Heather Hart's Blog, page 41

Day 20

“Word–of–mouth marketing has always been important. Today, it’s more important than ever because of the power of the Internet.”~ Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett
Word-of-mouth marketing is probably the single most important type of marketing there is. Having someone tell someone else about your book is huge, but they can’t tell someone about it if they haven’t heard of it themselves – that’s where your part comes in. As an author, you have to be able to talk about your book. Beyond the tweets. Bey...

Day 19

“…the work of promoting the book requires just as much work as writing the book, if not more so.”~ Adam S. McHugh
I have to admit that once my mind shifted from writing to marketing, writing got increasingly more difficult for me. As I was writing, I started marking quotes that would be great for advertising the book, or come up with ideas that would help me market the book. I knew that marketing took a lot of work, and I wanted to be prepared. Instead of scrambling around once the book was pu...

Quality Content

“You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”~William S. Burroughs
Quality is important. People can tell when you have thrown something together last minute, and when you have put a lot of thought and hard work into it. It really is very similar to cooking. Should your readers expect a 5 course dinner from your book, or hamburger helper? Your marketing will tell them that – it should be like the appetizer. Are you serving chips out of a bag or crab cakes?Marketing prompt:Bra...

Day #17

“Set aside 30 minutes every day (I know you’re busy, and I KNOW it sounds like a lot of time, but it’s important) to read other people’s blogs and write comments on the posts.”~Erin MacPherson
It’s back to that relationship building thing again. Networking is just a huge part of book marketing and there’s really no way around it. Connecting with other authors and readers online – especially on blogs – can build relationships that last forever. You might not believe me, but there are some blogs...

Please and Thank You

“Remember your manners. Please and thank you are still golden words to use no matter what your age.”~Jeanne Kraft
I’ve already said that book marketing is more about relationships than it is about you and your book, with that in mind, I can’t tell you how important manners are when it comes to marketing. You want a reader to buy your book? Your marketing should reflect what they are going to get – it’s also a reflection of you as an author. I know that there are a few niches where manners migh...

Second-hand Knowledge

“...based on second hand knowledge and first-hand experience, a successful online marketing cocktail looks like this: Equal parts hard work, talent and persistence, shaken for a long, long, long, long time, and some luck skewered onto a tooth pick and thrown in for good measure.”~Kristin Weber
There is no one thing that will make or break your book marketing efforts. It takes persistence. It takes hard work. It takes time. It takes a lot of things. But at the same time, each thing you do to ma...

Day #14

“Customer, readers, agents, editors, YOU, can reach more people, faster than ever before. This can be very, very good, or very, very bad. You can’t necessarily control what will go viral, but you can control your content.”~David Unruh
One of my favorite marketing techniques has always been blogging. Participating in blog hops or going on a blog tour is an amazing way to reach new people. However, when you put information out there – especially marketing material – you have to make sure you are...

Evaluation time

“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”~Napoleon Hill
Not every marketing effort will succeed. The important part is to keep trying. It can be easy to get frustrated in the beginning of something new, but it only takes 21 days to build a new habit. At day #13 of our challenge, you’re over half way there. If you've missed a day or two, no big deal, just pick it back up and keep going – yo...

Day #12

“My theory is that every little bit has the potential to help. We just have to learn where to focus our limited time and energy, because we obviously can't do it all.”~Jody Hedlund
Building relationships, telling people about our books, tweeting, blogging, the list goes on and on. We could spend 24-7 marketing our book and still never be finished. It’s important to remember that we can’t do it all – and if we try to do too much, we’ll end up doing nothing well, and a whole lot p...

January Bookly

Featured Book:
Starting Off On The Right Foot by CJ HitzRunning
Description:A Beginner's Guide to Running Well

No matter the sport, everyone has to start somewhere. The simple sport of running is no different. Running came natural to us as kids but for various reasons, many of us gave it up at some point.

In Starting Off on the Right Foot, best-selling author CJ Hitz (Smoothies For Runners) shares some of the valuable information he's learned along the way since picking up running again in 2...