a year or more ago, may not yield the same results today.

Most of all, remember why you got started. Recall your vision. Revisit your destiny, how and when it came to you. Let that vision, that motivation, lead you.

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Success Choices To Staying Motivated Through Failures

Be persistent; be consistent. On the success road, you must be tenacious. You also have to find ways to stay motivated. Here are actions you could take to keep going when the pull to quit gets strong:

  • Listen to deep meditation tapes to train your brain for success
  • Sharpen your vision so you’re clear on what you need to do to yield the results you want
  • Meditate on success quotes
  • Talk with people who achieved their dream, asking them to share failures they faced and what they did to stay motivated and move beyond those setbacks
  • Join professional groups with memberships that include people with passions similar to yours. Share successes and mistakes. Also, network with these people to learn about new technologies, marketing tools and industry trends that you can use to gain traction.

More Paths to Staying Motivated Through Failures to Achieve Success

  • Read books about success, including books about success principles
  • Write down dreams you have that reveal tips on how you can shortcut the road to success
  • Journal about your feelings, especially during times when you find staying motivated through failures difficult.
  • Create a detailed plan, mapping out actions you will take to get from where you are now to where you want to be
  • Hang pictures of what your life will look like when you fulfill your destiny around your home
  • Complete at least three actions a day that bring you closer to what you want. If you start to feel vulnerable, like giving up, remind yourself why you got started.

Instead of focusing on failures, review your daily actions, making changes as needed. Also, review monthly time and money investments, again making adjustments. Show your inner critic that you are taking smart actions. Prove to yourself that you are setting yourself up to experience ongoing success. After all, success is never owned. You have to keep reaching for it, achieving success, experience after experience. It’s a journey Mulukan, in the story Long Walk Up, is more than familiar with.

How Reading with Children Strengthens Families

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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Reading with children strengthens families in ways other bonding activities don’t. Even more, reading, writing and math are subjects that children use throughout their lives, in one form or another. In fact, reading and writing play a major role in one-on-one and group communication. School, work, finances and personal relationships are affected by each of the three subjects. Yet, of the three, reading books is too often limited to the classroom.

Lasting Benefits From Reading Books

You have to use math skills to balance your personal budget, operate a business and ensure you don’t get ripped off while engaging in money exchanges. And, even if you don’t use long hand, you have to use a form of writing (or typing) to communicate via a memo, email, card or letter. It’s hard to stop using writing and math skills.

But finding interesting books to read may be perceived as a “chore” or an activity that’s limited to school. This can happen despite the fact that reading books is a key to lifelong learning. And here’s another benefit of reading, especially parents and caretakers reading with children. Reading books with children can help strengthen families.

Think about the people who you felt a deep connection with as a child. Did any of those people read 2nd grade books or 3rd grade books to you when you were a child? If they did and they enjoyed reading to you, enthusiasm filling their voices, it wouldn’t be shocking to learn that it’s those people who you remember fondly when you look back on your childhood.

Fun Times Reading Books

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I can still see and hear my aunt reading books to my siblings and me. She put so much inflection in her voice, glancing up at us, her eyes expanding with excitement, as she read important parts of a children’s book. Soon, I was strengthening my passion for reading books. To this day, I know that my love of discovering good books to read is rooted in the way that my aunt read to me when I was a kid.

Years later, I passed that same habit of finding great books to read and sharing them with my son. We had so much fun reading stories like the Bernstein Bears series, classic 2nd grade books and standalone novels. Just thinking about those times brings a smile to my face.

Before long, my son was reading books to me. We were growing together. And, perhaps more importantly, we were strengthening our bond.

Reading with Children Strengthens Families – It’s A Great Investment

In fact, the bond between children and parents may strengthen because reading books, even short 2nd grade books and 3rd grade books, takes time. Even more, reading books is a time investment that demonstrates how much someone means to you.

Think about it. Would you sit down and read a book to or with someone you didn’t want to be around?

