Looking for a place to feel inspired and challenged? Like to share a smile or a laugh? Interested in becoming more familiar with Canadian writers who have a Christian worldview? We are writers who live in different parts of Canada, see life from a variety of perspectives, and write in a number of genres. We share the goal of wanting to entertain and inspire you to be all you can be with God's help.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Marketing – Lawrence
Since compiling and self-publishing my latest book, Welsh Cakes: Book of Short Stories, I have done more marketing than with any of my previous books—not that I have sold any more books this time around than I did with any of my other books. My marketing efforts have, however, drawn a lot of visitors to my web site, particularly to my monthly meditations, which I now have in text and audio.
Visits to my website are important to me and, though I would like to sell more books, I am writing a lot through my website with more immediate results than I have ever done with my books. I have been getting around 1,000 visits to my site each month for several months now; this is up from 100 when I first started in 2007. This is attributable to my presence on the internet on other sites.
Most of my marketing has been done on-line and there are a lot of opportunities available to an author. I got quite involved with on-line marketing a few months ago when one of The Word Guild members told us about a site called Marketing Tips for Authors. http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com From reading this blog by Tony Eldridge, I have linked up with a number of helpful ways to market my work and website.
One cannot take advantage of all the suggestions that are given—if one did there would be no time for writing—but one can search through and pick out some that would be helpful to one’s own situation. The following are examples of ideas that I have chosen to pursue.
1. I joined Authors Den, www.authorsden.com which is a site where authors and readers meet together. Here I have an opportunity to put all my information in one place. I blog there once a week; I show my poetry, short stories, and published books; I have links to my other blogs, my website, and where to buy my books; I can keep track of visits by others to these areas by viewing my stats page.
2. When I started my blog on my book of short stories, I decided to follow a suggestion I found on Marketing Tips, to use my new blog to tell the story behind each of the short stories in the book and the reason that led me to write it.
3. The most recent idea that got my attention was putting up my book in readable form on my website, blogs, and anywhere else I so desired. I joined a website called fReado www.freado.com from where I was directed to BookBuzzr. www.bookbuzzr.com Here I was able to put sample pages of my book for people to read and could put a widget of this in various places on the internet so that people could have access to it.
These are new times and we have to be able to change our method of bringing God’s message to the people with the times if that is what God is leading us to do. I was never much of a computer techie but I have been willing to try and now enjoy the challenge of learning new marketing tips and techniques in order to make God’s word available to the ever growing internet population.
To God be the glory in all we do.
Labels:
God's message,
internet,
marketing,
writing books
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts
-
Write Canada is more than a professional networking conference. It’s a safe place where beginning and intermediate writers can learn ...
-
It's an old proverb: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Sometimes elephants come crashing through our front door - uninvite...
-
Dreams are baffling things. Like high quality china they have a strength that defies logic. Yet after years of bumps and bangs that sugges...
-
I have been feasting of late on Marilyn Chandler McEntyre's Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies . She exhorts all of us -- and mo...
-
Have you ever been to a film festival? Last year I had the privilege of attending Sundance where God put in on my heart: “What if we had a f...
-
Writers—especially those who aspire to write books—are currently being told that the publishing industry is undergoing a massive change. Th...
-
This may be a bit outside of what we normally post here, but the problem as I see it is that people frequently come to The Word Guild after ...
-
When I was a young mother many people offered advice on how to raise my children. Some suggestions were more helpful than others. One helpfu...
-
To what would we have turned in our low times had David had not written about his experiences? When he was down, David created songs ...
-
Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt was Canada's First Finance Minister and Canada's First High Commissioner to Britain. Queen Victoria knigh...
5 comments:
Helpful tips, Judith -- thank you!
Thanks so much Judith for all your tips. I will certainly investigate what you have suggested. I must admit, I need all the help I can get to market my own book and you given some very good starting points. :)
Hi Judith
Isn't Tony's blog just great for authors, love it!
Thank you for the mention of BookBuzzr. I am glad to see you like our tool.
Best of luck in all you do :)
Cheers
Freya
Author Community Manager
www.BookBuzzr.com
World's No. 1, Free Online Book-Marketing Technology for Authors
Thank you so much for mentioning my blog in your post! You seem to be doing some great things to get the message out about you.
Thank you Freya, for you kind words. I look forward to seeing your post on my site in a couple of weeks!
Congratulations Judith!
I hadn't realized just how wide you'd been casting your net, but am glad you are having such positive results.
Thank you for sharing this phase of your journey -- and your tips.
Post a Comment