I also recommend Twitter as a great way to microblog other Twitterers with links back to your own book blog or website.  With that in mind, BiblioScribe.com now has a place where members (free membership) can place their Twitter address and description.

The display page is located HERE.

Sign up with BiblioScribe to take advantage of free press release and article submissions.

ALSO…

I just found this site that shows you a way of potentially getting thousand’s of new followers on Twitter, I just started using it myself and its starting to work already at http://Twitter.com/WealthVirtues.

To get more information on the Tweetergetter tool, visit http://tweetergetter.com/WealthVirtues

Here’s to more free book marketing!

Words are extremely powerful. A stinging blow to your skin will leave a bruise that last for days. But venomous words that are lodged into your soul and spirit can last for a life time.

Poisonous words that were hissed and screamed to us as children from our parents or peers; reverberate throughout our psyche during our life’s journey. The words that were so freely hurled at us begin to create a great void within our souls that helps nurture the ugly wounds of insecurity. Leaving many to question what is my purpose and true destiny on this earth? Am I really good enough?

The quest to seek our authentic selves begins with many of us grasping in the darkness for something authentic and tangible to direct us to our true identity. Many of us stumble along the way trying to find solace in items that only place a band aid on our external.

Cosmetic surgery, a new car, new wardrobe, a fancy condo, a mcmansion, wild sexual escapades, the latest technical gadget, drugs, or alcohol cannot repair a marred soul.

A disfigured soul and spirit can only mend through the divine reunion with our Creator and Heavenly Father. And He will meet you right where you are.

In His presence he can begin to dispel the lies and negative words that have been spoken over many of us throughout our life time.

If you would open your heart and mind you can begin to allow God to repair your heart, soul, and spirit. And He will bestow a new identity and divine destiny.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Your Creator had a plan for you on this earth while you were still in your mother’s womb.

When I discovered this great truth; I immediately became excited about my life. I have a purpose and a divine destiny that is designed just for me. And I’m careful to encourage those who are around me because they too, have a majestic plan designed especially for their lives.

You can choose to use words that can shred a person apart, or you can purpose in your heart to use words to uplift and build one to their divine potential.

Blessings,
Camille Kleidysz

Hebrews 3:13
But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sins deceitfulness.

But for many people, the idea of reading a book is great effort. They have to be really “into” the book to finish it (not like myself who is determined to finish it regardless). Most people read a chapter or two and if it’s not working for them, they are done.

You’ve probably heard all kinds of branding ideas, but here is a fresh one that you may want to consider. I found “Driving Reflections” at the Christian Retail Show last summer. To quote the web site, “Driving Reflections are windshield biblical passages, Bible verses, and messages for your car to see while driving. They offer powerful affirmations based on the truth of God’s Word.” Go to the web site to see the whole idea.

They are also branching out into many other topics than just the faith market, so regardless of your book topic (money, counsel, weight loss, thankfulness, etc.) there is one that would compliment your book.

And here is the good part… you can order them customized with your own words! What message are you trying to send in your book? What affirmation? Encouragement? Knowledge? The site says…

• Minimum quantities start at 50 units, 16 messages per unit, includes card holder with non-slip pads, package insert and clear bag.
• Set-up Fee to convert your messages and art set up – as low as $100
• Consulting available to create your messages – quote upon request

The driving reflections that are already designed resale for $10 and are about half that for wholesale. I gave them to all my family this year as Christmas gifts and everyone loves them. And when friends ride in the cars they always ask about them.

Or if customizing them is a bit too spendy yet, there are many topics, with more being created all the time from peace of mind, love and relationships, and courage and faith.

So… I know I sound like a commercial for them. Truth is I don’t get anything out of this deal except for the fact that I (1) met the owner and loved her and saw her vision; (2) loved the product; (3) have customers that love the product.

I think these are great to have available at your book table when you do signings or “back of the room sales.” Include one with your book when you give your book away in a drawing. And definately consider creating your own custom messages with quotes directly from your book that people can put into practise when they read it on their way to work each day.

Don’t you just love promotional ideas? Do you have any to share?

