Category Archives: Marketing your novel

Inspiration for Book Marketing

I’ve just been inspired by an article by Sandra Beckwith on book marketing, posted on the wonderful blog The Book Designer.

3 Ways to Get Past What’s Holding You Back

Sandra goes beyond looking at what holds you back in marketing but she also explores how to break free in a positive way. These are my thoughts and my resolutions inspired by the post. I do recommend you reading the original post, which is packed with ideas, but if you come to write your own resolutions I’d love to hear from you. Here are my three resolutions:

Getting in the Zone ~ Essential First for Book Marketing

The post brought to mind the wonderful Carol from Kirkcaldy Curves

who talks about ‘Getting in the Zone’ as far as keeping fit and losing weight and I believe that the same applies to book marketing, or writing for that matter.  Life gets in the way, its true, but I have no hesitation in finding time to write when I’m in the middle of a project, so why is marketing so hard? Carol explains that sometimes it seems impossible to be motivated to lose weight, plan meals and exercise enough, but its all about changing our mind-set. I think doing what you enjoy helps.

Since living in Scotland I’ve learnt to love a good blether. I enjoy the banter on Twitter when you connect and I’ve been told that the #writingcommunity are great for feeling connected to like minded folks. I have my twitter ‘friends’ with whom I’ve built a connection over the years, but since leaving behind The Ampthill Writers’ Group, I’ve never really felt part of a community of writers and I must admit that it sounds fun. This, then is going to be one of my aims in the next few weeks; one to look forward to.

Setting Small Steps for Book Marketing

Going with the above analogy, a crash diet may work but often that approach doesn’t last and is unsustainable. It’s the long consistent effort which really works. It’s a mindset and one of the bits of advice on Sandra’s post which struck a chord with me was small steps.  Set yourself manageable tasks. OK, so apart from getting to know the #writingcommunity and all the good karma which goes with supporting others, I’m going to set myself a book marketing task each week. This week I plan to use the little video I had made a couple of months back but have been remiss in using it ~ so here’s the link:

Murder Now and Then Promo

Click on photo to view book on Amazon (universal link)

Regular Blog Posts for Book Marketing

All of the advice about blog writing is that you should be consistent, write regularly and as frequently as you can. This is one area I often let slip, but with the ability to schedule blog posts with WordPress it should be easy enough to do this. I do try to schedule posts when I am on holiday.

I find blog posts are a way to connect and give information, which hopefully folks enjoy, rather than just as a book marketing tool. New readers of posts I wrote a while back show that search engines work and give me such a surprise when I get an email or message.

There are times in life when the needs of the family or work commitments must come first and at those times it is impossible to keep to a plan, but while I am awaiting the right time to launch my next novel I’m going to  attempt the above, achievable steps. (I think they are anyway!)