Don't Be Cheesy

Day 115

“Don’t reduce yourself to a cheesy book hawker.”

~ Rob Eagar

That quote by Rob Eagar always makes me think of this lady I follow on Twitter. She use to post the same exact thing every 5 minutes. It said: “Buy my book: linktobookhere” 

That’s it. 

That’s all it said. 

Every 5 minutes. 

It was beyond annoying. I even unfollowed her for a while. But she’s grown since then and has developed as a marketer so I'm following her again.

There are other types of things you want to avoid as well though. Here’s my top 10 list of ways not to market your book:

1. Post on Twitter telling people to buy your book over and over and over and over and...

2. Review as many books as possible and always mention your book in the review.

3. Never have a conversation where you don't mention your book - online or off.

4. When people ask a question that you answered in the book, tell them to read your book to find the answer.

5. Make up some (false) statistics (sales, reviews, anything really) to share about how awesome you and your book are and share them with others.

6. Leave nasty reviews for books similar to yours and say that your book is better.

7. Host a webinar just to tell people how great you and your book are without giving them any helpful information and then referring them to buy your book.

8. Try every single book marketing idea that you come across and make sure you are doing everything possible to market your book.

9. Spend thousands of dollars just to draw in one or two sales.

10 . Just assume your book will market itself and don't even try.

Marketing prompt:

Try one of the following 10 ways to market your book:

1. Learn about the different aspects of book marketing and form a plan.

2. Market your book on a shoestring budget - you wrote it to make money, not spend money.

3. Don't try everything at once. You'll burn yourself out and end up failing - It's better to do one thing well then ten things poorly.

4. Host a webinar that offers people a ton of useful information in a short amount of time (build their trust, not their desire for more).

5. Only review books that you've read, and review them honestly. Remember that you're an author too, don't write anything about another author and their book that you wouldn't want written about you and yours.

6. Tell the truth and always be honest.

7. When people ask you a question that you know the answer to, answer them - then, if you must, let them know that you go into more detail in your book - or not.

8. Build real relationships that don't revolve around you and your book marketing. Relationships sell books, not meaningless conversations.

9. Never mention your book when reviewing another book. Amazon will delete them and it just looks tacky. If they like your review, there is a good chance they can trace it back to your book without you shouting "look at me!"

10. Use social media to build relationships and make announcements. You should post about things other than your book at least ten times more than you post about it.

Days to go: 250

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