It’s no big secret, there is not a lot of money to be made in the sale of a book. A book only sells for a few bucks, and there is not a lot left over for marketing the book. We need to be careful and frugal with our marketing efforts.
In a previous article, I talked about giving your book away for free and doing an upsell. That should enable about a $2 profit which should allows more to be spent on marketing. In this scenario, we need to offer something else, meaning an upsell, in order to generate revenue.
The question now comes down to, how do we use that marketing money? Where and how do we spend it? There are a couple different ways to do it.
First, let’s talk about a marketing mistake that a lot of people make— they promote to their existing audience. That’s not the point of marketing. You want to promote to as many people and areas as possible to reach new audiences. Sure, you have audience is a finite number that actually shrinks due to normal attrition. Besides, they’ll probably buy anyway without much money spent promoting to them.
Press Releases
You need to get out of the comfort zone of emails to your existing audience and open up your marketing efforts to the rest of the world!
There are a number of ways to do this.
Number one, is niche targeting. The best way to start this is by utilizing press releases to your biggest advantage. Press releases are an old school marketing method, but they still work.
I’m not going to go into the details about how to write a press release because you can find a lot of examples on YouTube and even Amazon. In 10 to 15 minutes of searching, you should find enough information to almost make you a press release expert.
There are various online services you can use to submit your press release. Let’s look at some of them. Here is just a sampling of what I found with a simple Google search for “press release distribution service”:
- E•Releases: www.ereleases.com
- Newswire: www.newswire.com
- PRNewswire: www.prnewswire.com
- PRweb: http://www.prweb.com
- PressWire: https://presswire.com/
- PR.com: www.pr.com/
- Press Synergy https://presssynergy.com/
You can watch the video as I open these various press release services, and talk about them, the services they offer and their cost…just log into your Marketing University Member’s area and do a search on “Best Selling Author” and watch session seven.
You can expect to pay $200, $300, $400 for these services. There may be some cheaper ones. A few even offer limited services for free. But, remember, you get what you pay for, so free may not always be the best route. Do your research and see what you get for the price you pay. I want to get the most bang for my buck. I don’t want to just pick the first one that comes up.
Do your research and put your money to the best use possible. There’s an old saying that goes like this, “If you can’t manage $5 you can’t manage $5 million.”
Spend your money wisely and it will work for you. If you spend your money foolishly you deserve to lose it.
Armand Morin
Do press releases work? Yes, they do! Let me give you an example…
A few years back, I generated over 148,000 visitors from a press release on PR Web announcing the release of my Michael Lee Austin music CD. If I recall correctly, I submitted about four different press releases promoting the CD.
Press releases are a great way to get your message out, but you need an angle, a reason for the press release. A press release that basically just says you have a new book out and you want people to buy it won’t work.
You have to convince them there’s an advantage to reading your book. Know the advantage and expound on it in the press release. You need to get good at telling your story.
Radio Interviews
Radio interviews are a great way to get the word out about your book. A long-time friend of mine, Alex Carroll, wrote a book about beating a speeding ticket. He promoted it for years and years by going on morning drive talk radio shows and talking about the book.
Go to Google and type in something to the effect of, “get radio interview service.” You’ll come up with services such as:
- Nan Radio: www.nanradio.com
- Radio Guest List: www.radioguestlist.com
These are just a couple. You will also want to look at related things that come up in the search such as, “how to find radio guests.” This is looking at it from the radio perspective but it’s good information for you to know. You’ll find things like, “how to get on radio shows”, “Interview Connections” etc.
Radio Guest List has an article on how to get radio interviews, https:// www.radioguestlist.com/how-to-get-radio-interviews.html.
Here’s an “Interview Guest Directory” for radio show hosts. I’m not familiar with it but it might be worth looking into in order to see if you want to be listed here. www.interviewguestsdirectory.com
Type in “radio show booker services,” and you’ll see more booking services for radio and podcasts. After all, that’s what you want, someone to book you on these shows. It looks like GuestBooker.com is one that does that.
