Kimberly Dalferes: Summer Splash Guest Post – Marketing as a Bind

Today BookZone welcomes Kim Dalferes,  participating author in the Orangeberry Summer Splash Book Tour featuring: 100 Authors, 106 books and 500 Blog Stops in 31 days! As part of this tour Kim is promoting her non-fiction title, I Was In Love With a Short Man Once as she shares what she has learned about marketing via the following guest post:

Many authors see marketing as a bind. What are your thoughts?

As a new author I came to realize, a bit too late, that effective marketing starts BEFORE your book is published.  There are a few ways that I would have approached marketing I Was In Love With a Short Man Once a bit differently if I had known the following:

• Engage in social media six months before your book is completed. Use the time before your book is published to learn and understand the social media world. There is a rich array of resources available to you on the Internet: Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are my big three at the moment.

  • Facebook. I’m working now to move beyond my book fan page and have joined several Facebook groups that support and engage new writers. I wish I had done this earlier. Examples of great places to start include The Kindle Hub, Go Indie, and Celebrating Authors. If you’re currently writing a book, consider joining a few of these groups so you can begin to interact with other writers and learn about marketing tools such as blog tours and giveaways.

  • Twitter. I joined Twitter after my book was published and I truly wish I had started much sooner. You have to learn the Twitter language to become truly comfortable: direct messages (DM); re-tweets (RT); modified tweets (MT); hash tags (#); and twitter events such as “Follow Fridays” are all part of the Twitter culture. Learning to be succinct in 140 characters or less is an art form that takes practice.

**Important tip: if all you do is tweet about your book, people will probably stop following you. Your tweets need to be a mix of book promoting and other tidbits and updates.

• Blogging. I must admit that this one worried me a bit. How on Earth would I find the time to develop blog posts and who the heck would read my blog anyway? Before you start a blog, follow a few author bloggers: Rachel Abbott, Bob Mayer , and Morgen Bailey are three of my favourites.

• Have your author’s website ready to go live the day your book is published. I strongly recommend creating an author’s website. Trust me, any funds expended on creating an author’s website will be money well spent. I made the rookie mistake of not launching my website until nearly two months after my book was published. I missed out on some valuable holiday marketing opportunities.

• Develop a marketing plan before your book is released. This doesn’t have to be fancy, but you are going to need a vision for how you want to market your book. Sandra Beckwith is a book marketing genius; she offers quite a bit of free advice at http://buildbookbuzz.com. You should sign up for her monthly newsletter (also free). A good marketing plan includes book review requests, local press contacts for press releases and story ideas, local bookstores to target, and interview requests.

~Giveaway~

Grand Prize – Winner wins Kindle Fire and 14 books

Consolation Prizes – 25 x winners choice of 3 ebooks

Kindle Fire Giveaway is sponsored by

ALL participating authors in the Orangeberry Summer Splash event.

Check out all participating authors!