Ten Quick and Inexpensive Things You Can Do to Promote Your Book

1. Activate Your Circle – people who already know you are the most likely to buy your book. Make sure you tell EVERYONE you know that your book is available. Also, make sure to encourage them to tell their friends about it. You would be surprised how many people you know, and how many people THEY know.
2. Start a Blog – You can get a free blog on Wordpress.com and use it as a website to promote all your books. Best part is you don’t need to know how to program anything, and it’s FREE!
3. Send out a Press Release – You can write and send a Press Release on PRWeb for $40 to $360. Alternatively, you spend a little more and send it out on PRNewswire or BusinessWire and get even more exposure.
4. Join Discussion Forums and Participate – You can really influence a lot of people by joining online discussion forums and participate as an expert in your field. Remember that sometimes you need to participate for a while before it will start to have an affect. “Newbies” rarely get the traction that an established participate does.
5. Blogger outreach – Bloggers can influence large numbers of people. It doesn’t take long to contact a few and ask them to review your book!
6. Run ads in email newsletters – You can usually purchase ad space in an email newsletter for about $0.08 per recipient if you shop around. Most industry associations and groups have some sort of monthly or weekly email newsletter – some with tens of thousands of subscribers. Depending on your market and the type of book you have written, this may be a good way to target a specific group of people.
7. Speak at meetings - Depending on your market, there may be meetings and tradeshows that would welcome a guest speaker. Sometimes you pay to speak, sometimes they let you have a few minutes for free. Be sure to bring extra copies of your book to sell. Most of these meetings will allow you to have books on a table in the back for people to buy.
8. Start a Newsletter – Once you have your Blog up and running. Add a newsletter to it. This is a great way to reach out to people who have visited in the past and it keeps your ideas in front of them. Many people will buy your book after they have come back to your website or blog a few times.
9. Give them an incentive – Come up with an “extra” chapter and offer it to people who join your blog’s newsletter. It’s a great way to line people up for your second edition or to purchase other books you write in the future.
10. List your book on Google Books – Go to http://www.google.com/books and register a free account. Google will scan your book’s content and add it to it’s search results whenever someone searches for information similar to the subject of your book. They will even give searchers a direct link to buy your book on WWAOW!