How to Promote Your Book Without Being a Bore

[Eva Ulian]

Don’t expect people who barely know you or don’t know you at all will promote your book. It’s not likely that people will go out of their way so you can climb a step up the ladder to success, unless they are invested. Nor can you count on the many faceless friends, acquaintances or followers you have on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the likes to spread the word, unless they are motived.
So, how am I going to promote my book, so may well ask, if the picture is so grim? How can I get people to be invested, interested or motivated to buy my book?

Have you ever heard of people going wild about a book where there’s nothing to rave about?

Precisely!

So that’s your first ingredient- write a book people will WANT to rave about.

But even so- you can’t get people to rave about your book if they don’t know of its existence. And here we are back to square one. People who don’t know you, are not stimulated by you and therefore they are not invested in you or your book. So where do you start from to get known?

That’s ingredient number two. Your BASE is the starting point to getting known.

You start right there, from home. Talk about your book to your mother, father, sister, brother, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins- right up to the seventh generation- and so on and so on. They, are the ones who will listen to you, will put up with you, and if anyone in this world is going to be invested in you, it will be precisely those who care for you- they will be the ones most likely to get involved and interested.

Ah, but… you may object and rightly so, Stephen King and such notable authors had their publisher who invested real hard cash in their promotion- such authors never had to enlist their grandmothers, did they?

I’m not all that convinced that a publisher can make a super-star writer out of you if you don’t have a core backing of your own fans, and as I have said, to get that you have to start from the base- your home, your kith and kin, the guys next door, the parishioners at the church or your political party club mates… etc. etc. etc.

Home- that’s where I started. I wrote “The Litany of Malediction” in my mother tongue, English. But I didn’t live in a country where people spoke English and if I was going to get people interested in my book I had to get involved with them, talk to them and that meant talking to them in their own language, which in this case was Italian. So, I translated the book in Italian but felt that the title I had in English sounded too churchy for Italians. I realized I would not get a lot of the locals invested in something that smelt too much of incense and so we came up with something more suitable. Since the book was about a religious person with an attachment to the Devil, we thought, “The Slyness of a Praying Mantis” would be a good fit.

Thus, I now had my product and people interested in it- I had to launch it. There were two ways I could do that. I could launch the book at the local library or a pizzeria and I would get quite a number of locals and a few outsiders who got to know about it, which for me, quite honestly, was fine. I certainly would have got more people coming than if I launched it in an unknown place or even virtually on Internet.
The other alternative was to involve a family member who loved organizing things- (there’s always one of those in every family!) and a fellow local writer whom I had know for years, and like myself had just published a book. The family member, who is always in the middle of things, is friends with the friend of a famous local author who, as fate would have it, had just published a book and agreed to launch his book with us if we could find a place big enough to host the event. And we did. The Mayor put at our disposal the local theatrewhich seats nearly 300 people.
At the top is the poster announcing the event and hopefully we will sell lots of books- all three of us!

But more importantly it will spread the word to those uncharted corners of the universe where my “creature” would otherwise have remained unknown and unseen… and this is what is called “promotion”.

Any thoughts from anyone?
How do you plan to promote your book?

 

[Peyton Stafford]

Is the book selling? And why not focus on the English-language market?

 

[Dorm Ant]

DoView attachment 13284n’t expect people who barely know you or don’t know you at all will promote your book. It’s not likely that people will go out of their way so you can climb a step up the ladder to success, unless they are invested. Nor can you count on the many faceless friends, acquaintances or followers you have on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the likes to spread the word, unless they are motived.
So, how am I going to promote my book, so may well ask, if the picture is so grim? How can I get people to be invested, interested or motivated to buy my book?

Have you ever heard of people going wild about a book where there’s nothing to rave about?

Precisely!

So that’s your first ingredient- write a book people will WANT to rave about.

But even so- you can’t get people to rave about your book if they don’t know of its existence. And here we are back to square one. People who don’t know you, are not stimulated by you and therefore they are not invested in you or your book. So where do you start from to get known?

