Are You Aiming Too Low in Your Book Marketing?

If nobody laughs at your dreams, you are probably aiming too low. - Art Jonak

I shared that photo plus made an additional comment I think is worth sharing with all book authors:

If you don't laugh at your own dreams, at least some of the time, you are also probably aiming too low. Have fun. Dance. Enjoy. Keep aiming higher. - John Kremer

For more advice, check out the rest of this update article here: http://bookmarketingbestsellers.com/are-you-aiming-too-low-in-your-book-marketing.
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Book Marketing Magic: http://www.bookmarket.com/novelmarketing.htm - How to market novels, children's books, memoirs, and more. $48

15,000 Eyeballs Internet Marketing Program: http://www.bookmarket.com/15000eyeballs.htm - Ten lessons on how to get thousands of impressions for you, your book, your blog, or your website. $50

New York Times Bestseller Program: http://www.bookmarket.com/newyorktimesbestsellers.htm - This program offers unprecedented access to the most up-to-date book marketing resources and insider tips to help any author create a New York Times bestselling book. $17

Amazon Bestseller Campaign: The Inside Secrets to Becoming a Real Bestselling Author on Amazon.com: http://www.bookmarket.com/amazon.htm - You can create a true bestseller on Amazon using the step-by-step guidelines included in this multimedia course. $17

New Hot Book Promotion: Cookbook Discussion Groups

While most local book clubs or reading groups have focused on fiction, the new hot movement is Cookbook Clubs. Members pick a cookbook each month, spend the next few weeks test-driving the recipes, and then come together for a potluck and discussion.

If you write or publish cookbooks, ask your local booksellers if they  are hosting any cookbook clubs. Or, better yet, start to promote cookbook clubs where your book or books are the first to be featured.

For more on how to start a Cookbook Club, read this blog post:
http://www.book-club-queen.com/cookbook-book-club.html.

For a list of five San Francisco Bay-area cookbook clubs, read here:
http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2011/01/22/five-bay-area-cookbook-clubs.

Children's Book Marketing: Reading Starts Here

As part of the We Believe in Picture Books campaign honoring the importance of picture books, Candlewick Press has launched a yearlong video celebration of picture books at Reading Starts Here.

Candlewick will share 365 videos about picture books – a new one each day – from their authors, illustrators, staff, family, and friends.

The videos will be short, engaging, informal, and personal as each contributor shares what picture books mean to them, recommends favorite stories, and more.

They will be including videos featuring non-Candlewick books and authors (provided they can get the necessary permissions).

They are only doing active outreach to their own authors and illustrators, but they are "absolutely open to accepting videos from authors and illustrators from other houses."

Here is the first video celebrating their We Believe in Picture Books campaign:

Book Marketing Video: How to Create Relationships That Sell Books

Last month I did an interview via Skype with Joel Friedlander of TheBookDesigner.com where I talk about book marketing, blog tours, Internet marketing, and author book promotions. Some of the details include:

• How authors can use social media most effectively to sell more books
• The 3 elements of effective book marketing
• How to create relationships that really sell books
• How to carry out SuperStar Blog Tours and other event blog tours that truly create impact

Watch this book marketing video here:





John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books as well as the developer of the following programs:

Book Marketing Magic: http://www.bookmarket.com/novelmarketing.htm - How to market novels, children's books, memoirs, and more. $48 special offer

15,000 Eyeballs Internet Marketing Program: http://www.bookmarket.com/15000eyeballs.htm - Ten lessons on how to get thousands of impressions for you, your book, your blog, or your website. $50

Real Fast Book Marketing: http://www.bookmarket.com/realfastbookmarketing.htm - How to sell 100 to 200 copies of any book in two weeks or less. $97

Blog Tour Palooza: http://www.bookmarket.com/blog-tour-palooza.htm - How to carry out a blog tour or virtual book tour that gets millions of impressions, builds your brand, and sells thousands of books. $297

Jack Canfield on How He Got Lucky in Marketing His Books

Here is an excerpt from a long interview Jack Canfield did recently with the Economic Times, a division of The Times of India.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention for the past 15 years, Jack Canfield is the co-originator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books, which has over 225 books in print with total sales of over 500 million copies worldwide in 47 languages.



