Promotion: When is enough, enough?

It’s All About Pleasing Your Man (Wom... Hero-A man to fall in love with

Promotion: When is enough, enough?

Writing a book is hard work, every author knows that. After that grueling process, you need to figure out the whole “promotion” thing. It’s not enough to have the book published in some form and have it listed on one or many of the book selling sites. There is too much competition out there for similar books. You, the author, need to determine how best to Promo, Promo, and then Promo some more.

I’ve been preparing to present a program for a local writers’ organization this weekend on Social Media, in other words learning all about promotion. The task of just learning about it all was daunting. And I quickly realized how many things I’ve been doing wrong or not at all. (heavy sigh here)

The basic elements of an Author’s Promotion Platform should at least include some, in truth, a lot of the following:

Website with a blog, or a blog site
Brief bio to use whenever your name appears online
Press kit
Social media accounts: Facebook fan page, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest
Social book cataloging sites for mix with readers: GoodReads, Shelfari, LibraryThing
E-newsletter
Contributing to other blogs
Public appearances: book signings, speaking engagements, readings, interviews

Does that all seem daunting? Yes. So you need to do the best you can, choose the promotion ways that you can be the most comfortable with. I’m still working on fine-tuning my Author Promotion Platform. At the moment, because I write/publish under three pen names, I have 4 websites, 3 Facebooks, 3 Twitters, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Plus I’m loosely on GoodReads and Shelfari.

This promotion stuff takes a lot of time away from actually writing. Carefully consider what works best for you and will allow you to continue your real purpose: writing and selling your work.

Stop by and leave a comment on works best for you…or what doesn’t work for you.