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Best Selling Authors Know Promotion!
By Linda Dominique Grosvenor ©2003 All Rights Reserved. Everybody wants to be a best selling author. The words best selling conjurs images of million dollar royalty checks. Readers and authors alike hear about them and may even read their books, however, although there is thought to be a secret to getting your book noticed and on some of today's best selling lists...there really isn't. Anybody can be a best selling author. The problem with many authors is that they want overnight success or the same degree of success that they observe other authors getting, and they want it all with a limited amount of work on their part. Here are two interesting and crucial points: #1. Nobody is an overnight success. The author(s) we claim is/are an overnight success most certainly has been toiling behind the scenes for months if not years, trying to get noticed-and they finally did. #2. Best selling authors work hard, plain and simple. You cannot expect a single email to your mother, cousin in Texas and your sister in Georgia to start a buzz that will keep selling hundreds of thousands of books for years to come. It honestly takes more than a drop in the promotion bucket to become and remain a best selling author. The pressing question is then, "When should I start promoting and what should I be doing?" Answer: As soon as you know that you have a book coming start promoting! This of course, can be the minute you start writing it or when it is sent off to the printer. Your book can be in the editors hands and come back full of typos that you have to input manually, but the last thing that you want to do is wait until the day that the boxes are delivered to your home to figure out how to move them. To get the buzz started you can use a blog (short for web log or web diary). Readers enjoy following along with a writer's progress. Talk about how you got started. Share your fears and triumps with them. It doesn't have to be a daily thing, but we all need an outlet and heartfelt entries in your blog will have readers coming back weekly and monthly to catch up on you and your quest to become a writer. Don't believe that you need a finished book to get a readers attention. Readers love excerpts. Excerpts on your website or printed and hand delivered to book clubs and bookstore owners are like sampling cheese or wine before you buy it and take it home. If you give them something to indulge in, it's more likely that they'll buy or stock a book that they've sampled rather than just buying it blindly. PROMOTE EVERYDAY! EVERYWHERE! Even before you have a book a nice glossy postcards with your book's cover is an option. Use the back portion to share the release date along with the price and ISBN, a teaser from the book and your official website (every author MUST have one). Leave your postcard at restaurants with the tip, put them in the envelope with your telephone bill, light bill and/or car payment. Give them to the cashier at your local grocery store when you're checking out or to the woman at the ticket window when you go to a movie and buy tickets. Trade postcards with other authors. When readers buy books directly from you, enclose extras of your postcards for them to share with their friends and include postcards for other authors in the package too. Sharing is definitely caring and readers will appreciate you keeping them informed about other authors as well. Why promote? That's the infamous question, but with over 1,500 books released every single month, your book will be fighting for shelf space in the local bookstores as well as stores across the country. A book that isn't promoted is a book that will collect dust and end up in the "remainder" bin or returned "unsold." Thus, the key is of course to keep your books moving, keep people talking about them and keeping your name and book cover in prime view for readers to see. Proper Promotion can do the following: -Increases book sales -Broadens your readership base -Create demand for you as a speaker or expert in a particular field -Can give a second life to your novel or non-fiction title if sales are lagging and more much... My novel Fever (ISBN:1583142614) made it onto two best seller lists when it was released in January, 2003. Emails from curious authors followed. They wanted to know how I did it and if I would show them how. I now share my promotion techniques in an affordable online email-based promotion course for writers. I enjoy teaching authors how to increase their sales and their readerships base. If you have a book, you don't have years to waste trying to figure out how to promote your book(s) the right way. One budding authors who took my most recent course states: "This is an excellent workshop. I recommend the Guerrilla Marketing workshop for all authors who are ready to take their sales to the next level. The information gained here was invaluable and I'm glad I didn't let the opportunity to take the workshop pass me by." - Shelia M. Goss, Author of ROSES are Thorn, VIOLETS are True Shelia M. Goss has gone on to have her novel appear on the Dallas Morning News Best Seller List only months after taking this course. I applaud her and urge authors to take their promotion as seriously. Some books that will help you in your promotion effort are the following: Jump Start Your Book Sales - Marilyn and Tom Ross 1001 Ways to Market Your Books - John Kremer Buzz Your Book - Doug Clegg and M.J. Rose Join the ranks of best selling author by getting "YOUR" book on the bestseller lists right out the gate. Then you can simply let the readers do what they do best...read. Linda Dominique Grosvenor is the Best Selling author of several novels including BLOOM, FEVER and LIKE BOOGIE ON TUESDAY (that is now in its 3rd printing). She is affectionately known as the Princess of Guerrilla Marketing. You can get more information on her affordable book promotion seminars by contacting her directly at: Dominique@lindadominiquegrosvenor.com. Visit her interactive website at: www.lindadominiquegrosvenor.com Linda Dominique Grosvenor is the Best Selling author of several novels including BLOOM, FEVER and LIKE BOOGIE ON TUESDAY. Log on to the website to read a FREE excerpt of her latest release PRETTY BOYS. www.lindadominiquegrosvenor.com
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