Quick Tips for Self-Promotion

Long gone are the days when the only thing writers had to do was write. With the advent of the eReader and the explosion in self-publishing, writers are expected to market their book and themselves — self-promotion baby. Social medias like Facebook and Twitter have proven to be a writer’s best friend when it comes to getting the word out to the masses.

On Facebook you can create your own writer’s page that is separate from your personal page. Once you have created an author page on Facebook, you can run ads promoting your book that target a specific audience and not only your friends and family members.

It is a given nowadays that a writer will have their own website to showcase themselves and their books (as Moe advised me–you should purchase your own domain name. See GoDaddy).

There are other things you can do as a writer to promote yourself and your work. I asked a few of my published writer friends what they found to be helpful and here’s what they said:

Cally Taylor (Heaven Can Wait, Home for Christmas, Secrets and Rain ): “I found running competitions on my blog using Rafflecopter helped promote my short story collection Secrets and Rain. People gained extra entries for following me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribing to my newsletter and retweeting details of the competition. The benefit goes beyond the current book as your newsletter, etc will have more subscribers which will help when you want to spread the word about future books. Something I did to promote my first novel Heaven Can Wait was contact my university alumni association to ask if they’d like to do a piece on my publishing success (they did!). It was then distributed to all the alumni members in the next newsletter.”

Clodagh Murphy (The Disengagement Ring, Girl in a Spin, Frisky Business): “Goodreads giveaways have helped promote my books.” Goodreads sites states: “Prerelease books are listed for giveaway by publishers and authors and members can enter to win. Winners are picked randomly at the end of the giveaway.” They claim an audience of 20 million book lovers.

Vanessa “Nessie” Curtis (The Haunting of Tabitha Grey, The Taming of Lilah May, Lilah May’s Manic Days, Zelah Green:Queen of Clean, Zelah Green One More Little Problem): “Joining an organization like WriteWords is great publicity, as is contacting the local newspaper and offering a piece. Those two things have helped me in the past.”

If you are not currently writing a blog, you could do a blog tour to coincide with your launch date. Prior to your book launch, research blogs from book lovers, especially in your genre and contact them and see if they would be interested in doing a post/interview about your book. Arrange a different post for different blogs for 7-10 days.

Also try contacting those sites that review books and ask them if they would be willing to review yours. You have nothing to lose.

You need to be proactive when marketing your book and think outside of the box. You are responsible for your own success.