Here, again, is the excerpt from Economic Times (note that the video was not part of the interview, but does talk about one of his key points in the interview):

Did you just get lucky? Or was there a method to it?

I believe that people make their own luck by great preparation and good strategy. We used The Rule of 5 which I write about in The Success Principles, which is to do 5 specific action steps each day to move you towards the completion of a goal.

So every day for the 14 months before we hit the New York Times bestseller list we would take 5 actions steps. We would make 5 phone calls to newspapers to review the book. We would send out 5 free copies of the book to reviewers.

Once we sent copies to all the producers of TV shows like Touched by An Angel and when the producer got hold of the book, they required everyone on their staff, including the cameramen, script writers and actors to read it. That story reached the Hollywood Reporter which published it and then that article went out to syndication and appeared in many more newspapers all across the United States.

So we worked very hard. We actually studied how to create a bestselling book by interviewing 10 bestselling authors and everything they told us they'd done, we then did the same.

We also bought a book called 1001 Ways to Market a Book by John Kremer.

We made a post-it for each of the 1001 ways and put it on a wall, where our commitment was to do everything in the book and then remove each post-it until we were finished.

It took us the better part of a year to do it, but I believe it is this kind of commitment to a long series of actions that is what's always required to create major success that lasts.

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To read the entire interview with Jack Canfield, see: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/chicken-soup-for-the-souls-jack-canfield-and-his-mantra-for-success/articleshow/11825464.cms.

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It's interesting that I wrote about the Rule of Five in the 1989 edition of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, Chapter 9. Here's what I wrote:

I'm giving you the basic rule, a rule that forbids excuses. I call it the rule of five.

All it takes is five promotions a day. Really, that's all it takes. Mail a letter. Send out a news release. Phone someone. Take an editor to lunch. Do a phone interview. Give a speech. Jot down a postcard. It need  not require much time - 15 to 20 minutes is enough - but it can make a world of difference on how well your book sells.



John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books as well as the developer of the following programs:

Book Marketing Magic: http://www.bookmarket.com/novelmarketing.htm - How to market novels, children's books, memoirs, and more. $48 special offer

15,000 Eyeballs Internet Marketing Program: http://www.bookmarket.com/15000eyeballs.htm - Ten lessons on how to get thousands of impressions for you, your book, your blog, or your website. $50

Real Fast Book Marketing: http://www.bookmarket.com/realfastbookmarketing.htm - How to sell 100 to 200 copies of any book in two weeks or less. $97

Blog Tour Palooza: http://www.bookmarket.com/blog-tour-palooza.htm - How to carry out a blog tour or virtual book tour that gets millions of impressions, builds your brand, and sells thousands of books. $297

Book Marketing Makeover: Broadcast Your Brilliance

Guest post by Nancy Juetten

Aspiring experts and authors around the world are starting off the year with the bold intention to get known and get paid for their expert status.  If this is your goal, here are a few tips inspired by the classic film “The Wizard of Oz” to guide you forward:

• Don’t let blue bird envy stand in your way. Wishing and hoping doesn’t get the job done. Get into action today to earn the attention you seek for your message.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help to get what you need. Good witches and mentors are everywhere — if you just ask the local munchkins for quality recommendations.
• Don't settle. Along your yellow brick road to success, don’t settle for Munchkin Land when the Emerald City or the Land of Oz is what you really want. Think big about what you want to accomplish and the perfect outlets where you most want your message to be heard.
• Celebrate new media. If the crystal ball isn’t delivering the solutions and information you need, find alternative ways to learn how to carry your message forward.
• Put your best dress on and your best face forward before you make your pitch.
• Stand out. It takes brains, courage, and heart to make your message stand out.
• Stand apart. Frame your story as a horse of a different color so it stands apart.
• Make magic. Just as Dorothy discovered, you can make a lot of magic happen if you just click your heels together and get to work.

Learn more by attending a free high-value webinar with Nancy Juetten hosted by John Kremer.

Tuesday, January 24th at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern

Here is the link to save your place: http://www.mainstreetmediasavvy.com/nancy-juetten-and-john-kremer-say-bye-bye-boring-bio-and-get-ready-for-opportunity-in-the-new-year




About the Author

Publicity expert Nancy Juetten has spoken to thousands of business owners through webinars, teleseminars, media interviews and articles. Juetten teaches the Broadcast Your Brilliance webinar series that trains professionals, speakers, and authors to get seen and heard in the media to attract clients, earn credibility, and make money. Sign up now for her high-impact webinar next week.

