So You Want to be Published (pt. 4)

You've decided to publish your book, 1001 Uses for a Dead Cat, through an online publisher. You finally see the book showing up in searches on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million and other book retailers' websites. What happens next?

If you do nothing....

Nothing happens.

Why?

Remember the business model I described for PublishAmerica in an earlier post? They have sent out a mailing to the list you provided, and that is the FULL EXTENT of their promotional commitment. The rest is up to you.

So what do you do?

It's not enough to merely have a product listed on a website on Amazon if no one 1. knows you and your work, and 2. likes your work enough to buy it. People purchase what they want, that which interests them. You need to develop interest in what you've written.

Howie Carr, a conservative radio talk show host from the Boston area, wrote a book called "The Brothers Bulger." It is about Boston gangster Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill gang. Howie has used his talk show extensively to promote the book. He is well known in Massachusetts as a columnist for the Boston Herald, and he makes occasional appearances on television news and talk shows. He has the venues from which to promote - venues unavailable to the rest of us.

Christopher Paolini is a self-published author. You may have heard of his book-became-a-movie called Eragon. He started writing Eragon when he was around 15 years old. His parents read it, and decided to self-publish. Then they spent a year touring the country and promoting the novel.

"Paolini and his family gave over 135 talks at bookshops, libraries and schools. Many of these events were done with Paolini wearing a " medieval costume of red shirt, billowy black pants, lace-up boots, and a jaunty black cap". In summer 2002 the author Carl Hiaasen brought the attention of Eragon to his publisher Alfred A. Knopf after his stepson read a copy of the self-published novel. Knopf went on to acquire the rights to the entire trilogy. The novel was once again edited, and a new cover was drawn by John Jude Palencar." (from Wikipedia.com).

So who has the time and money to do what the Paolinis did? That question will always loom to the forefront when taking on this adventure. There are many ways to promote a book you've written, and many ways that can be done creatively, with little to no cost. Here are some suggestions:

1. Donate your book to local libraries and offer to do readings.

2. Contact local newspapers a. to announce your book by sending them a press release, and b. to find out if they are willing to review your book.

3. Seek distribution through independent bookstores. If they are unwilling to purchase the book from the distributor, perhaps you could ask them to display some of your copies with a consignment agreement. Also ask them if you could do a book signing at their store. (This will require some promoting, and you may have to run an ad to announce it - local weekly papers are always less expensive than the dailies).

4. Set up a website for your book. (This is an entire lesson in itself).

5. If you write poetry, look for poetry clubs or literary guilds in your area, and get involved.

6. Again, if you write poetry, there are many poetry websites you can join to post your poetry and start developing a following there. A couple examples are:
poets.com, thepoetstree.com, poetsinkwell.com, worldofpoets.com and so on. They usually cost around $5 a month with discounted prices for longer subscription periods.

7. Have business cards made up and hand them out to everyone.

8. If you do seminars on 1001 Uses for a Dead Cat, you will want to bring your book to the seminars and promote it there.

9. Enter writing contests (make sure you understand copyright implications when you do this - every contest has different requirements. Some are free to enter, some require a reading fee). A good place to check out contests is at winningwriters.com. It is a subscription site.

10. Seek publication through literary journals. Writer's Market is a good resource publication for this. It's a thick book, updated every year. If you don't want to purchase it, you can probably find it in your library.

You can be as creative with your promoting as you want. But remember that it isn't enough to let people know you've written a book. You have to figure out a way to give them a reason to buy it. There are millions of book titles on Amazon.com. When you go to Amazon, is it to purchase every book they have? Of course not.

In the next post, I want to go into internet marketing a bit. It can be daunting and a complete flop.

But there are ways to use it to spread the word around the world, and it can work for you while you are doing something else.