Welcome back! Thanks for stopping by again. For those of you who have picked up a copy, thank you so much and I hope you enjoy the book. This week I wanted to talk about the daunting task of promoting this book, especially to those who are not as big into fantasy. The good thing is that there are no shortage of options for someone who is looking to promote. They range from free to very costly. It also depends on your genre, but I will stick to fantasy since it is technically Edenlancer's genre. I am not an advertising professional, but I just wanted to share my experiences during this stage.
First off, it is very difficult to explain what a fantasy/adventure book is in a short summary. Especially to family and friends who may not be as keyed into the fantasy genre as your core audience. The trick is to try to keep it short and concise while relating it to real-world topics. However, even then I mess it up. But I found that if I bring up the religion and government plot of the book, people are more willing to seek it out because those are two things they understand. When you start with magic and a sacred sword, some might gloss over or try to compare it with things they know.
One of the first things I did in the beginning was not to pick a traditional cover and design. Edenlancer's cover is bright with a simple pattern that draws attention and invokes curiosity. Since I am a first time author, I didn't want something that would blend in, I needed something that would pop out among other books. That's an easy one for an author to control. Everything else is essentially all about exposure.
You want as many people as possible to see your book, but as I researched I realized a lot of promotions were useful only to non-fiction or self-help books. The absolute best way of getting exposure is the oldest form in the world: word of mouth. Ratings and reviews are extensions of this. That's why I plead to those who are reading the books to give it a review on any review site you can like Amazon or Goodreads. It helps tremendously get the word around. Even if you didn't like it.........
Other ways are to having press releases, business cards, and advertisments. These are effective but usually involve some money. If you were lucky to get a publisher that does press releases (like Page Publishing), that can help but they do take time to craft; as they should. Handing out business cards is another great way (more on that). But of all, I implore you to take time and make a website for either you, as an author, or your book. This is the easiest way to direct people to you. Squarespace is one that I used to build this site. They usually have offer codes on podcasts that I implore you to try. Another big thing with Squarespace is that they have a partnership with Google AdWords. A $100 credit which is about 320 clicks. That's a good chuck of new traffic to your website which can mean 320 potential buyers if you include a link to the seller.
Finally a sure fire way to get new people to look at your book are book fairs, book signings, and other events that you can personally promote your book. These are incredible opportunities to pass out free copies or your business cards. The downside of these is that (especially book fairs) tend to cost some money. A spot at a good sized book fair can cost about $400+.
So...what I'm trying to say is that this phase of the book is exhausting, daunting, and expensive, but it is worth it. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed at the things I want to accomplish and the things that I can accomplish in my already busy day. It's great to have so many options to promote a book, but it can be a little paralyzing especially if a route you have been focusing on has not been fruitful. I also get the feeling that I'm not doing enough to promote it sometimes.
I hope that brings some items to light and that it might help other authors at the beginning of this process. Good luck. If you have any stories about promoting your book, please leave a comment or tweet me. I'm not so active on there as I am on Instagram (check out the Feed the Dino game I made for my son's birthday!) Thanks again!