Book Marketing Makeover: Seth Godin's Advice to Book Authors, Part II

Advice to Book Authors, Part II

This article is now located here:
http://bookmarketingbestsellers.com/seth-godin-19-points-of-advice-for-book-authors.



About the Author

Seth Godin is the founder of The Domino Project and has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and, most of all, changing everything.

John Kremer's Free Book Marketing Birthday Bash Teleseminar

Thanks to all of you who are wishing a great birthday on January 16th. I'm 63 years young.

I'm celebrating by giving a free teleseminar to answer all your book marketing and ebook promotion questions.

Details here: http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventID=25717449



John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, developer of the Blog Tour Palooza program, and webmaster of BookMarket.com.

Book Marketing Makeover: The 12 Days of Christmas for Book Promotion

Blog post by John Kremer

On the first day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
A short speech in a bookstore.

On the second day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the third day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the fourth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the fifth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the sixth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the seventh day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the eighth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Eight books a-giving
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the ninth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Nine columns writing
Eight books a-giving
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the tenth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Ten podcasts sending
Nine columns writing
Eight books a-giving
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the eleventh day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Eleven blogs commenting
Ten podcasts sending
Nine columns writing
Eight books a-giving
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My promo tip is this:
Twelve guest posts making
Eleven blogs commenting
Ten podcasts sending
Nine columns writing
Eight books a-giving
Seven Facebook pages
Six news releases
Five TV shows
Four webinars
Three blog posts
Two Twitter tweets   
And a short speech in a bookstore.


Please let me know your own book promotion tips. You can email those to me at johnkremer@bookmarket.com or via comments below. Thanks.

About the Author

John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and the multimedia course on Book Marketing Magic.

Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing, ebook promotion, and Internet marketing consulting with John Kremer. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting.

Details on consulting services here: http://www.bookmarket.com/consulting.htm

Book Marketing Makeover: Selling Books Via Event Planners

Guest post by D. E. Boone

I learned from John Kremer's 15,000 Eyeballs Program that one of the best ways to promote a book is to give away free copies. At first this made no sense to me. Although giving away free books seems counter-intuitive, I kept hearing that it worked.

John suggested that we give away an ebook version of our book. It's much less expensive and much easier to give away online. I am doing that now, but initially I decided to try something more risky.



At a social gathering, I met an event planner. Instead of my business card, I gave her a free copy of my humorous gift book, Legs Talk: A Modern Girl's Dating Tale. Legs Talk is a quirky, offbeat, Sex in the City kind of girlie book. Photographs take the reader on a wacky relationship trip that makes you laugh and sigh. It is an illustrated story of a relationship that soured and eventually went bad. The story is told by a pair of gorgeous legs.

The event planner told me she was putting together a ladies only party. She enjoyed my book so much, she asked me to donate 20 free print copies for the event. Since most of the attendees were single women, she figured they would enjoy Legs Talk's witty one-liners and break up humor. The idea was to turn poison into medicine. I took a chance and gave this stranger 20 copies of my book with order forms attached. It worked. Legs Talk was a big hit.

Currently, the event planner purchases copies of my book (at a discount) whenever she throws a similar event. She has even planned ladies only get-over him parties. So far, I sold over 100 books and expect to sell many more.

About the Author
D.E. Boone is the author of Legs Talk: A Modern Girl's Dating Tale. Find out more about her book at http://www.legs-talk.com.

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Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing and ebook promotion consulting with John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting.

Book Marketing Makeover: Selling to Libraries, Bookstores, and Other Retailers

Guest audio with Elaine Wilkes and John Kremer

Listen in to this audio podcast featuring Elaine Wilkes and John Kremer. It features lots of great content about selling to libraries, bookstores, and other retailers. As well as key information on ebook publishing, ISBN numbers, and more.

Click here to listen to the podcast

About the Authors

Elaine Wilkes is the Hay House author of Nature's Secret Messages: Hidden in Plain Sight. John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books.

