I've written an amusing book about

04/20/2015 - 03:55

I've written an amusing book about my experiences of living in a forgotten part of Italy, and although publishers have expressed interest, I've waited long enough and published it myself. How can I get the publicity I need to sell it? (I am a regular writer for Italy Magazine and other reputable journals, so it's a good read!) Title: 'The Best Mud in Italy'. 

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I am writing a book (a culinary travel guide) at the moment and have been doing a lot of research on promoting for self-publishers. These are the channels that I will be using myself.A great way is to offer free .pdf copies on Facebook pages for Italy expats and ask them to write reviews on Amazon in return. Having a detailed Author's page on Amazon is important too. You can also organise a web "book tour" asking a number of bloggers to review your book. And, of course, having your Facebook page and blog are paramount. 

Hi Myra,I assume you're publishing it on Amazon? If not, I would consider starting there. They do a lot of the promoting for you...and that increases exponentially as you get sales and reviews under your belt.To get those initial sales and reviews, I'd enroll in Amazon's KDP Select program (assuming your book is priced between 2.99 and 9.99), and schedule a 5-day sale where you offer your book for just .99. Then reach out to your emai list, blog readers, Facebook Fans, and Twitter followers (in that order). If they follow you on those channels, chances are a good percentage of them will be thrilled to buy your book.At the same time, sign up for a few of those book promoting sites. I can think of the names right now, but a quick Google search will bring the cream to the top. They will post/Tweet/share your book with their followers either for free (they make money on third party ads) or for a small fee.Work hard to promote the book yourself that week on social media. Then sit back and watch the magic of Amazon's algorithms do their thing. The real "secret" to Amazon success is to keep publishing new books in the same genre. Nothing help sells a first book better than publishing a second book. Again, this goes to Amazon's algorithms. Build up an entire series and you'll have a nice little passive income stream. I know, I'm not making it sound very sexy, or "writerly," but there you have it... To be successful, you have to find a balance between creativity and the task of self-promotion.It takes a bit of planning and busy work, but if you've already got a good audience, this formula has been proven to work for many self-published authors. Good luck!Rick