Top Five Free (or Cheap) Online Marketing Tools for Authors

Since it's New Year's Eve and all of the news casts and news channels are doing their obligatory year-end "Top Five" lists, I thought I would post a few of my own. Today, it's the Top Five Free (or Cheap) Online Marketing Tools for Authors. These are things that you might already be doing, but there may be an idea or two here you haven't considered before.

1. Your own blog. Do you have your own blog? Every author should have one. It's like having your own web site which you can update and add to every single day, if you want. You can post a free chapter of your book, list your upcoming book signing events, post photos from your book signing events and discuss your latest writing projects. This post you are reading right now is posted on my own blog. I use the blogging platform Blogger, but there are other free blogging platforms such as Wordpress.com. Setting up a blog on Blogger is easy and free.

2. Paypal. Do you plan to sell your books on your blog? You'll need a way of accepting payments, and the king of online payment systems is Paypal. Have you ever wondered how you can take credit card and check payments at your book signings or at book fairs? If you have a laptop computer with wireless internet access, you can use Paypal to process these payments. Click here for a tutorial on how to set up a Paypal account, if you don't already have one.

3. Facebook or MySpace. Once you set up a blog, you'll need to start driving traffic to it. A good way to do that, and promote yourself and your book at the same time, is to get your own Facebook or MySpace account. As with your blog, you'll want your Facebook or MySpace page to offer some content of value and not seem to pushy while you're pushing your book. People want to know about you. Be yourself. MySpace and Facebook pages can also be customized, which takes a little more know-how. If you can't or don't want to do that yourself, there are services to help you do this (your Tate Publishing marketing rep can help you with this).

4. Red Room. Red Room is like Facebook or MySpace, but it's for authors. It's a great way to connect with other writers or with fans of writers.

5. Twitter. Twitter is like a mini-blog, and you enter updates of 140 characters or less at a time. I use Twitter to pass along publishing news or articles that I think are worthwhile, or to let people know I have a new blog post. Setting up a Twitter account is free and easy, and it's a great way to update your readers about what you are up to, whether its a book signing event, a new book you're writing or news about your book. You can follow me on Twitter for additional marketing tips or to send messages directly to me.

Honorable mention:

Shelfari - This is a social networking site focused on books. You can use this site to build your own bookshelf (including your books, of course) and discussing books with readers.

Craig's List - Craig's List is like the penny-saver paper for the online community. It has a section where you can post community events, which is a great place to post the information about your upcoming book signing events.

LibraryThing - You can use LibraryThing in a number of ways, such as entering your book to the list if it isn't already listed, discussing your book, listing your events and finding venues in your community which regularly host book signing events.

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How to Market Your Book When You Don't Have Time to Market Your Book

I had a conversation with an author yesterday that went something like this:

"Ugh! Terry, I am just too busy to do anything to help market my book. There is just too much to do. How can I possibly do it all?"

First of all, I think they were overlooking the fact that they are not in this alone. As their marketing representative, I'm here to help authors create sales and promotional opportunities for their book. But, I get their point. Marketing and promoting a book IS a lot of work, and authors MUST be involved in the marketing and promoting of their book.

This was my response:

"You don't have to do everything all at once. Just do it in baby steps. Pick one thing to do each day to help spread the word about your book. It could be anything. Write a blog post. Post a message on your Twitter or Facebook profile. Call a bookstore and see if you can do a signing. Just do one thing each day. By the end of a year, you will have done 365 things to help market your book."

That's a lot of marketing and promoting, and the cumulative effects of those tasks do add up, in a positive way.

When an author's book is first released, they are excited. They should be. They authored a book! But, all too often, they feel like everything has to happen NOW. Unfortunately, publishing isn't an immediate-results type of business. Just like it takes time to build traffic to a new web site, or bring customers into a new business, it takes time to develop a loyal readership. It doesn't happen from the simple act of a book being released. That's just the first step.

So, market and promote your book in baby steps, but remember: there is no expiration date for your book. Many of these "baby step" activities can be done in just a few minutes. Everybody can find 10-15 minutes in their day.

A sample marketing schedule could look something like this (assuming you're only going to work on your marketing Monday-Friday and do book signing events on Saturdays):

Monday - Call a bookstore and schedule an event.
Tuesday - Update your Facebook and Twitter pages.
Wednesday - Send out press releases and invitations for your upcoming events (at least a week before the event)
Thursday - Identify at least one new niche marketing venue for your book and try to schedule an event there (not a bookstore). These could be speaking engagements, book fairs and festivals, trade shows, etc.
Friday - Send an email to at least five new bloggers, book reviewers or publications introducing yourself and telling them about your book. Spread the word!