Book Marketing Makeover: Do You Avoid LinkedIn Because You Don't Know How to Use It?

Guest post by Judy Cullins

I’m discouraged by what I see on LinkedIn. Many authors don’t take advantage of LinkedIn’s power to promote and market themselves and their books there. It’s frustrating for me to see the big mistakes authors are making on what has become the second largest social network in the U.S, and the one that is perfect for authors and businesses that brand themselves with a book.

LinkedIn is the best way to get you and your book seen and loved! You get much more visibility and credibility on LinkedIn than FB and Twitter.

Proof of LinkedIn Results

My own targeted traffic comes first, from my name and brand, Judy Cullins / book coaching, and other related searches on Google. Second source? LinkedIn, by a mile! My results include more than doubled traffic, from around 2,200 to over 6,000 a month, and also more opt-ins. From these opt-ins, book and coaching sales have doubled this year.

What Are Book Authors and Professionals Doing Wrong on LinkedIn?

Here are just a few of the problems I see regularly...

1. They sign up and forget about it.
   
2. They don’t update their LI profile enough. Canned and old information looks OLD.
   
3. They join the wrong groups. They need to focus on their target audience and groups that they can network in.
   
4. They use the groups, but don’t interact and make relationships. They blatantly shout "Buy my book!"
   
5. They don’t know how to use LinkedIn’s applications such as connecting your blog with LinkedIn or listing your books with direct links in your profile.
   
6. They don’t know how to prioritize their profile placements. Which is more important - your recommendations and summary or your college?
   
7. They don’t have a personalized URL (mine is http://Linkedin.com/in/JudyCullins).
   
8. They sign up for 40-50 groups and don’t participate much. You must build relationships.
   
9. They collect numbers. They send invites to anyone! They don’t focus on their best audiences.
   
10. They don't use laser focus on their main book or service. Too many things to distract their audience.
    
11. Their profile focuses on them, not their audience. Use the YOU point of view here.

See more LinkedIn benefits at http://bookcoaching.com/linkedin-marketing.php



About the Author

Book, Blog, and LinkedIn Coach Judy Cullins helps you transform your LinkedIn presence into an income stream for life. Author of 14 books that include LinkedIn Marketing: 8 Best Tactics to Build Book and Business Sales, Judy offers free, up-to-the minute weekly publications on writing and online marketing at http://www.bookcoaching.com/help-writing-a-book.php.

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Book Marketing Makeovers - Query Letters That Work: Grab Them with the First Sentence

Guest post by Jeff Rivera

Agents are so busy nowadays they won't even give a query letter an entire paragraph to grab them.

If you've passed the first test, what I like to call the scan test (meaning it looks professional at first glance), then you'll be lucky to go on to the next test: the first sentence.

They might be patient enough to even give you the first few sentences but Honey, if you don't have it together by then, you can kiss your chances of landing that agent goodbye. There are so many different ways to grab an agent.

These are 5 of the techniques I use for my clients. I've ghostwritten over 100 query letters for clients successfully. 100% of them have interested at least 10 top agents that have requested to read their manuscript or book proposal. In other words, use these techniques - they work.

You don't need to use all of them, just choose one.

The Top 5 Ways to Grab an Agent with Your Very First Sentence

1) Start with a question that makes them ponder?

2) Talk about a dramatic moment in your personal life that connects with the book you've written

3) Tell them immediately about your platform

4) Compliment them on a specific recent sale

5) Tell them who referred you

Use one of the 5 suggestions above, and you'll be one step closer to landing an agent.

If you would like to see an example of query letters that worked, visit: http://www.HowtoWriteaQueryLetter.com.



Jeff Rivera is the founder of http://www.HowtoWriteaQueryLetter.com. He and his works have been featured or mentioned in Publishers Weekly, GalleyCat, Mediabistro, Los Angeles Times, New York Observer, NPR and many other media outlets.

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The reader with the best comment on this guest post will win a CD interview of Samantha Ettus on how to brand yourself through social media and networking.

Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing and ebook promotion consulting with John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting

Book Marketing Makeover: Writing Effective Emails That Get Attention

Guest post by Jill Konrath

The following tips are excerpted with permission from Jill Konrath's The Ultimate Guide to Email Prospecting.