That’s ingredient number two. Your BASE is the starting point to getting known.

You start right there, from home. Talk about your book to your mother, father, sister, brother, in-laws, aunts, uncles, cousins- right up to the seventh generation- and so on and so on. They, are the ones who will listen to you, will put up with you, and if anyone in this world is going to be invested in you, it will be precisely those who care for you- they will be the ones most likely to get involved and interested.

Ah, but… you may object and rightly so, Stephen King and such notable authors had their publisher who invested real hard cash in their promotion- such authors never had to enlist their grandmothers, did they?

I’m not all that convinced that a publisher can make a super-star writer out of you if you don’t have a core backing of your own fans, and as I have said, to get that you have to start from the base- your home, your kith and kin, the guys next door, the parishioners at the church or your political party club mates… etc. etc. etc.

Home- that’s where I started. I wrote “The Litany of Malediction” in my mother tongue, English. But I didn’t live in a country where people spoke English and if I was going to get people interested in my book I had to get involved with them, talk to them and that meant talking to them in their own language, which in this case was Italian. So, I translated the book in Italian but felt that the title I had in English sounded too churchy for Italians. I realized I would not get a lot of the locals invested in something that smelt too much of incense and so we came up with something more suitable. Since the book was about a religious person with an attachment to the Devil, we thought, “The Slyness of a Praying Mantis” would be a good fit.

Thus, I now had my product and people interested in it- I had to launch it. There were two ways I could do that. I could launch the book at the local library or a pizzeria and I would get quite a number of locals and a few outsiders who got to know about it, which for me, quite honestly, was fine. I certainly would have got more people coming than if I launched it in an unknown place or even virtually on Internet.
The other alternative was to involve a family member who loved organizing things- (there’s always one of those in every family!) and a fellow local writer whom I had know for years, and like myself had just published a book. The family member, who is always in the middle of things, is friends with the friend of a famous local author who, as fate would have it, had just published a book and agreed to launch his book with us if we could find a place big enough to host the event. And we did. The Mayor put at our disposal the local theatrewhich seats nearly 300 people.
At the top is the poster announcing the event and hopefully we will sell lots of books- all three of us!

But more importantly it will spread the word to those uncharted corners of the universe where my “creature” would otherwise have remained unknown and unseen… and this is what is called “promotion”.

Any thoughts from anyone?
How do you plan to promote your book?

I tried things like this with the self pub graphic novels. Hiring spaces, launch parties. All that happened was that the people who came expected a free copy, because they sort of were friends with me and the artist. I now get very short print runs done and don't bother with promotion. I just sell the books at book fairs. Graphic novels are tactile and the covers sell them.

As for my first novel... It's trad or nothing. I have no online marketing skills, and putting events on didn't work for me. I want people who know what they are doing to market my book.

 

[Eva Ulian]

Is the book selling? And why not focus on the English-language market?

Because I'm doing one country at a time. I'd have to use the same tactics in England and work from a home spot to gather people around me who know and sort of "care" for me. Yes, I could very well do it in England for I have more than one home spot there. But my biggest advantage here is that the events of the book happens here and as they are based on real life, wrapped up in fiction, people nevertheless can see through them and recognize themselves.

 

[Eva Ulian]

I tried things like this with the self pub graphic novels. Hiring spaces, launch parties. All that happened was that the people who came expected a free copy, because they sort of were friends with me and the artist. I now get very short print runs done and don't bother with promotion. I just sell the books at book fairs. Graphic novels are tactile and the covers sell them.

As for my first novel... It's trad or nothing. I have no online marketing skills, and putting events on didn't work for me. I want people who know what they are doing to market my book.

I'm sorry you've had such a tough time but it seems you were doing this on your own- what I'm proposing is that others work with you, if not actually without you, to organize the events without spending money on hiring places and stuff. But these people must be people close to you and are willing to do something for you because they want to. Friends on the side or acquaintances are not so well disposed.