Do you have a book in you? Do you want to let it out and offer it to the pu
blic for sale? You can produce, publish and promote your book on your own with absolutely no cost. Help Yourself: Learn to Produce, Publish, and Promote your Book on your own will show you how to do it all by yourself.
1. GoodReads
GoodReads is the largest book reading website on the internet with thirty five million registered readers as of the start of 2015. In fact, the membership has been growing exponentially the past few years.
- Author members should post all of their books on their GoodReads author pages. All of the books will have links for purchase. You will have the opportunity to upload an entire book or a portion of a book, whichever you prefer for reviews.
- As a member you can join in discussions about every subject under the sun. Try to stick to the topics of discussion and develop some real relationships with people in the groups.
2. Get Book Reviews
There are many bloggers out there who will review the types of books that they enjoy reading for FREE. It can be very time consuming to find people to review your books but it can be done. In order for this review process to be FREE for you, only offer electronic book files for review.
- Only offer your book to a blogger who says they read your style of book.
- Don’t pester a potential reviewer. Only contact them one time. Do not check in to see if they ‘ve read the book.
- If your book is reviewed always thank the reviewer and post a link to their review from your different sites–Facebook, Pinterest, your Webpage, your Blog, etc.
Note: You don’t always have to wait for a blogger to notify you that they’ve posted a review of your book. Set up a Google Alert for your book title and your author name so that you will be notified when your book title is captured by a search bot.
3. Social Media
If you don’t already have one, create a Facebook page for your author marketing activities. Name the account your name–Author. This can be an extension of your existing account. Set the page up so that people can LIKE it.
The easiest way to market your book for FREE is to research and join as many Facebook Groups as you can to post your book information to.
You can also use your Facebook page as a blog of sorts. Always provide a link to your book on Amazon, reviews of your book and/or your book trailer on each post. Share information revolving around the subject of your book.
Oh what a marvelous invention! What the heck did we do before Pinterest? It is the fastest growing tool available for sharing information on the internet. As of 2014, 21% of all internet surfers are spending lots of time browsing on Pinterest to see what the latest and greatest ‘stuff’ is. That’s about 70 million Pinterest users worldwide.
- Name your profile Your Name–Author. Create as many boards as you can think of to draw people in to your area.
- Have a board for your book containing excerpts from the book and book reviews. Create other boards which are related in some aspect to different facets of your book. Does it take place in Scotland? Start pinning Scotish items. Is it about unicorns? Start pinning unicorns. Is it a cook book? Start pinning pictures of the different recipes in your book.
It is also free to join Pinterest as a business. You can even convert an existing account to a business account. One of the many benefits of having a business account is that you can get codes to post your most popular pins on your website or blog.
4. Book Trailer
You can hardly find a book these days that doesn’t have an associated book trailer on YouTube or on one of the many other video sharing sites.
To create my book trailer videos, I use Microsoft Office PowerPoint to create the slides for the different images in the video. I’ll usually include some slides with notes to the viewer along with pages from the book. Once I have created all of the slides that I want to use, I insert them into Windows Movie Maker program and then add audio. Windows Movie Maker program easily converts the file to a movie file that can be uploaded right to YouTube.
5. Give away a free sample chapter or even a free book
Giving something away for FREE is the best FREE method of advertising and marketing. If you’re a children’s book author, offer the first 1/3 of your book for free. If you write romance novels, offer the 1st chapter for free. Whatever you do, make sure to include enough to make the reader want to purchase the rest of the book, either in ebook or printed format.