This isn't a carved-in-stone schedule, of course. It's just a sample of what can be accomplished over the course of a week in just a few minutes a day. Over time, these efforts add up and begin to pay off. Try it. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results!

How much time do you dedicate to marketing and promoting yourself and your book each week?

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How Do Books Get Stocked in Bookstores?

Reader question:

Hi Terry. I was just curious...Is it common or helpful at all for an author to contact bookstores (local or not) and request that they order your book at that store? Basically, what is the regular criteria for why a certain store puts a book on their shelf or not? Thanks! I enjoy your marketing articles! David

This is actually one of the most-asked questions we receive in the marketing department at Tate Publishing. To understand the answer to this question, you must first understand how certain titles come to be stocked in bookstores in the first place.

We have already explained how competitive and difficult it is to get a book stocked in a bookstore. With more than 560,000 titles released in the U.S. this year, there is no way all of those titles, or even a majority of those titles, are going to get stocked on a bookstore shelf. Let's take a look at the two kinds of bookstores and explore how the decision is made to stock the titles they do have on the shelf.

Corporate chain stores: These are the major chain bookstores like Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, etc. The decision to stock books in these stores is not made at the store level. It is made by a buyer who works in the corporate offices of these bookstore chains (they only deal with the publisher. Authors should not contact them directly). Each company may have several buyers, and each buyer may have a particular genre of book they buy (such as Children's books, Christian books, etc.). Buyers take several things into consideration when deciding whether to add a title to their stores' stock: Has the author published before? What kind of sales did their previous titles have? How have similar books sold at their stores? Are they already overstocked on books with a similar theme? Books by previous bestselling authors and celebrity authors go to the front of the line. Does the store already have 49 different titles about gardening? They probably don't need a 50th. Also, some publishers pay for product placement in certain stores. This real estate, usually somewhere in the front of the store, is usually reserved for bestselling authors and is very expensive.

Store managers have very little say about the books stocked in their store. They can order books for book signing events and they may even stock a few select titles for their "local interest" section, but that's about it. So in this case, the answer is "no", it probably won't do an author any good to call their local corporate chain store to ask them to stock their title. Authors can call and ask to participate in a book signing event at the store, and if the event goes very well and customers continue to request the title, the store manager may locally stock the book in their "local interest" section. If the buyer at the corporate level notices growing customer demand for a particular title, they may eventually pull the trigger and decide to stock the book in their stores. Books handled by a distributor have the edge over books which are only available directly from the publisher. Buyers want books at a discount, and they want books that are returnable. This usually disqualifies self-published titles.

A word of warning: in the past, some authors have asked 300 of their closest friends to call their local Barnes & Noble or Borders stores and order a copy of their book. The problem with this is the friends don't go to the store to purchase the book when it arrives. Many authors mistakenly think the stores will then stock the book on their shelves. They won't. The books will be sent back to the distributor as returns. Now, not only has the author cost themselves money, but the corporate offices of these bookstore consider these to be "fraudulent" orders. What are the chances that this title will ever be stocked at these stores in the future (or that the author will get another book signing event)? Probably never.

Local, independent stores: I call these stores the "mom and pop" bookstores. They are locally owned and locally operated. The people who make the decision to stock a title work right there in the store. The decision might be made by the store's owner or manager (often this is the same person) or with feedback from all of the store's employees. These stores also stock the "hot" bestselling titles, but they also often stock titles by local authors. Authors can often get in touch with the managers of these stores, show them their books, and if the manager thinks the book will sell, they'll stock it. They may order the book from a distributor, or they may have the author leave a few copies and sell them on a consignment basis. If the book sells well, the store may reorder copies of the book. No, this won't get a book stocked in a major bookstore chain nationally, but it does make the book available in a retail outlet. In this case, it may very well pay off for an author to contact the store and ask them to stock their book (a step you may want to approach in person or via email, along with a photo of the book cover and a good description of the book.

Look at it this way: when any other product first comes out, no matter what kind of product it is, it isn't automatically stocked in every store across the country. There has to be demand for the product. If the Shamwow didn't have a stellar track record of sales, you would not see it in Walmart or Walgreens or any other retail outlet. The buyers for those stores stocked it because they had a reasonable expectation that it would sell. Bookstores operate the same way.

Getting published is the first step. Building demand for a title is a job that is never done.

Which bookstores are currently carrying your book, and how did it come to be stocked?

