MARKETING'S 4 P's AS IT RELATES TO BOOKS

An excerpt from my guest blog post for Midwest Writing Center's Blog:

In marketing, we talk about the 4 P’s: place, price, product, and promotion. This is just a simplified way to plan out how to promote any product, including a book. Place is where you will sell your book, more commonly known in the book-world as distribution. Price is how much you will charge for your book, but also encompasses determining if readers will pay that price. Product involves more than just your book’s title, but also includes, among other things, its genre, length, and ideal reader. Finally, promotion is figuring out how to tell people about your book.

To learn more about how to apply these 4 P’s to your book as well as other marketing tips, please attend my workshop from 10 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. at MWC’s March 22^nd Pen In Hand Mini Writing Conference (Yes, it's tomorrow - but if you're in the Davenport, Iowa, area - you're still welcome!). In this workshop, you will learn how to create a basic marketing plan so you can take focused action to try to get you book into readers’ – and buyers’ – hands. We’ll cover the four P’s (place, price, product, and promotion), the 5th P (people), holding giveaways, using social media, and setting up appearances.

Click here to learn about moreabout Pen In Hand. Call 563-324-1410 or email mwc@midwestwritingcenter.org to register. Or just show up on the 3rd floor of Bucktown at 225 E. 2nd Street in Downtown Davenport, Iowa.

To the 4 Ps!

-The Wordsy Woman

SURPRISE PLACES TO PROMOTE BOOKS (at least to me)

My first book, Crush and Other Love Poems for Girls, came out in 2008. At that time, social media was still relatively new. When I opened my Facebook account, I used the cover of my book as my profile picture. Now, the book has its very own Facebook page.

Last year, I published my second book, Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters, and, by that time, the options for promoting books had grown exponentially. I have the ability to learn a new way to marketing books every day if I want. Other than the classics such as John Kremer's 1001 Ways to Promote your Books, Carolyn Howard-Johnson's The Frugal Book Promoter, Angela and Richard Hoy's 90 Days of Promoting Your Book Online, or one of the other several hard copy book-marketing books, there are dozens of websites, blogs, and enewsletters devoted to the subject.

But some of the ways I've discovered of marketing my books came by chance. For example, on Wednesday, August 28th, Missing Emily was named the Book of the Day by First Chapters. I found that option when an author Facebook friend posted her book as the one of the day. The best part was, it was FREE!

There are dozens of paid outlets for listing books but there are also some good free sites including Goodreads, IndiePENdents, and Author Marketing Club. AMC also has a free widget you can put on your website or blog linking to your Amazon book page and Freebooksy has a free Facebook author app. If you have a YA book, you can list it on YA Books Central for a mere $4. If you are holding a free book promotion, there are may places that will list your book for free. If you are on Pinterest, try to talk everyone you can into pinning your book. Of course, these ideas may be old news to some, but, to me, they were new. If you have any book promotion/marketing ideas that seemed new to you when you heard about them, please share them in the comments section.

Happy Book Marketing!
-the Wordsy Woman