6 infallible ways to promote your novel

The biggest mistake most novelists make when promoting their books is thinking that it’s all about book reviews. Mistaken. Book reviews are valuable and securing them should be on any author’s or publisher’s book promotion to-do list, but your novel deserves broader, long-term, and ongoing exposure than you can get through book reviews alone. reviews. It deserves to be talked about month after month, as long as the book is available for purchase.

Here are six tips to help you see the advertising and promotional value in your fiction so that it generates the ongoing excitement your book deserves:

1. Find the nonfiction nuggets in your manuscript and use them to create newsworthy material for relevant media outlets. Is her heroine a jilted wife starting over in the workforce as, say, an account executive at a high-flying packaging design firm who finds love with her client at a high-end product company? consumption? She has advertising opportunities with packaging and marketing trade magazines. Is she a radio jock? Female morning drive time personalities would love to interview you over the phone.

What about the places, products or services in your novel? A story set in a national park or grocery store gives you points of interest for exposure in the relevant trade magazines. A character’s obsession with an obscure beverage brand could land her book in that company’s employee newsletter. If you’re writing your novel now, work on some nonfiction nuggets that you can capitalize on later.

2. Use your content to identify promotional partners. Is your protagonist a wheelchair athlete? Connect with groups like the National Wheelchair Basketball Association or the National Wheelchair Softball Association. What about the professions of the people in your book? Do you have a secretary? Contact the Association of Executive and Administrative Professionals. There is an association for almost every profession.

But don’t just send them a note that says, “I’ve written a book your members will love.” Send a copy of the book with a letter outlining the promotion possibilities and what’s in it for them. You can offer to speak at your national meeting, do a Q&A for your member post, or offer a discount to members.

3. Take advantage of what you discovered while writing your book. Did you learn about a specific period of history or region? Use this knowledge as a springboard for advertising. The author of a historical romance novel set in the Hudson River Valley of New York, for example, might write and distribute a press release announcing the region’s top historical and romantic attractions, or submit an article to a local newspaper or magazine. regional magazine about the most important attractions in the area. romantic dating destinations Your goal is to be cited as an expert source because this would require using your book title as one of your credentials.

4. Support your book with a good, professionally designed website. Your website has to be as good as your writing. It also has to contain information that convinces us that your books are worth buying and reading. It doesn’t have to be clever, but it does have to be very well written, engaging, useful, and enticing. We’ll assess your ability to tell a good story based on your ability to communicate on your website, which is why writing is crucial.

5. Be social. Focus on one or two social networking sites (Facebook now has more users than MySpace) and master the most effective and appropriate ways to use them to promote your book before spreading yourself too thinly across multiple sites. Once you understand how the process works, extend it to others and use new technology tools and resources, like those at TweetDeck and Ping.fm, to streamline information sharing across your networks.

6. Share the love. Help us connect with you by blogging about your writing process and experiences. Get excerpts on your website and read parts to us via podcasts so we can get a feel for your writing and decide if the story is compelling. Give us enough online (on your website, blog, and through podcast download sites like iTunes) to convince us that we’d like your book.

There is no doubt that promoting fiction is more difficult than promoting non-fiction, but for that reason it is also more rewarding.