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Guerrilla marketing has been around for quite a while. Guerrilla marketing, as in Guerrilla warfare has certain attributes.  According to an entry on Wikapedia, the strengths of a guerrilla strategy are are:

1. Never attacking the enemy’s main force preserves resources.
2. It is very flexible and can be adapted to any situation, offensive or defensive.
3. It is very difficult to counter with conventional methods.

Taking these strengths into consideration, you can begin to develop a crafty (and legal) means to promote your work.  You may already be using the internet to apply these methods, but do not forget that printed web addresses are also a means of driving traffic to your site (see http://almanack.prwp.com/website-marketing-20050830.php to see how you can use your vehicle to help with this.)

The Traditional Bookmark

Beyond my business card, I wanted to have something easy to hand to folks that could actually be used, especially by avid book readers.  In many of the trade shows I attend, many of my contest givaways are books, so naturally, I wanted an associated inexpensive give-away to hand out as well as place inside the books.  So, I developed a larger sized bookmark showcasing my business in an attractive design.  Both front and back are presented below.

This is a nice card to present along with a business card because of it’s usability and size.  There is also pleny of room to describe your book(s) as well as space for a prominitely places web address.  But what else can a card of this size do?  Here are some things I have done:

1. Enhance the use of gas station displays by adding your bookmark to the credit card brochure holders as well as any card holder displays they may have.  As someone pumps gas, they can grab one of your attractive bookmark cards while they wait.  Even if they put it back, the domain name on the card may stay with them.

2. Drop a few on one of those tables you find in libraries, coffee shops, and bistros that tend to have lots of reading material nearby.  Dont forget those cafe areas in the big bookstores as your book-related bookmarker may appear to be a store promotion (sneeky).  In a less roguish approach, you may want to actually ask the establishment to place your bookmarks there as there may be an added benefit for them as well.

3. This one seems rather nefarious, but drop a few into the book holders in the pew backs at your particular house of worhip.  If you feel guilty, just increase your tithing. Know your audience first.  If your book is about something satanic, sexual, or of a nature that would offend the avaerage person, this is not the venue for you.

4. I was involved in a campaign where a few week before Halloween, about 4000 partents and children made their way through a large outdoor park where businesses were givien deignated spots along the park trail to give out candy and advertising.  The event was free for businesses to participate, though each had to spend a few hundres dollars on candy.  I placed the bookmark into each candy basket along with a piece of candy.  Something for the kids to pull out and give to their parents.  This was better than a paper ad as most of those get thrown away.

5. Ever see a line of people? Of course you do.  You may be diss’ing a fellow author with this one, but during a booksigning, walk down the line handing out your bookmarker to the folks in line and thanking for coming.  This is rather underhanded, but is deffinitely a guerrilla tactic.  If you want to maintain a good professional relationship with the author who’s book signing it is, instead use another line of people in a different venue.

6. When handing them out, be sure to give the recipient at least two – theirs plus more to pass on.

DON’T put them on automobile windshields. It is more intrusive and will probably lead to more litter as people, after finding out it isnt a parking ticket, will chuck it away.  “In your face” methods can work, so long as they do not have the appearance of being “in your face.”

A Good Print Shop is Key!

Even though I created the designs on the bookmark, I needed a service that take care of the printing, cutting, and laminating required to make my bookmark stand out.

The transition from digital media to print ready media can be a headache. The print shop may desire specs the designer is not familiar with. The designer may not understand their requirements. The file may be too large to attach to an email. There are numerous problems that can present themselves. That is why I used PrintingForLess.com to handle those details for me. Click here to learn more about their services as you create print materials to market your book.

Good luck.  I would love to hear other ideas on this as well.

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The Who, What, Where, and Why of Christian Book Promotion & Marketing
By Athena Dean

So, do you think every Christian needs to read your book? If you do, let us stop for a moment and get real. If you think your book is going to end up in WalMart, on Oprah, and on the NY Times Bestseller List…really, I hate to rain on your parade, but you really are setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment. It will help from the start to have realistic expectations and recognize clearly who your real market is. You must ask your self these defining questions…who, what and where? Then you must prove the why.