Furthermore, it takes time to find good books to read. Bring home a new good book to read to or with your child each week and, after awhile, your child may realize that you’re investing time in her or him. Top that off by choosing great, entertaining stories and your child could start looking forward to the times when you sit down together and explore good stories.

How to Encourage Kids to Read Books

If you’re struggling to find ways to get your child to want to read as a start, consider the following actions. Keep trying different techniques. It might surprise you how fast your child goes from having an unwillingness to read to having a passion for reading books.

  • Start reading books to your child early, definitely before your child starts school.
  • Choose fun 2nd grade books (earlier grades if you start reading to your kids before they start school).
  • Read with enthusiasm. Make reading books fun.
  • Ask your child what she thinks about the book’s characters. Also, ask your child what she thinks the story is about and what her favorite parts of the story are.
  • Select a day and time to read books to your child. After all, he’ll come to expect you to invest time to read entertaining stories to him.
  • Make seasoned popcorn before reading books to your child. Snack on the popcorn before or after you finish reading.
  • The following day, ask your child how he enjoyed the book that you recently read.
  • Also, ask your son for suggestions on interesting books to read.

More Way to Encourage Kids to Read Good Books

Another way to encourage your child to read books is to find great books to read when your child’s cousins or friends visit. Even more, take your child to the library and bookstore. To show your child how much you appreciate good books, pick out a few good books for yourself while you’re at the library and bookstore.

If you really want to have fun, wear a hat similar to a hat worn by a book character. That, or you could pull on a cool t-shirt that’s similar to a t-shirt worn by a major character in a popular children’s book. And, let your child dress up. Then, enjoy reading great books together.

Although reading with your children can strengthen your family bond, there are more benefits of reading books. For example, reading is a good way to get some brain exercise. Reading can also help you to relax. Try it.

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Keep Reading Great Books

Read a relaxing book an hour before you head to bed and see if you don’t sleep better. Now, this has to be a relaxing book, not a book that’s going to scare you or keep you up guessing what’s coming next in the story.

Another thing. The more books you read, the easier you may comprehend articles, research material and written policies and procedures. Improved comprehension could shorten the time it takes for you to grasp new skills.

For your child, improved comprehension could shorten the time it takes her to study for exams. Your son or daughter might even start to recognize which parts of a class textbook is most important, helping them to know which sections of a book to focus on.

But the lasting benefits of reading with your child have to do with your child and your relationship. It’s a fun and entertaining investment that says, “I love you.”

How to Launch New Books to Boost Book Sales

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By African American Books Author Denise Turney

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One of the easiest ways to boost book sales is to publish a new book. To yield good results, you need to launch new books successfully. Then, you need to work to sustain your efforts. If you want to keep sales coming, you have to keep marketing and promoting your titles. This applies whether you’re a self-publisher, hybrid publisher or publishing a new book through a small press or a traditional publishing company.

Prepping New Books to Launch

But first things first. After you write a book that hooks you, pass the manuscript to an editor. And don’t just focus on price when choosing an editor. Look for an editor who has deep experience editing the type of book you wrote. For instance, some editors work mainly with children’s books, while other editors focus on adult mystery novels.

If you’re seeking a way to save on editing costs, polish your book before you send it to an editor. As a tip, you could submit chapters of your manuscript to a professional writer’s critique group. Another way to tighten your manuscript before you send it to an editor is to ask beta readers to read the manuscript and offer you feedback.

Now, here comes the fun part. And, not just the fun part – but the time-consuming part as well. Are you grinning?

To boost book sales and launch new books successfully, you must consistently market and promote your books. It can’t be any book marketing effort. To succeed, you have to incorporate smart book marketing actions into your book sales plan.

Map Out Book Marketing Strategy to Boost Book Sales

The book industry is fiercely competitive. Yet, you can earn six-figures or more a year in the industry. Part of the work to boost book sales starts months before your book is published. So, map out how you are going to market you new book months before the book is published. To save time, you could create two spreadsheets in the same Excel workbook.

