Welcome to the book tour for Buzz: The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing by Roseanne Cheng and Dara Beevas! This book is a must-have for any indie author who is looking to break out in the market and get started with promotion. Get a sneak peek into the book and then read my thoughts about it. There’s also a great giveaway at the end, especially for my fellow writers and authors. Be sure to also follow the tour for more reviews, excerpts, and chances to win!
Please note that affiliate links are present within this post. Should you make a purchase through one, I may earn a few pennies to help support my websites at no additional cost to you.
Congratulations, indie author!
You’ve finished your book—now all that’s left is to get it out into the world. Unfortunately, for many authors, it’s that step of the process that’s the hardest. Marketing is seen as something to be feared, dreaded, and outsourced as much as possible—a daunting task that will leave you drained.
But fear not! The team at Wise Ink knows a thing or two about how to sell your book. And they’re here to tell you everything.
Buzz is the indie author’s ultimate guide to marketing effectively, inexpensively, and excitingly. Within its pages, you’ll find answers to the questions on every writer’s mind:
• What does it really mean to “market” my book?
• How do I best reach my specific audience?
• What are effective ways to promote my book via social media?
• Do I really need to be a public speaker?
In addition to this, the Wise Ink marketing team has provided sample content calendars, email promotions, a marketing starter kit, and more to ensure you’re prepared to get out there and sell your book.
Marketing doesn’t have to be a horror story! Let Buzz teach you how to take your book to its maximum potential.
Read an excerpt:
Where Do I Begin?
This certainly is the million-dollar question. The truth is that you “began” when you started writing your book, saw that process through to completion, and decided that what you’d written was worthy of being brought into the world. So congratulations! You have already begun.
Now that you can check “writing your book” off the list, your next task is to define what success means to you. Yes, “selling books” is a good goal in general, and yes, it would be nice if Bill Gates recommended your book for his summer reading list. But success as an author is more complicated than simply selling books. For many authors, being successful means leaving a lasting legacy. For others, it means winning awards in the literary world. For authors who have speaking careers, success might mean having something tangible and desirable to sell to their audience. You are guiding this journey; you get to create your goals based on your vision for your life and career.
Doing this work at the beginning will focus your marketing efforts. There are literally thousands of ways to market your book. So begin by asking yourself why your book is important, who you’ve written it for, and how you expect it to impact your audience. If your book isn’t solving a problem or offering something new and different, you’ll have a difficult time marketing it.
Next, envision the next three to five years. Are you hoping to start a business? Become a career writer? Launch an online platform based on your book’s content? Inspire activists? Is your book the start of several books you will write? If so, who are these future books for? Are you growing a robust online business where content is essential to grow and leverage your brand?
When seeking marketing opportunities, revisit your definition of success and measure whether each potential marketing effort helps meet your specific goals. What works for someone else’s book won’t always work for yours. If an opportunity does not advance you toward your vision, skip it.
What are three non-monetary definitions of success that align with your vision for your life, career, and future?
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Buy on Amazon / Wise Ink
My thoughts:
I think that promoting a book and gaining a following is just about as hard as actually writing it, if not harder, especially if you have no experience in the book promotion industry. And sometimes, even if you are familiar with book promotion, you may feel lost trying to decide which approach to take. Or maybe you want to branch out and try some other methods beyond what you have already been trying. How do you know what to try? Where do you even get started?
Courses abound online but can cost hundreds of dollars. Even if they are effective, you may have already spent a ton of money getting your book edited and ready to publish online and/or in print. You can read blog posts, but again, it’s hard to know where to begin. This book seemed to lay out a logical plan of action for you to take with plenty of options to try. And it doesn’t cost nearly as much as some of those courses.
A lot of indie authors are already familiar with the book blog tour, such as this one. But there is so much more to it. And what if you want to get into actual brick-and-mortar stores? How do you do that without having a publisher doing all of that work for you? That’s one thing that I really liked about this book – it goes beyond the online book tour and helps you think outside the box a bit more.
In addition to that, the authors have provided some worksheets and journal-type questions at the end of each section of 50 FAQs. That will help you to really develop a comprehensive plan that works best for you and your book. Some people will want to have a hard copy on hand for writing directly in the book. Using the ebook as a guide, though, still works well and you can reuse the notes for each book that you write.
Finally, each section is broken down into easy-to-read bullet points that really dive into each concept and FAQ so that you aren’t glazing over with a bunch of technical jargon and don’t feel so overwhelmed. I also love how they outline pros and cons of various methods. While they give their own opinions as to what they think works, they really do leave it wide open for each person to make independent decisions about the plan of attack they want to implement.
You’re not going to sit and read this book all at once. You’ll want to take time to let each section digest. You also don’t need to wait until you have a book completely finished before you dive into it. I think it could be helpful to peruse it as you’re writing, because you also get a few tips about that. For example, why are you writing your book? If you don’t know, then you won’t be able to promote it.
I really think this book is a great tool to add to your arsenal as a writer, and I can’t wait to try to implement some of the methods for myself.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
About the authors:
Roseanne Cheng is a former high school English teacher and author of two young adult books, The Take Back of Lincoln Junior High and Edge the Bare Garden, which won the gold medal for young adult fiction at the Writer’s Digest Self Published Book Awards and the Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. She now works as Marketing Director at Wise Ink Creative Publishing where she holds the secondary title of “Author Therapist” and has the pleasure of helping authors create plans to get their work into the world. When she’s not reading a book or practicing yoga, you can probably find her hanging out with her hilarious husband of ten years and their two ridiculously awesome kids. Follow her on Twitter @teachablelit.
Dara Beevas believes that books can save lives, open doors, and build bridges. As co-founder of Wise Ink, she encourages authors to share powerful stories that ignite change, tolerance, and growth. She has been involved in the publishing community for fifteen years, acquiring manuscripts, managing projects, and creating marketing and sales strategies for authors and publishers. She’s helped more than four hundred authors publish their books. She is the author of The Indie Author Revolution and co-author of Social Media Secrets for Authors. When she’s not busy pushing the envelope in this crazy world of publishing and networking with inspiring entrepreneurs, she’s traveling and enjoying her husband Tomme’s delicious Jamaican meals with her daughter Genesis. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @darairene.
Links:
Wise Ink Website / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Pinterest
The authors will be awarding a 30 minute book marketing consultation to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thanks for hosting!