According to email provider ExactTarget, people take only 2.7 seconds to decide if they will read, forward or delete a message. These busy people sit with their finger on the delete button ready to blast you into oblivion the moment they detect that you're trying to sell them something.

So what does it take to capture their attention? Is it even possible to craft an irresistible message that compels potential prospects to immediately hit “Reply” and request a meeting with you?

• One seller sent an email to the CEO of a company and just eight minutes later got a return message asking for a conference call.
• Another salesperson had been trying unsuccessfully to reach a decision maker for months. When she changed her messaging, she got a request for a meeting 30 minutes later.
• An inside salesperson used these strategies to set up meetings with marketing VPs. While his competitors were battling it out in purchasing, he'd get the business with no competition.

Snap Factors Matter

What's behind these lightning-quick decisions? I spent several years studying this behavior before Iwrote SNAP Selling, my newest book that's focused on selling to frazzled people. I discovered that they evaluated every sales interaction (phone calls, emails, meetings) by asking themselves these four key questions.

• How simple is it? In other words, does it require effort for me to quickly grasp the meaning or will it throw me into overload?
• Does this person bring value? Yes, they're making a decision about YOU personally. Not your company, service or solution. You!
• Is this aligned with my objectives? Unless what you say is clearly aligned, it's irrelevant and not worth even one more second of their valuable time.
• How big a priority is it? Urgent matters always take precedence over everything else.

Mastering the Basics

Here are the primary things you need to think about before you even craft your message.

• Length. Keep your prospecting emails under 90 words. Shorter is nearly always better when dealing with today's crazy-busy prospects. Remember that many people are reading your messages in their preview screen or mobile device. They hate scrolling and worse, they hate rambling messages.
• Look. Simple text (black and white) messages are essential when reaching out to a new person. If you have fancy templates, save them for your friends or family. They don't evoke the image of a highly capable resource. Also, think carefully before using logos, and definitely avoid using colored fonts. Logos and color, especially red, catch the eye of spam blockers.
• Links. If you have some good resources on your website that you want to drive your prospects to, only send one link per email. People will look at one link, but more than that sends them into overwhelm. Future emails can include the additional links.
• Attachments. Don't send any with your first email. People are wary of opening attachments from strangers. But after you've initiated a conversation (either online or via phone), it's okay to send an attachment. Again, just send one at a time. If you send more, they won't read any.
• Proofing. Read your emails three times. Then print your email and read it again. You’ll be surprised at how different it looks, and you’ll catch overlooked errors. Spelling and obvious grammar errors give prospects the opportunity they’re looking for to hit the delete key.

If you'd like to read the entire free report, The Ultimate Guide to Email Prospecting, get it here: http://learn.gotomeeting.com/forms/G2MC-Sales-WP-2011-Ult-Guide-S?ID=70150000000Xmqf (made available free via GoToMeeting but registration is required).

About the Author



If you liked the ideas in this above post, check out Jill Konrath's Prospecting Tool Kit that contains four free must-have sales tools. They'll help you open more doors - and ultimately close more sales. Download the Prospecting Tool Kit now: http://bit.ly/ProspectingKit.

For more about Jill Konrath and her book Snap Selling, go to http://www.jillkonrath.com.

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Win a CD Interview on how to sell a million books!

The reader with the best comment on this guest post will win a CD interview of Cindy Cashman, where she talks about how she sold over 1 million books.

Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing and ebook promotion consulting with John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting

Book Marketing Makeover: First-Time Novelist Novel Marketing Strategies

Guest post Q&A with Simone Bailey

Simone Bailey is an Australia author who specializes in adult satire and young adult fiction. As a member of The Book Marketing Network, she volunteered to be interviewed about her marketing efforts for her debut novel, Calumny While Reading Irving Welsh.

Question: Are you involved in any social networks? Have you used them in marketing your book? Again, if so, how?

Answer: Yes, I am a user of social media. I use Facebook and Twitter to publicize my work. I have posted some articles on The Book Marketing Network, which has the facility for sharing to these sites. I have also attached reviews for my work, reviews I have written for other's work, my press release, and newspaper interviews.

Question: Did you speak to promote your book? If so, what audiences or venues produced the best sales?