If you cannot narrow down your who into a specific people group, the narrower the better, the more difficult you will find marketing and promoting your book.

WHO?

If your who is all Christian, all women, all men, or all teens, then we’ve got a problem. Your goal should be to target your message to a more specific people group, like:

• New moms
• Single moms
• People in sales
• Military wives
• Cancer survivors
• Homeschoolers
• Christian writers
• Teachers
• The grieving
• Bereavement counselors
• Child abuse survivors
• Teens struggling with addictions
• Women struggling with eating disorders
• Christian counselors
• Runners or hikers
• Pastors or church leaders
• Wives of veterans
• Parents of terminally ill children
• Caregivers
• Senior citizens
• Stay at home moms
• Dog lovers
• Cat lovers
• And so on

The more clearly you can define your market, the easier it will be to find ways to advertise and promote to them.

If you are a fiction writer, make sure you include an issue in your story. Do not just have your main character become a Christian, but create someone struggling with abortion, infertility, domestic violence, infidelity, prodigal children, AIDS, homosexuality, etc. This will help you niche market your fiction title much easier since there are many support groups in the church and secular world reaching out to those dealing with issues, giving you a greater potential reading audience, again, because it is targeted.

WHAT?

Once you’ve determined the who and hopefully narrowed down your market to a niche group of potential readers, it is time to take a look at the what:

• What magazines or newsletters or newspapers or catalogs might they read?
• What radio stations do they listen to?
• What TV shows do they watch?
• What websites do they visit?
• What keywords are they typing into an internet search engine?
• What blogs do they read?

These days you see magazines, catalogs, websites and newsletters targeted for specific people groups. Many support groups have newsletters to keep in touch with their membership and typically the cost to advertise is low. Also, the chances of getting your book reviewed are much better in this type of publication than in a huge, well known publication…especially if your book offers great benefit to their readers.

All too often, authors gravitate towards the well known, full color, slick magazines like Christianity Today, Discipleship Journal, Charisma and the like. But beware…to advertise in these publications is not only extremely expensive, but typically very unproductive because the audience is so broad. You could easily spend thousands of dollars and get about as much return as flushing your money down the toilet would!

Take a few moments and come up with a list of keywords that relate to your topic. Then go to a few different search engines (http://www.google.com; http://www.dogpile.com; etc.) and type in each one of the keywords on your list. You will be amazed at all the resources you will find on the internet…and many of them are looking for important books like yours to add to their list of links and recommended reading.

The essential opportunities to look for are resources that are focused on meeting the needs of your particular people group. Whether it is a daily or weekly radio or TV show, a catalog, or newsletter, or an e-zine, blog or website, do some research to see what you can find that is dedicated to your prospective readers. Those are the kinds of websites, publications and media resources that you will want to prayerfully add to your marketing plan.

WHERE?

So where are you going to find these prospective buyers? Another reason to get as specific as possible is that you will find that the more specific the people group is, the easier it will be to find events and happenings where they might gather. Whether it’s in cyberspace, or in your physical locale, people who share similar interests or challenges tend to gather on a regular basis. This is good news for you if your book is a resource that will meet their needs.

Online

• Message boards
• Forums
• Chat groups
• Opt-in newsletters
• Targeted websites
• Blogs
• E-Zines
• Social networks (myspace.com; facebook.com, etc.)
• Teleclasses
• Web Conferences

Offline

• Support groups
• Seminars and conferences
• Bible Studies
• Book Clubs
• Conventions (annual, regional, etc.)
• Civic groups
• Churches
• Monthly membership meetings
• Christian workers conferences
• Christian Education conventions
• Street Fairs / Festivals

You’ve zeroed in on your niche market, but now begs the question…why should anyone buy your book? What do you have to offer them?

At this point the best thing you could do is get some valuable feedback. Get a group of your supporters together for a creative inspiration session. Brainstorm a list of places where you can find those who need to hear your message. While you’re at it, ask your focus group these important questions:

• What does your book offer?
• What problem does it help the reader solve?

