Creating a book marketing and publicity plan is a necessity for indie authors and it’s advisable for even most traditionally-published authors to set up a some personal market tactics to execute in tandem with their publishers’ efforts.
A strategic and well-thought-out publicity and marketing campaign will help spread the word about your finished book. When you’re publishing your own book, it’s critical to think about your book’s publicity and marketing.
But even when your book is being published by a traditional publisher, you need to pay attention to publicity and marketing. The book marketing department and the publicity department have tens of other books to be concerned with, so your efforts as an author to create opportunities are important to the book’s success. Here are the steps to getting the word out about your book:
Get your pre-publication self in order
The book’s launch is really important to give it sales momentum. In order to set up a proper launch, up to a year before the book’s publication, you should lay the groundwork for the book’s publication.
For example, you should:
Establish an online presence. Produce a website and/or create a Facebook page for your book. Establish Twitter account to help get yourself out there as an author and/or a topic expert
Set yourself up on other social media sites that apply to your book, such as Goodreads.com, Pinterest if your book is visual, etc. Use this handy Author’s Social Media Checklist from Laura Rossi Public Relations to help keep you on track.
For more details, read about the 6 advance steps your should take to prepare for your book’s publication.
Assess and make contact with your “offline” networks
Near publication, you’re going to utilize all your contacts to help you promote the book.
Publishers ask authors to do this with a tool called the Author Questionnaire, which helps gather together all the resources an author brings to the marketing and publicity campaign. This could be as grand as having a media platform like a radio show, or as modest as having a college alumni magazine that’s willing to make an announcement about your book’s publication. The AQ will help you put on your thinking cap about your friends and family who might be useful — the friend of a friend who writes for the local newspaper, or your cousin who owns a café and might be willing to host a book party.
Read More at:
http://publishing.about.com/od/BookMarketingAndPublicity/a/Creating-A-Book-Marketing-And-Publicity-Campaign.htm