Answer: Yes, I have spoken at book launches, libraries, and classrooms. The book launch talks have been the most fruitful in terms of sales.

Question: What Internet marketing technique produced the best sales results for your book? Did you do anything interesting to boost the effectiveness of the technique?

Answer: My personal blog is where I do a lot of my marketing. I receive up to 1,000 hits per day on average. I have just posted on it,. Recently I've asked about getting some advertising on my blog as a form of extra income.



About the Author

Simone Bailey is the author of Calumny While Reading Irving Welsh. Her personal blog is at http://bingellsblog.bigblog.com.au.



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Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing and ebook promotion consulting with John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting

Book Marketing Makeover: Dead Body Cookies Create Killer Sales for Mystery Novel

Guest post by Cindy Sample

When I began writing, I fantasized about how my life would change when I became a rich and famous published author. This fantasy did not include me spending more time in the kitchen. Yet now I’m in there more than when I was raising my kids. The death of my writer fantasy occurred with the birth of my launch party for Dying for a Date.

Back in my corporate life, one of our company mottos was “feed the client.” We had chili cook-offs, pancake breakfasts, and BBQ’s. Our clients were happy and well fed. So, when my neighbor graciously offered her backyard for the launch party and offered to make dead body cookies, I was in heaven. We covered her patio with chalk outlines of dead bodies, decorated the house with crime scene tape, and wined and dined the participants. But the dead body cookies were the life of the party.

From then on, I gave away dead body cookies at all of my author events. It was great, right up until the day my neighbor went out of town, and I was forced to make 3 dozen cookies. By myself.

Creating corpse cookies requires more of a skill set than I realized. If the dough is too thin, you’re stuck with a platter full of dead body parts. If the dough is too thick, the cookies resemble chubby aliens. Your friends might even rudely blog about your big foot cookies just because one (or a dozen) looked like Sasquatch on steroids.

After spending that entire day baking cookies, every speck of my kitchen was coated with flour and icing. I decided there was no way I was giving these cookies away for free. No sir. If you wanted a cookie, you had to buy a book.

And they did. EVERYONE wanted a dead body cookie and Dying for a Date sold like crazy. At one event, just for fun, I changed the sign to read: free book with purchase of dead body cookie.

I sold just as many books. People had to have a cookie. I had created a marketing monster. How was I going to top this promotion when Dying for a Dance was launched?

Without giving anything away, if you write a ballroom dance mystery, there is a high possibility that a stiletto heel may be involved in a murder.

And a new literary culinary creation was born: the chocolate stiletto. A carbohydrate infused weapon that is truly to die for. And if one of the shoes looks more like a loafer, well, I am a dedicated author. I’ll go the extra mile and eat that chunky stiletto for the good of my craft and my fans.

About the Author

Cindy Sample is the author of two great mysteries: Dying for a Dance and Dying for a Date. Find out more about her books at http://www.cindysamplebooks.com.You can email her at cindy@cindysamplebooks.com.

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Special Book Marketing Makeover offer: 40% off book marketing and ebook promotion consulting with John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Order here: http://bit.ly/JohnKremerConsulting

The Top 4 Book Marketing Tactics in Today's World

Here are the top four book promotion activities you can engage in to sell more books in today's world . . .

1. Speak. Speaking builds a word-of-mouth army better than anything else. Speak locally - at garden clubs, libraries, bookstores, Rotary clubs, JCs, poetry nights, story swaps, book club meetings, etc. Then expand out to a wider area, to nearby cities, to nearby states. Eventually, expand out to an even wider audience.

When someone hears you speak, they become a bigger fan than if they had just read your book. If they like you when they hear you speak, they will tell ten times more people than by just reading your book.

2. Book yourself on national TV. TV is still the largest mass market media. It still reaches more people than any other media - and with more impact. It's worth spending the time contacting the ten or twenty news and talk shows that reach your audience. For most national TV shows, you can get the contact information in one of two ways: 1. from their websites, and 2. via your network of friends and fellow authors.

Your appearance on one major TV show will not only expose you to millions of viewers, but it also opens the door to dozens and sometimes hundreds of other media: newspapers, magazines, radio, more TV shows, etc.

