Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller
The professional social networking site LinkedIn.com is currently considered by many, including me, as one of the big three of social media sites (the other two being Twitter and Facebook).
Yes, there are other sites appropriate for various social networking connections, and particularly YouTube can also be very important. But for making connections with your targeted audiences, these are the big three.
First a little background on LinkedIn
LinkedIn Read more [...]
Category: TGIF Book Marketing Tips
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Publicity is FREE: 15 Commandments for Getting In on the Ride
Guest Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
An Excerpt from THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON’T
A huge retailer once said that advertising works, we just don’t know how, why, or where it works best.
What we do know is that advertising’s less mysterious cousin, publicity, works even better. It is the more reliable relative because it is judged on its merit alone and carries the cachet of an editor’s approval. It also is surrounded by the ever-magic word “free.” Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: How to Become a Powerhouse Blogger in just 15 Minutes!
Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri
We hear it all the time: “Do you have a blog?” and maybe you do, or maybe you’ve thought of it and haven’t been ready to take the plunge. The biggest complaint I hear is that it takes too much time and authors don’t know what to write about. But there’s an easy way to start, grow, and manage your blog. Let’s look at a few ideas along with some tips for blog optimization and some headlines that will make readers beat a path to your virtual door.
Why Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Everything You Do Online Reflects on Your Book
Everything You Do Online Reflects on Your Book: Make Sure That Reflection Is Professional
Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller
This month’s guest post is a natural extension of last month’s guest post “Do Your Offline and Online Book Promotion Activities Support Each Other?”
In that post I talked about how your book author website should present consistent information about your offline and online book promotion activities.
In addition, all your online book promotion activities Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Your Media Release: What to do? What to do?
Guest Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
This will be short and sweet. There are many ways to use a media release. These are the major ones. If your title is unique, you may think of others.
Attach a media release to the outside of your media kit with a paper clip. It will tell an editor, producer, or other gatekeeper exactly what the big occasion is.
Send a media release to total strangers through one of the many news release disseminators. Many are free. Find a list on the Resources for Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Why (Some) Authors Fail
Guest Expert: Penny C. Sansevieri
Sorry for the buzz kill title of this article, but instead of spreading pixie dust as many marketing articles do, I thought I'd take a hard look at the realities of self-defeating behavior and some of the things authors might buy into that will sabotage their careers.
Over the years I've written a lot of articles on how to be successful, but to be successful you must first learn how to fail up, meaning that you learn from what you did wrong, take full responsibility Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Writers Get Connected To Build a Solid Author Platform
Guest Expert: Teresa Morrow
You love to write. Of course you do, you are a writer. Searching for just the right word and crafting how the words will form to produce the correct sentence to create your story for your book feeds your soul. But in our highly technological world today, just writing a book is not enough. Placing a purchase link for your book on your website waiting for the readers to respond doesn’t equate to sales. Today, you have to take action to build a solid author platform Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Self Publishing in Baby Steps
Guest Author: Carolyn Watson Dubisch
Becoming a publisher was the last thing from my mind when I graduated from The School of Visual Arts in NYC in 1993 with my BFA in illustration in one hand and my children's book portfolio in the other. I just draw the pictures and the publisher writes the checks, or so I thought. After 10 years of drawing pictures for children's magazines and submitting and submitting my children's book dummies for review,(sometimes getting as far as "the committee" only Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Do Your Offline and Online Book Promotion Activities Support Each Other?
Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller
Have you ever read a tweet on Twitter about an upcoming book signing in a specific city the next day and clicked through to the book author website to learn more?
But once on the website you can’t find any mention of the time and place for the book signing?
You haven’t really stepped into the next dimension. What you have stepped into is a disconnect between an author’s online and offline activities.
Let’s start at square one:
An effective Read more [...]
TGIF Book Marketing Tips: Editing IS Marketing: Boning Up on First Impressions
Guest Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers.
First impressions are important. We all are aware of that as we brush our teeth and try to unknot the rat's nests from the back of our hair each morning. In fact, first impressions are part of our marketing efforts, too. Whether we are marketing ourselves (say, an interview or a TV appearance) or marketing our books via e-mail, editing is an essential part of that first-impression effort called a query Read more [...]
