Writers Magazine 2008

1. There are many ways in which you can promote your work, some of which will be more appropriate for different kinds of work.
2. Readings can be an excellent way of promoting your work and hopefully selling it at the same time. Readings and performances are vital for poets but also helpful for a wide range of other kinds of writing.
3. Festivals can be a good idea and local festivals in particular may be an effective way of reaching a local audience. There’s been a huge explosion in literary festivals over the last few years and it’s worth investigating whether there’s a festival or specialist event in which you could participate. The Fringe is often the best way to get a slot but you will need to plan a year ahead.
4. Local bookshops can be enormously supportive of local authors, especially independent bookshops. If you are self-publishing they will be particularly important, and may even provide a large proportion of your sales, especially if the subject of your book is also of local interest.
5. Can you write an article about your book or something relating to it and place this in a newspaper or magazine? Once again local media are most likely to be interested and local papers in particular are often short of material. They have been known to publish articles offered, especially with photographs, pretty much in their entirety. Make sure your article is succinct and attention-grabbing, and focuses on the story, rather than reading as a piece of selling copy for your book.
6. Don’t forget the rest of the media. Could you talk about your book or offer yourself as a contributor on local radio or television? This may seem to be aiming high, but think carefully about what you have to offer and how to approach them.
7. Have you explored all the web opportunities there might be for your book? Having a web presence of your own is the best way of going about this, but there are many other ways of promoting yourself online. A blog is essential and you need to seek out other writers and web communities to link into any network.
8. It’s worth thinking about email lists, because if your book has a special interest market this may be a good way of reaching it. Of course you should put together your own email list as soon as you can and work at building this and sending out bulletins when you have something interesting to tell people.
9. Have you ever given talks or lectures? Once again these work particularly well if your book is a non-fiction work which will appeal to a special interest group of some kind. Bear in mind that these might be anything from a local history group to the Women’s Institute, an after-dinner speech about your fascinating life or even a reading group focusing on fiction. Make sure you have books to sell afterwards.
10. Don’t forget writers’ magazines (see our magazine reviews), many of which are full of articles about writers’ own stories and which are always looking for new material.
11. The same goes for writers’ websites, it really is worth exploring them fully and seeing if there’s a space for your work or for you to write something about it for one of them. If you have your own website then link it to as many of these sites as possible.
12. Consider entering competitions, as this can be a good way of publicising your work. WritersServices list many of these in our Writing Opportunity series and there are many more to be found on the web. Our article on Entering Competitions will help you to make sure your entries have their best chance.
13. Above all, turn yourself into your own publicity machine and never pass up an opportunity to talk about your book.

Marketing your book

Marketing

The Marketing department – what it does from the Inside Publishing series

Special markets

Review of How to market books