The Quick and Dirty Ways to Promote Your Book

I’m not naive to think that promotion and sales aren’t in a writer’s description, at least not in this day and time. However, building an Author platform to sell more books has become easier than ever, but where do you begin?  For someone who  hide  in a cave somewhere writing for months or even years, this can be challenging. Finding  that you now have to sell yourself, can be intimidating.  Switching your mind from story telling to thinking  about  Blog book tours, press releases, media pitches, promotional materials, shrink your sound bites…. Ugh!

Since I’m one of those, writing cave women. I  reluctantly stepped out into the light to become a  promotional saleswoman and found that the air was breathable, and this might not be dauting. When it comes to promoting my book, I’ve found there are  as many  avenues in which to promote my work, as there are places that can handle my needs. Most of which  will do an excellent professional  job that ravels publishing houses. However, they are only asking for hundred of thousand of dollars to get the job done. Ouch!

Indie authors  are often on a budget, we have  to think about things like cost, time, availability , user-friendly, the ability to make changes when necessary as well as so many other things which could become overwhelming. I’ve scouted around the web and different other places trying to find  quick and easy ways to promote my book. What I’ve  found are ways to promote it without any money at all, or very little out of pocket expense. Yea!

Here are 7   Quick and Dirty ways to promote your book

1) Here is a list of sites where you can promote your book for free

2) You are a writer, write guest columns and essays.  Pitch articles, interviews or blog posts to media outlets ( they love this stuff and will promote your book so get in there and get dirty)

3) Contact Book stores. Hey most will take self-published books on consignment, and some coffee houses. There are print on demand place like The BookPatch  which will print as many as one book at a time.

4) Got a blog, Facebook page, Twitter host a book giveaway online. People love free stuff.

5) Work your Twitter account,  make sure you have  a picture, link to your site, a description about yourself and don’t protect your tweets, obvious and add  your location. Don’t forget about Google+ while you’re at it.  Do all the same things, but also check to make sure your personal tagline isn’t too long and make sure your profile is visible in search. Want people to find you, right?

6) Create a free Tumblr page dedicated to one of your book’s themes.

7) Get a Vine account to do a quick 6 second video to promote your book. Don’t have to use  YouTube anymore, you can create a short book trailer right from your phone. You can video yourself reading the first sentence, showing off your cover, a promotional event. Upload to your profile, and share them instantly with your followers on Twitter and Facebook. All right from your phone, easy peasy.

I know that promoting a book isn’t an easy task, it often takes years for a book to get noticed. However, these 7 quick and dirty ways can help get you started  toward that goal.