Marketing your book doesn’t require you to become a high-powered salesperson, advertising executive, or seasoned promoter. Your personal involvement and commitment to the process are the most important factors for a successful book-marketing campaign. Your creativity, imagination, and energy will also contribute to the success of your marketing efforts. Use the low-cost and unexpected ideas outlined below as a launching point for crafting your own guerrilla marketing campaign.
The term guerrilla marketing is used to describe a broad variety of non-traditional, low-cost, and effective techniques for promoting a product or service. Authors are among the champions of this marketing movement; with a keen understanding and commitment to their product, authors are uniquely suited to devise new, interesting, and successful techniques for reaching their book’s target audience.
After you’ve spent time identifying and profiling your book’s target audience, and reviewing the successful marketing techniques used to promote other books in its genre, you’ll be well-prepared to come up with your own unique marketing ideas. Here are some guerrilla marketing ideas you can use for inspiration as you brainstorm:
-Offer promotional items as door prizes or giveaways at your author appearances; examples include T-shirts, calendars, baseball caps, or coffee mugs, printed with the name and cover of your book, and the address of your web site or online sales portal.
-Hold raffles or contests at local fairs and events, where the prizes are free copies of your book or promotional items.
-Print small chapbook excerpts from your book (perhaps a ten-page preview) and distribute them to members of the media and potential buyers. Alternatively, you can create electronic versions of the chapbook and distribute them via e-mail. In either case, be sure that the last page of the chapbook tells readers how to order your book.
-Place an ad with your local movie theater, to appear during the slide show that plays before each movie begins.
-Run advertised specials on your books, such as buy one, get one free or referral discounts.
-Publish an e-newsletter pertaining to your book's main themes, for example cooking, gardening, genealogy, or local history; advertise your book within the newsletter.
-Make handbills and hand them out to passersby in shopping areas or during lunchtime or after-work hours near business centers.
-Insert marketing materials in your correspondence, such as your invoices and your own bill payments.
-Offer to speak before local organizations. Contact the area chamber of commerce to find out about the organizations in your region, then send the organizations information that describes you and your book and what you might offer as a speaker.
-Became a sponsor for community events, such as theatrical performances, fund drives, farmer’s markets, youth-related events, and state/county fairs. Run an ad in the printed program or other material that accompanies each event. Be sure to attend the event, and work the crowd, distributing bookmarks or other promotional materials. If possible, set up a booth for book sales and meet the author opportunities.
-Host a monthly reading group to get in front of book buyers. Although you shouldn’t feature your book as the book of the month, you will have drawn together a group of attentive readers who you can tell about your book (and who are likely to tell others).
-Host a writer’s workshop and schedule weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly workshop events where local writers get together and critique each other’s work. These meetings offer great word-of-mouth publicity, as well as an opportunity to network with other writers in your community.
-Do a regional book tour to promote your work. Extensive book tours are costly, but you needn’t plan a globe-hopping, international blowout. If you can schedule appearances or events in a few key markets, such as in major cities or regional centers, you can really boost public awareness of your book.
-Host your own events such as whodunit mystery dinner theaters, poetry readings, square dances, or parties linked to any day or event that ties into the topic of your book (consider special days such as Halloween, Columbus Day, Boxing Day, St. Patrick’s Day, or even Take Your Daughter to Work Day).
-Consider setting up a calendar that will target your guerrilla marketing activities to specific dates and events throughout the year, such as holidays and large community events.
Once you begin brainstorming, you might be surprised at how many creative and non-traditional methods and opportunities you can come up with for marketing your book. Guerrilla marketers need to plan carefully, however, to be sure that their promotional techniques will be effective and well received.
Plan your marketing activities well to be certain that you are able to carry them off without disappointing or annoying participants, business owners, event organizers, and so on. Here are just a few of the ways you can be sure that your marketing efforts will be effective:
-Have promotional items ready for distribution, and put together a working plan for holding giveaways or raffling off items.
-Check with retailers or business owners before you distribute marketing materials within their space.
-Don’t put posters or other notices in the windows of restaurants, retailers, or other businesses without first getting the permission of the owner.
-Target your speeches or other appearances to offer real value to the groups you’re addressing.
You can be proud of your book, and you should draw upon your creativity when determining effective ways to market it. Just be certain that your marketing tactics are carefully planned, organized, and carried out so that you get the full benefit of the time, effort, and money that you invest in them.
My name is Roger my hope is that I will find someone who would be willing to help finance in the publication of my kid book I have created all the illustrations all the characters in the manuscript but my problem is I do not have the funds or the resources to publish this what I would believe would be at successful kids book 1st edition of many more to come use in these characters my book is called Chickies adventure home it is about A little chick that born on a farm and ends up wandering into the metal and have quite an adventure and meets a great friend along the way trying to get back home this helps him to get back home if I had the right person to help me it would be a successful Kidblock that is my sincere belief
For almost 50 years, I have taught young children, and older children and if you have written a CHILDREN'S book, please call it a CHILDREN'S book.
I have written a Children's book. I had the book self published which was quite a challenge for me. Unfortunately, I was at a loss as to how to market. I had no clue and the publisher was of little use to a new older author out in the cold on her own. I have another book to be published and the young publisher seems to be so informed on marketing, but it is expensive. Have my fingers crossed. These are stories that I have read to my children and now my grandchildren. The 1st one I called, Airport Runaways & Topsy-turvy is the upcoming one. I read Airport Runaways at several schools. I had some shipped to me so I could put them on consignment in stores. Small stores & gift shops like that.