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
