Book Marketing for Beginners #wwow

Hi and welcome to this weeks edition of Writers Words of Wisdom. I hope if you've been coming by lately, I've been able to help in some way.

This week I want to chat a little about marketing. In this day and age as a writer you have to market yourself. Even if you sign with a big pub, you still have to be out there and accessible to readers. Because nowadays, readers want to connect with you. And is that really such a bad thing? It gives you the chance to be hands on and keep them up-to-date a whole lot easier.

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My first tip is to get on social media sites. Start with Twitter and Facebook. They are the most popular right now. On twitter, begin following some of your favorite authors and then follow the people that interest you that they are following. You will slowly start to build up a following yourself. Try to be chatty. Not just promo. No one will want to follow you if all you say is BUY MY BOOK, VISIT ME HERE, etc.

With that, Twitter is a great place to in fact promo your book. But be sure to even out your promo post with more interesting tweets. I find funny pet tweets and kids tweets get good conversations rolling.

Then their is facebook. I recommend starting with a fan page where people "like" your page. Keep this page professional at all times. Use it for promo and a place to interact. 

I use a pen name, so on top of a fan page as Lacey Wolfe, I also created a facebook account for Lacey Wolfe. I promo on it as well, but I have this account so I can interact on the level you're used to on facebook under your personal account. Write on walls, comment on status, etc. But once again, I recommend you keep it professional there as well. Check out my post on being professional HERE.

So your book has released, now what? Have a release party. If you're going to do it on facebook, create an event (you need a facebook account for this) or do it on your fan page. I would caution however that if you do an event on facebook, don't invite your entire friend list. You'll annoy people. I recommend creating the event and letting people know about it and hope they join the event. Invite a few folks yourself, but don't go overboard.

You can also have a party on twitter using a specific hashtag you create. I don't have much experience with a twitter party at this time.

What to do at these release parties? Share excerpts. Recently OPPOSITES ATTRACT released and I did a party on my fan page. I didn't only share the excerpt my publisher and I agreed on, but also a few of when my hero and heroine met and their reactions. They were high school sweet hearts who ran into each other again. Since the chapter ended and a new began in the others point of view, it gave me two perfect excerpts. If you're a brand new author, I recommend doing giveaways. Giveaways are always good, but if you're new, I recommend more giveaways that you would do later on. You're building a following. Be happy your book is being read to begin with.

I hope my tips helped. 

Want more wisdom?

#WWOW or Writers Word of Wisdom - A Smart & Savvy Group of Authors who write a weekly feature for their blog -Writer's Words of Wisdom- each Wednesday. The goal is to impart what we've learned about writing, editing, getting published, book promotion, and more along the way.

Melinda Dozier http://melindadozier.blogspot.com Why Authors Should Use Google Plus
Tammy Dennings Maggy http://tammydenningsmaggy.blogspot.com/ Trying out Scrivene
Paloma Beck http://romancebeckons.blogspot.com/search/label/WoW#.UN348m_AeSo