Promotion: Stage 3

Over the past couple weeks, I have covered promotion in stages, stage 1 being before your publish and stage 2 being when you publish your work. Stage 3, the last stage, is meant to be an ongoing stage to keep interest up about your book as long as it is out.

Wow! Now you may think that stage 3 is a lot but truth is, it has the least amount of active promotional work.  At this point, you are still able to do some of the promotional activities mentioned in stage 2: character interviews, author interviews, blogs, banners, book tours, giveaways etc. In addition to this, if you have several books out and depending on where the rights of your books are, you can always try re-packaging the books.

Most importantly in stage 3 is your current writing. Huh? What I'm saying is that the best promotional tool in this stage is a new work. Occasionally, an author writes something that hits it out of the park and really stands alone on its own, but I imagine that even their fans would like to see more works from them just due to the fact that their first book was so good.

And that brings me to my next point. Not only is it important to keep writing, but it's important to keep writing quality work.  Nothing kills an author more than readers who believe that said author is out there to rip them off. Now, I didn't say bad reviews because that is a general term and many good authors will sometimes get bad reviews (can't please everyone). If anything, those will sometimes generate more traffic and sales. But I'm referring to those reviews that rip on the basics of the book: editing, grammar, structure, etc. The books we write are bought (not given away), therefore, readers have an expectation of receiving a quality product.

Stage 3 really brings promoting your work full circle and in essence, it is the most important part of the promotional process. We are writers and as such, it is our responsibility to keep telling the quality stories inside us (as long as they keep coming to us). I hope these 3 stages of promotion have benefited you and wish you a happy week of writing. Oh, and good luck on that release ;0)

Filed under: Business, Marketing, Toni Kelly