Spend some additional time listing all the benefits of the message and then take a break. After a snack, come back together and go over the list, highlighting the most compelling and exciting benefits. These are the ones you will want to use in your sales copy in advertising, back cover copy, and a short description for a catalog.

WHY?

The truth is, people are selfish. That’s our sinful nature and there’s no getting around it…that said, most don’t really care why you wrote your book, what they really want to know is what is in it for them. Why should they take the time to read what you have to say?

Hopefully you’ve already gone before the Lord to make sure your message is His message, getting rid of anything that draws attention to yourself and embellishing whatever glorifies the Lord. With that done, you need to clearly and articulately encapsulate the benefit your book offers your reader.

If you cannot come up with sales copy of less than 40 words, then you might be in trouble. Let’s face it, people are busy. If you meet someone in an elevator; you don’t have 15 minutes to tell them about your book…you need a sound byte…a “bottom line” describing the problem that exists and the solution you offer.

You should be able to share your sales copy (or “elevator speech”) one on one in 30 seconds or less. You’ve got to be able to communicate what’s in it for the reader and be ready to expound on that as the opportunity arises. Just make sure your copy sounds natural when you say it…if it is too flowery or technical it will sound canned. It needs to be natural yet compelling to those who hear it without so many words that your listener gets lost.

As you consider the troubles you help others conquer, as a Christian writer, you are able to offer a real and enduring solution for the trials of this life. It is true that the solution is surrendering ones life fully to Jesus and becoming a disciple whose only goal is to do His will, but that does not necessarily mean that the Lord is going to solve all of our problems and we will never have to suffer.

Readers are tired of trite, superficial answers to the challenges of this life. We must, as Christian writers, give them an opportunity to go deeper and experience true life by the power of the Holy Spirit as the only solution to the issues they face.

So what are you helping your reader to overcome? Depression? Loneliness? Abuse? Unforgiveness? Anger? Betrayal or infidelity? Fear of the future? Grief over the loss of a loved one? Make sure you use this information in the back cover copy and all advertising and sales material so that your potential readers will relate based on their felt needs and see that you may have some answers for them.

In conclusion, by clearly determining who your market is, what type of media they prefer, where they congregate with others, and why they should buy your book, you have the basics that you’ll need for success. Now you can create and launch a successful marketing campaign to get your message into the hands of those who need to read it.

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Athena Dean, founder of WinePress Publishing and three-time self-published author, has coached hundreds of authors through the daunting task of book production and promotion. Over the last 17 years she has helped bring the degree of credibility for self-published works up to the high level of acceptance in the industry it enjoys today. Athena functions as Acquisitions Manager for WinePress Publishing Group http://www.winepressgroup.com and is currently the President of the Northwest Christian Writers’ Association http://www.nwchristianwriters.org Check out her You Can Do It – Promote and Market Your Self Published Book Blog at http://athenadean.authorweblog.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Athena_Dean
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Who,-What,-Where,-and-Why-of-Christian-Book-Promotion-and-Marketing&id=896615

Back in 1897, novelist W. Somerset Maugham, now known as author of Of Human Bondage, was having trouble selling his first novel Liza of Lambeth because his publisher wasn’t interested in advertising the book. So he took matters into his own hands.He took out some classified ads in a few daily newspapers in London. The copy read: “Young millionaire, lover of sports, cultivated, with good taste of music and a patient and empathetic character wishes to marry any young and beautiful girl that resembles the heroine of W.S. Maugham’,s new novel.”
By the end of the week, the first edition had sold out. The novel went on to get critical praise and popular sales.

For more such success stories of debut novelists, see http://www.bookmarket.com/debutnovels.htm.

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For more Book Marketing Tips SIGN Up to receive our RSS feed and you’ll be entered to win a copy of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer.

Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

Mark Landsberg, founder of http://www.selfpublishersplace.com , says, “Book lovers deal directly with authors cutting out the expensive middlemen. We have a unique sales plan and work tirelessly to help authors promote their books. Our international forum is open to all. Whether you are a writer or a reader please check out our new site and let us know what you think. We value your input.”

