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How to Get More Exposure For a Book
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I've been wondering about the same thing. I wish I had tried a blog tour when I published my debut novel in August. But at the time our family finances were and still are stretched too thin. Now that my first 90 days on Amazon are past, my sales have dropped off dramatically. How do you get people to find your book way down on the page count? Does an add on Goodreads help? I'm trying to put a little money away for a blog tour for my second book that will be coming out in the summer. My questions are to authors who have used blog tours: Do you think it made a difference in your sales? What about later when that initial buzz faded?
I think once your first 90 days are up on Amazon, the only thing you can do to continue to generate interest for a book is to try to get reviews here on Goodreads. Or you can publish another book. What I would like to do when I release the first book in my new fantasy series is have some book tours, a few giveaways (not many because my budget is stretched also) and start querying book bloggers a full six months before the book's release. From what I can tell, it helps a lot to get as many reviews as possible prior to publication...
You could try doing readings locally - cafes, bookstores, libraries. It might help them drum up trade for themselves too. I did one at a local restaurant. It wasn't great, but I sold a few, and it's good experience. Once you've done one, others might invite you. That's what happened to me.
Loretta wrote: "You could try doing readings locally - cafes, bookstores, libraries. It might help them drum up trade for themselves too. I did one at a local restaurant. It wasn't great, but I sold a few, and it'..."I was thinking about doing something locally, but I have a secret fear that no one would show up. :0
When I was in elementary school, I went to a reading and signing by a local author and thought it was the coolest thing! I hadn't ever owned a book that was signed by the author, and it turned out to be a great read.
Anyway, owing to my crippling fear of public rejection, I don't plan on doing anything locally. There's a huge market for indie YA books online, so I think I'll (try to) tackle that first. Thanks for the advice, though! Happy reading and writing! :)
Katie wrote: "Loretta wrote: "You could try doing readings locally - cafes, bookstores, libraries. It might help them drum up trade for themselves too. I did one at a local restaurant. It wasn't great, but I sol..."The first one I was invited to do was dreadfully poorly attended, as it was not, as I had been assured, advertised! But, I had invited some friends and neighbours, some of whom turned up, and bought my books. Also I had a contingency plan as I, like you, was terrified no-one would turn up. My husband's office was nearby, so when it looked as though it would be poorly attended he brought some of his staff. They enjoyed a break, and I got a captive audience, haha. It takes a lot of courage, and my 3rd one only had a few people, but I see it as an apprenticeship. We have to start small (and I live in a very rural area, so it is small!) but that helps us hone our audience grabbing techniques. I once heard a well known stand up comic say - "I didn't just appear on the scene overnight, you know. i served my apprenticeship in smoky, noisy clubs, where only a few people were listening" and that has encouraged me. So, start off doing what you intend to do, but don't give up the idea entirely. I've read that it takes about 5 years to establish one's author platform, so hang on in there, and keep thinking up new ways to get your name out there. I am still working on that, myself. Best of luck to you, in building your audience. Don't give up. Cheers. :)
Hi Katie,I don't know if you'd be interested in this or not, but I'm trying something a little different on Twitter. It's still sort of book promo, but it's hopefully something readers will pick up on and won't just be authors tweeting and supporting each other. Also, it won't be any more of that endless tweeting of book links that I'm pretty sure everyone ignores (at least I do and I know I'm not alone).
What I'm hoping to do is have a Twitter GAME that will appeal to readers (games might work better for the YA reading crowd). The idea is to get the YA readers (or readers in general) tweeting each other about books, and get more exposure for books that way.
Here's the idea: Instead of succumbing to the hundreds of book tweets with links that fly by as promo each hour, tweet WHAT YOU'RE READING as a hint and get some twitter friends to guess what book you're reading. It can be your book, a book you're reviewing, or just something in your library. Get your friends to do the same thing and you guess what they're reading. Then on a specific day, you and your friends tweet the answers (Friday is my choice). I'm hoping the game will work because it's an interactive thing - not just advertising that will likely get ignored.
So what I did today was create a hashtag (#w_a_i_r) for What Am I Reading? and put a couple of tweets out. If you look up the #w_a_i_r on Twitter tonight (after 11 pm Atlantic time - yes it's a weird time zone), there should be examples of what I mean. I think tweeting your books as part of a Twitter guessing game might work better than any of the promo stuff that's on there now (although I don't really know to be honest). It can be a general kind of game - just tweeting the hint and hashtag to everyone - or it can be done as a conversation. You can include a book link when you tell everyone the answer to what you're reading (or not).
I've only done a couple of tweets and haven't really told anyone about it yet as I was waiting until tonight (so it's a bit more obvious how it works). I hope the game will catch on and be helpful to authors and readers (maybe get conversations going). Although I kind of hate Twitter - I'm trying to find a way to make it useful.
Anyway - please let me know what you think. It's free and you don't have to look like you're pushing a book on anyone.
(I know this has nothing to do with book blogs, free books and new release promos - but I thought that anything to keep your first two books in the series regularly talked about might be helpful)
I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can get more exposure for a YA Fantasy-Adventure trilogy?
I'm releasing the third and final installment in the series in June 2014, and I'm looking for the best free or low budget advertising methods to get the word out about giveaways and generate interest for the series in general. I have a few book blogger friends who can help me out with giveaways, reviews, and guest posts, but I was thinking about doing a blog tour as well.
Does anyone have experience with book blog tours? I was thinking about doing three different week-long blog tours, before, during, and after the book's release. Any thoughts or advice?