OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Podcast: Download (Duration: 31:50 — 7.3MB)
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Dana Lynn Smith is owner of Texana Publishing Consultants and is the author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides, a series of ebooks on book marketing topics. She specializes in developing marketing plans for nonfiction books and is known as The Book Marketing Maven.
In this podcast, you will learn:
- Advice for authors who aren't sure about doing their own marketing
- Learn what you can about publishing and book marketing
- Online marketing is great for introverts – so focus on text-based marketing
- What a marketing plan is and why it is so important
- Include goals, package, price, distribution, target audience, outline how you will reach the target audience – it includes the promotional plan which is the detail of how you will promote
- Prioritise your marketing plan so you focus on the most important things as time flies!
- Start on it before you write your book, especially for non-fiction
- Publishers also want a marketing plan, as you are responsible for the promotion of the book yourself
- Divide your plan into online marketing and traditional marketing, and pick the things you want to include that fit your personality
- Develop relationships with other experts in your area, other authors, bloggers and influencers
- Social networking is a great way to develop relationships
- Content marketing – submitting articles to blogs, article sites, free reports and sites like Squidoo
- Have a good website that is search engine friendly and attracts subscribers and buyers
- Using a blog-based site – easier and less costly than maintaining 2 separate sites
- How to find blogs you can guest post on – social networking and searches e.g. Google Blog Search
- Check Alexa rank for blogs to see how they compare to your site – check the split by country
- How to combine social networking with writing and selling your books
- The great thing about Twitter – everyone you meet has the potential to share your message by retweeting
- How to promote yourself on social networks, without looking like you are promoting all the time – 80% helpful advice and other links, 20% about your own material (Joanna – this is also my rule!)
- How to get the attention of someone important in your industry, or a blogger – this way you can connect with them and potentially develop a relationship
- Selling ebooks – why they are such a great product. PDFs vs books for e-readers.
- Easy to produce and cheap vs print books – the profit margins are much higher than print books.
- You should still use an editor and produce a quality product
- Selling books to libraries – why they are a great market especially for non-fiction authors
- Getting reviews in the library journals, or using direct mail to promote
- Recommends GoDaddy.com for URLs, helps for search engine traffic
- Dana's Texas Author Resources ebook – a great product but also a great idea for other people – can you create a localized ebook for your country/state?
- Dana refers to Dale Beaumont's Get Published TV show, specifically “Think Book Series, not Book”
You can find Dana at www.BookMarketingMaven.com and also on Twitter @BookMarketer
Her ebooks are all available at www.SavvyBookMarketer.com.
View Comments (1)
Joanna, you are one dynamic, amazing, enterprising, professional, motivating, 'sharing' person and author. Have loving seeing you prosper and become a 'giant' in the e-publishing world. Thank-you for all the information you offer, give-away, and share with newbies and authors.