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What's It REALLY Like to be a New York Times Bestseller?

Most authors aspire to become a "bestselling" author. What exactly does this mean? You might think it means that your book has sold millions of copies and that it nets millions in royalties. The reality, however, is quite different.

Sheila Kelly, also known as Lynn Viehl, is a New York Times bestselling author, and she blogged about the reality of hitting the NYT bestsellers list.

Her first NYT bestseller for mass market fiction was actually the sixth novel in The Darkyn series of books. She does a great job of breaking down how many books were printed in the publisher's initial run (not all publishers have print runs. Those are mainly used by those who use offset printing), the amount of her advance and how much she made in royalties during the period her book became a bestseller. She even posts a copy of her royalty statement.

Here are the highlights:

1. Her publisher did no marketing for her book. The author had a platform based upon previous books she had written, and she reached out to her readers. Her readers made her book a NYT bestseller.

2. For the royalty period that the book became a bestseller, it sold about 65,000 copies.

3. The author's royalties for that period were about $40,500. However, her net earnings, after returns, royalty holdbacks, etc., were just under $28,000. Her ACTUAL earnings for the period (because she had received an advance) were $0.

That's right, a NYT bestselling author sold about 65,000 books and didn't receive a royalty check. Now, once her title earns back the amount of her advance (IF it earns back the amount of the advance), then the author will start to see some royalty checks. But until then: nothing.

Kelly said most authors are lucky to make 10 percent profit on their book, and the amount of money she received for her effort up to that point (the blog post was written in April) was a grand total of $26,000. Many authors might say they would be happy to make $26,000 on the sales of their book, but remember, Kelly writes for a living, and this is a NYT bestselling book, after all.

I think Kelly shatters a few myths with her post:

1. Not all NYT bestselling authors are millionaires.

2. Not all NYT bestselling books sell millions of copies.

3. Not all bestselling authors have nationwide book tours.

Kelly's "secret" to sales success: connecting with her readers and reaching her book's niche audience.

As an author, what surprised you most about Kelly's post?

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Five Recommended Marketing Books For Authors

I get involved with authors when their books are ready to go to print and receive their release date. When I make my first introductory phone call to the author, one of the most common things I hear them say is "I love writing, but I don't know a THING about marketing books." Sure, I'm there to help the author and assist them with the marketing and promotion of their book, but authors must be involved in the marketing of their book. No matter who the publisher of the book is, authors are always an important part of the marketing equation. Some publishers are bluntly telling their authors they are responsible for doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to marketing their own book. Authors need to be savvy about publishing, the marketplace, and how to promote themselves. With that in mind, I have a list of five books that I consider required reading for authors who are looking for an edge when it comes to promoting their own books.

1. Amen: A Simple Guide to Self-Marketing Your Christian Book - I have had the pleasure of sitting in on one of Leon Mentzer's presentations for authors about self-marketing. Even though I have been in the business awhile, I learned some new things myself. Leon condenses his knowledge about marketing and promotion into this book, which could be used by any author, not just authors of Christian books. Leon's mantra: "I just concern myself with selling one book at a time."

2. 1001 Ways to Market Your Books - I purchased a copy of this book, read it cover-to-cover, and then one of my co-workers "borrowed" it and I haven't seen it since. I can't blame them. There is a lot of great advice in this book, and you're sure to find some marketing ideas you hadn't considered before. In my opinion, this book is really written with the self-published author in mind, so some of the book's advice won't apply to every author, but there is a lot of good info in this book that can be used by any author.

3. Beyond the Bookstore: How to Sell More Books Profitably to Non-Bookstore Markets - If you're looking for a good resource about niche marketing for books, this is it. Brian Jud points out the many lucrative markets that exist for authors outside of regular bookstore channels. The book even includes a CD-rom to help authors map out a marketing plan for their book using niche marketing channels.

4. Guerilla Marketing for Writers: 100 Weapons to Help Sell Your Work - This book is straightforward and blunt, which I like. "Guerilla Marketing for Writers" states that writers need to take the future of their book sales into their own hands, and it details several ideas to help writers move copies of their book. Many of the ideas in the book are free for the author to implement. If you want to sell books, you'll want to buy this one.

5. Social Media Marketing for Dummies - It's a fact of life; If you want to market your book these days, you need to know something about social media. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter...they are all being used by authors and publishers as a means of marketing and promoting their books. Social media works, but only if it is done well and done right. This book is a good crash course about how to use social media to your advantage for marketing and promotion.

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