Category: Marketing

  • Creating an Opt In to Build Your Email List

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    If you have an opt-in already, now’s the time to decide if it’s working and compelling enough for your audience. If you don’t have an opt-in, here’s how to create one your audience will love.  Using Canva for your Opt-In Cover and/or Text I use Canva for all sorts of things. Here’s a great way…

  • Advanced Marketing for Printed Books

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    Book Signings If you are excited about book signings, try them. If you’re not, don’t bother. It can be discouraging to have a book signing and have no one show up. In the video, I talk about a few ways to get around this.  Speaking in Person Use your book as a business card to…

  • Kindle Select and KDP Ads

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    Recommended for new fiction authors (possibly). Kindle is about 60% of the ebook market, and when you’re agreeing to their 90-day exclusive distribution agreement, you’re leaving iTunes (30-40%-ish) and other ebook services out of the mix. Can be useful for improving a book’s ranking and sometimes increasing sales after the promotion is over. A LOT…

  • Podcasting for Book Publicity

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    How to pitch yourself as a guest on a podcast: http://michellelevans.com/pitch-podcast-guest-like-pro/ Blue Yeti Microphone (the bomb!): https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Yeti-USB-Microphone-Vintage/dp/B01H3DXTG8/ Summary: I love podcasts. : ) Highly recommend podcasting (on your own or as a guest) if you have an audiobook. It will work for all formats, but audiobook especially. Can be expensive to run yourself (estimated $2k/month…

  • Building an email list

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    Show notes (is it weird that I called it a “show?”). It’s just me with a webcam. ; ) Please note that the email list works to sell EVERY book type, plus any other offer that’s congruent with your audience. Mailchimp: free to 2000 people: https://mailchimp.com/ What I use now: Wishpond What I would use…

  • Building a Blog to Promote Your Book

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    My sad-sounding chime clock in the background…nice. You just can’t script this stuff, guys! : ) You should have a website of some kind – hopefully the URL is your name or some variation of it. (www.lisadespainauthor.com would be an example.) If you do this, you’ve laid the groundwork to promote other books and/or services…

  • Your Marketing Plan – Planning, Timing, Budgeting

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    A simple tracking method works well here. You might try an Excel spreadsheet to track dates, costs, and methods, or use the Word doc attached here to fill out your details as you move through the posts. A note about timing: a lot of emphasis has been placed on book release dates, as if that’s…

  • Finding Your Target Market

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    Target Audience Worksheet The more clear you are on who your target audience or ideal reader is, the easier it will be to find them and then speak with them in a congruent way. Create a separate Target Audience Worksheet for each new target audience you identify. I also attached a marketing plan that I…

  • Effective Metadata

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    Metadata simply means “data about data.” From a publishing perspective, this is all the information that is used to describe your book: the ISBN, the book description, keywords, author name, retail price, and more. It’s really important to get this stuff right when you upload your book. I’d call it one of the basic, foundational…

  • The Top 16 Ways to Market Your Book

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    This table will help you identify which methods you should focus your time and energy on, and avoid the methods that just won’t work well for your book type. It’s really easy to get overwhelmed by what you see. Please, treat this like a buffet: take what works for you and your book and ignore…