Hi everyone!

Pamela Meyers here with another discussion on marketing your novel.

Recently, while in a discussion with a couple people from my
church, a woman asked me if I had a publicist. I replied that the publisher for my book releasing next spring has a publicist on staff that is available to me, but for my small press books, the marketing is pretty much up to me. At that point the man with us spoke up and recited the old adage, “To make money, you have to spend money.” I assured him I agreed, but with a very slim budget, most of the marketing has been up to me and I needed to be creative without a lot of expense. Then I added that I have a lot of input from my professional organizations as to how to go about marketing my books.

Later, as I reflected on that conversation, I stopped to thank God for providing me with CAN and those here who work so tirelessly to help its members get the word out about their books, and also for American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) to which I’ve belonged almost since its inception. Between these two organizations I have learned a ton about marketing, and yet feel I’ve barely scratched the surface.

One of the ways I want to push the publicity for my next book is to utilize Twitter more than I ever have. During the launch of Thyme for Love I sent out Twitter posts with links to where the book could be purchased, giveaways during my blog tour, and anything else related to the book, but I keep asking the question:  Can I do more?

My pastor recently reported that after posting a website link on Twitter for my church’s radio and on-line ministry website, the website received 34,000 hits in a 24-hour period. That started the wheels in my head spinning, and I began to wonder what else I could do to stir up peoples’ interest enough to go to Amazon to order my new book.

This month at CAN we are seeing first hand how a team of people can bring about positive results more effectively than just one person. I don’t have near the number of Twitter followers to generate 34,000 hits by myself, but we can help each other in this way by agreeing to publish the Twitter posts that are being gathered every week.

It takes more than saying “Buy my book by going to this link.” We need to think creatively about how to get people interested in learning more about our books. This can be done by starting out with a tease, or asking a question to which they have to go to the link to find the answer, or holding a give-away and getting people to your blog to sign up for the drawing. But there has to be even more we can be doing. I’m just now starting to noodle what else I might do so I’ll be ready when the release date gets closer.

Have any good ideas to share? Please leave a comment!