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

AC writers need to promote their articles, and one of the most popular ways to do that is with social bookmarking tools. You might not get a good deal of pageviews directly from these tools, but you will boost the pagerank of your articles, as almost every decent social bookmarking site has a pagerank of at least 5 (some are as high as 8 or 10).

In the past, it was necessary to visit as many of the social bookmarking sites as you could stand to do, mindlessly adding your links in hopes of boosting your pagerank. And trust me, good promoters knew about a heck of a lot of these social bookmarking sites.

Now, with the addition of a new tool called Onlywire, writers and promoters have a much easier time dealing with social bookmarking. Onlywire is a free tool that allows you to input your user name and password for nineteen social bookmarking sites and submit your articles to all of them at once. Every site on their list has a pagerank of at least five, and the majority are pageranked higher. Unfortunately, Digg, Shoutwire, and @news, three of the most popular social bookmarking sites, are not members of this network…yet. Despite this minor detail, you can still make this a very important part of your social bookmarking strategy.

To use Onlywire, simply register with them, and with all of the sites in their network (some are a little buggy for the time being and will not work, but you can always come back and change it later). All of those individual sites will want you to add a little tool to your toolbar, but you do not need to do this, as you’ll hit them all with one super-tool at the end. Input all of your signup information on the Onlywire members page, and make sure you confirm all of your initial emails from these sites before you start submitting.

Once you get all of your information in place, drag the Onlywire tool up to your bookmarks toolbar, and get started. Visit all of your articles that you wish to promote, click on the Onlywire button, and use that tool to submit your articles to Onlywire. Within a few minutes, your article should appear on every one of the other social bookmarking sites in the Onlywire network.

That’s all there is to it. You’ve effectively automated one of the most difficult and time-consuming parts of promotion. Remember, Digg, Shoutwire and @news, three of the most important social bookmarking promotion sites out there, are NOT members of Onlywire, so you will still need to submit content to them manually.

Read more articles by Robert here.

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!

1. Will your submitted article or press release translate into a quick sale, or at least a look at your book?

Many article submission services allow you to provide a link to your website, but look for above and beyond features. A press release is a press release is a press release. Unless there is the ability for your submission to generate sales of your book, then you have to look for other benefits such as the ability to publish links to your website.

BiblioScribe.com goes the extra mile by embedding your designated book within the article allong with links to this book and others you have authored to multiple online seller websites. See an example here.

You enter the book titles and ISBNs into your BiblioScribe.com user profile, then any time you make an submission, those books are automatically included in your article. For press releases, you can designate a new book that may not yet be in your profile, and it will be presented in the article as well.

2. Does the article submission site have a professional appearance?

This may seem shallow, but a Stanford University study on web credibility found that the number one determining factor of credibility was appearance. See the Book Blog article on Website Credibility.

You should still consider posting to other sites as well to create more back-links to your website, but the better a site’s perceived credibility, the longer a visitor will stay on the site to read your article.If the site has a “fly-by-night”, or an unprofessional appearance, consider if there is really any benefit to your book marketing plan.

3. Does the article subission service syndicate your article or press release?

A good service will generate RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds containing your article title as well as a short description of your articles content, AND submit the feed to various news syndication outlets that republish your article. Not only does Biblioscribe do this, but we also privide the ability for individual users to add your article published on BiblioScribe to social networks like Digg.com or Del.icio.us. See the link above again for examples of these feed submissions.

4. Does the marketing service require me to sign up as a member?

This can be good or bad depending on the quality of the service provider. BiblioScribe.com uses registration to allow members the option of storing their book titles as well as the related ISBNs to help us to better market your books. It is also a control method to help keep spammers from overloading servers with bogus submissions. A good service will have a privacy policy in place and posted on the site. There should also be very few required fields allowing you to determine what you want to reveal about yourself. Usually the email field is necessary to ensure you have access to your account, especially if you lose your password. The email address can be used by nefarious websites to spam you with ads or unrelated solicitations. The key is whether you are able to opt-out of receiving email from the service.

If you are looking for a high-end book marketing venue at no cost to you, explore BiblioScribe.com