Top 7 Ways to Piggyback on Your Own Book Marketing Success

Book marketing doesn’t need to be hard. In fact, it can be very easy with a few simple tricks of the trade. You work so hard to obtain book reviews, interviews, and the needed exposure to make our work known to the outside world. What can you do to double your success? A few suggestions follow.

1. Testimonials: Whenever you receive an e-mail from someone thanking you for your ezine article, radio interview, short story, etc., ask the person if you can quote him or her on your Web site. Testimonials lend the necessary third-party credibility to your work. They are a powerful and simple tool to add to your success.
   
   
2. Testimonials for others: If you purchase a product or service that works for you, consider writing a testimonial for others. I recently did that for a publicity newsletter whose CD brought me great success in securing a high-profile radio interview on NPR. The editor used my testimonial as an example in her next newsletter. The result? Someone else saw it and offered me a regular spot on her parenting program.
   
   
3. Book reviews: Not only do you need book reviews for yourself, but you need to consider the power of doing them for others. So often I have offered book reviews for free to Webmasters. They, in turn, featured my book. In offering book reviews, you have created a win-win-win situation. The other author, the Webmaster, and you win!
   
   
4. Offering Tips: My publisher offers great PR advice. Whenever you get a good PR tip, pass the information along to other networks in which you are involved. People will begin to see you as a PR expert, which you are.
   
   
5. PR Begets PR: Once you have done a few radio interviews, you will notice how people start to approach you to do more. Follow-up with a thank-you note to each host with whom you work. They appreciate the acknowledgment for a job well done. More than likely, you will get a testimonial from them as well. Always ask to quote the person, first.
   
   
6. Press Releases: Make them work for you. You can build on the momentum of your campaign by issuing a press release whenever you have a high-profile interview in the media. Mention yourself as an expert available for comment on your area of interest. Make use of low-cost press release distribution such as PRWeb.com or OpenPress.com to spread the word about your news.
   
   
7. Follow-Up: If you make an initial contact with an agency and there is no response, do not give up right away. Give them a call. Leave a message and send another follow-up e-mail. If after a few tries, there is still no answer, move on. Your time is better spent elsewhere. The trick to sustaining your book marketing campaign is to persevere, no matter what.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, has been published in hundreds of publications. She offers an on-line book promotion course for published authors which has helped her students land articles in Family Circle and more. Christine has had six NPR interviews this year alone and has appeared in Boston Globe magazine. When she isn’t writing or speaking, Christine prefers to frolic in the Bavarian countryside near Munich where she lives with her husband and two children . Visit her Web site: www.diaryofamother.com or enroll in her next book promotion course while there's still room at http://get-me.to/bookPR.