3. Create relationships with high-traffic websites. How many major high-traffic websites that attract your target reader have you created relationships with? Are these real relationships where you contribute content to them on a regular basis? In today’s world, Internet relationships are the key to marketing success.

Uncover five to ten top websites that already reach the audience you want to reach. Look over their sites until you find a way to contact someone behind the site - a webmaster, an editor, the founder. Then email them with an offer of free content for their readers: an interview with you, a review copy of your book, a free article (that is really good), some tips for their readers, a Q&A column on your specialty, etc. Their obligation, in return, is to link to your website or sales page.

4. Do a Superstar Blog Tour. Or a Mega Blog Tour. Or a Blogpalooza. I’m not talking about the old-style humdrum virtual book tour of 15 or 20 blogs. I’m talking about an event blog tour that creates Internet buzz on a major scale. Event blog tours can build brands, create incredible website traffic, and sell tons of books.

The neat thing is that effective event blog tours take less time to carry out than the traditional Amazon Bestseller Campaign - and are almost always more effective in selling books, building a brand, and driving traffic.

If you want to know more about event blog tours, check out this recording of me speaking about the value and method of carrying out an effective impact blog tour: http://www.bookmarket.com/blog-tour-palooza.htm.

Conclusion

These four book marketing techniques work for almost any kind of book: fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, children's books, how-to, spiritual, business, even cookbooks. You don't have to do all four. Start with one and work it hard – you'll get better results than doing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, EzineArticles, or other Internet marketing flavors of the week.



John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. If you want to launch a SuperStar Blog Tour™, Mega Blog Tour™, or Blogpalooza™, check out http://www.bookmarket.com/blog-tour-palooza.htm.

Book Marketing Success Story: Sneaky Uses

I just received an email from a reader of my email newsletter. He describes how he has had success for his book series.



Just wanted you to know I ordered another copy of "1001 Ways to Market Your Books" @ B&N last night.

I have passed 325,000 in total sales, will definitely reach 500,000 (at this rate since my 8th "Sneaky Uses" title will be published 11/1/2011) but I want to get to a million, or more.

So, I am going to do a 'system refresh' and start over with your latest edition to work on the next 5 to 10 years!

(I meet or get introduced to writers and the first thing I tell them is to order your book - and they love it.)

Regards,

Cy Tymony of http://www.sneakyuses.com

Book Author Success Story: Giving Away Free Books

A Marketing Activity that Worked Wonders for My Book Sales: Giving Away Free Books

I have given away a number of copies of my book, Come Back Early Today. This has had three direct beneficial results.

1. Several friends of people I gave books to purchased copies for themselves. For example, I gave a copy of my book to my vet and five of her staff members immediately ordered copies.

2. Some people who got free books subsequently bought copies to give to their friends.

3. Many people who got free books subsequently wrote reviews on Amazon, and I’m confident others will, too, as soon as they finish reading the book.

None of these things would have happened had I not given away the books in the first place.



- Marie Marley, PhD., author of Come Back Early Today: A Memoir of Love, Alzheimer’s and Joy – A passionate love story of a young American woman and a delightfully eccentric Romanian gentleman interspersed with an inspirational guide for Alzheimer’s caregivers everywhere.

For more about the book, see http://www.ComeBackEarlyToday.com.

Note: The value of reviews is not only seen on Amazon, but also on GoodReads, Shelfari, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other social networks. People who like you or your book will tell others.

Book Promotion: 31 Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

I'm trying an interesting experiment. I'm promoting an important blog post on my AskJohnKremer.com website on how to promote your Facebook page by blogging about it on four different blogs: my Book Marketing Bestsellers blog (this one right here), my Ask the Booksellers blog, my Ask the Publicist blog, and my The Book Marketing Network blog. I also featured it on the home page of BookMarket.com.

If you want to get more action out of your Facebook pages, be sure to check this out: http://askjohnkremer.com/31-ways-to-promote-your-facebook-page.

Note: You can also use many of these techniques to promote your LinkedIn pages, Twitter profiles, and other social network profiles.

I think this particular blog post is valuable enough to promote more heavily than my usual blog posts. Another recent blog post I consider important is my 101 Ways to Blog as a Book Author. You can read it here: http://blog.bookmarket.com/2011/06/101-ways-to-blog-as-book-author-plus.html.



John Kremer is the author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books.

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