3 Ways to Market your Book for Free

The publishing world has changed and the days of a writer being able to sit back and let a publisher market their books are long gone. Today a successful writer needs to be a marketing machine in their own right. Below are three classic ways to market your book for free. You have probably seen or used some (or all) of these methods in the past. However, what I hope to do is to breathe fresh life into these tried and tested techniques.

Giveaway Competitions

The format is simple you write a blog post about your book and then giveaway one (or more) copies to your readers. Here’s the key points:

• Make the post as interesting as possible. Try to talk about a subject other than the book. The process of getting published, the way you write and a behind-the-scenes look all make great topics.
• Make it as easy as possible to enter the competition. If you put up any barriers people will not enter. At BubbleCow we like to ask readers to simply leave a pick me comment and then you pick at random from the comments. The beauty of this is that not only will you have the person’s email address, but once one person has left a comment others will feel safe to do the same.
• If you don’t want to send the book abroad make sure you say so in the post.
• Put an introduction at the top of the post, in nice big letters, telling the reader you are giving away a free copy.

Here’s an example of how we do it at BubbleCow.

Blog tours

We have all seen these. The concept is simple. A writer arranges to be interviewed by a number of blogs, each posting on consecutive days. The big advantage of blog tours is that you get access to new readers. Tips:

• Be organised. Make sure you set up the tour well in advance. Email the owners of the blogs and make sure it is all very clear. Give them an outline of what you are doing, a bit about the book and a list of the other people involved – as a minimum. I would also suggest you conduct the interview via email. Get the blog host to email you the questions well in advance.
• Make it as easy as possible for the blog host. In an ideal world you will send the complete post back to the blog owner. Make sure it is spell checked and ready to go to print. Any images should already be attached and any links included.
• Try to find hosts outside your circle. Don’t get hung up on the popularity of blogs, but instead go for blogs that have readers who will be interested in your book, but are not already part of your blogosphere.

Guest posts

A simple concept once again. You write a post and another blogger posts it on their site. Some thoughts:

• Try not to talk about your book. Once again you are much better to talk about the writing process, your inspiration or in fact anything but your book. Try and add value to the blog’s readership. Be aware of their readers and what they are expecting. Always ask yourself – “What can I talk about that will make the reader’s lives that little bit better?”
• Pick your host blogs carefully, the bigger the blog the better. You are better to target a couple of big bloggers than have a load of small blogs. Once again also try and find blogs that target readers that don’t already visit your blog.
• Finally, make it as easy as possible for the host blogger. You should be sending them an email with content that they can just paste into their blog.

Thoughts?