In one spreadsheet, list free book marketing tools you’ll use. Examples include social media platforms, free design tools like Canva and word-of-mouth. Before you start filling out the second spreadsheet, listing paid book marketing options, do some research. Find out which book marketing agencies and websites specialize in your book publishing genre.

Research Book Marketing Options to Boost Book Sales

Also, find out which book marketing companies showcase new books. Here are more points to consider during your research:

  • Does the firm market new books to read in print, audio and e-book format
  • How many followers does the firm have if book promotions are only on social media? (Check their social media platforms to see how engaged their followers are. As an example, look for comments, shares and how many of their posts get re-posted.)
  • Are the firm’s newsletter subscribers mainly other authors who have subscribed to their newsletter, people who may never buy another author’s books? Another stat to check has to do with newsletter subscriber engagement. To boost books sales, find out the open and click rates the newsletters have.
  • Is there a limit on the number of books a book marketing website spotlights in a daily or weekly newsletter? After all, if there are too many books in a newsletter and your book is listed midway or further down the newsletter, few people may read far enough down the newsletter to see your book.
  • What’s the cost to run a daily, weekly or monthly website literary ad? And how many impressions does a typical ad at the firm receive?

Also, find out the number of people in your book’s target audience the marketing firm reaches. This is important. Remember, book marketers can promise you the moon, stating that working with them could land your new book on a best seller list. Yet, a promise and an actual result aren’t always the same. So, do your research.

Schedule Book Marketing Initiatives

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After you finish researching free and paid book marketing options, create a schedule. Within this schedule, include the date you will start and end free and paid ads. For deeper impact, consider running ads on your backlist books too. In addition to running ads (free and/or paid), here are more ways to boost book sales after you launch a new book:

  • Take pre-orders for your new books
  • Work with an experienced website designer and build an official author website. Then, add a blog to the website. As a tip, update your blog with a new article at least once a week. And use relevant keywords in your blog articles to attract readers. Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use to find keywords. To highlight your books, add your book covers to the top or side of your blog.
  • Take advantage of Amazon’s free marketing tools if you publish e-books and print on demand books through Amazon. For example, you could do a Kindle countdown deal or you could offer a KDP e-book for free for a week. If you do use Amazon book publishing tools, apply to have your new book become part of their marketing newsletters.
  • Create your own literary newsletter. Add feature interviews, book coupons, links to your new book releases, etc. to the newsletter.

More on Book Marketing Initiatives

  • Schedule online and offline radio interviews. Also, interview on podcasts that spotlight authors. To get more traction, consider interviewing on podcasts and radio stations that are looking for guests who cover topics that your book focuses on. For instance, if you wrote a novel about a character who has ADHD, you could interview on shows that focus on mental health, learning or brain function.
  • Attend virtual and in-person book conferences, cultural festivals and writer’s conferences. These are good places to meet new readers and boost book sales. Even more, these are good places to showcase your books. As a tip, if you do attend conferences and festivals, consider bringing free book excerpts. For example, you could bring 100 copies of a two-page excerpt and hand them out to people who stop by your booth. But don’t just hand out excerpts. Ask people who stop by your booth to sign up for your literary newsletter. In fact, you could bring a printed sign-up sheet so readers can add their name and email address to subscribe to your literary newsletter. (Keep a copy of the sign-up sheet in case someone says they never subscribed to your newsletter.)
  • Use tools like Canva and Book Brush to design book marketing flyers and social media posts to share at your website, on postcards and on social media platforms.

Manage Book Marketing Budgets While You Boost Book Sales

Keep an eye on your budget throughout the book marketing process. After all, you don’t want to spend so much money on book marketing that, even if you sell 1,000 books a month, you find yourself in a financial hole.

And, going forward, always do your research before you pay for book marketing. Also, follow-up to ensure that marketing actions you paid for actually occurred. One good way to achieve this is to ask marketers and promoters you run ads thru to email you links to the places where they ran your ad. Get ad stats too, stats that show how many people clicked on your ads and/or bought your books.

Looking for more book marketing support? Check out the below book.