By Rhonda Campbell

Book marketing tips for authors need a holistic approach. Fact is that social media and email have shortened the time that it takes for readers and authors to connect. Yet, more than a few authors have fallen into the trap of limiting their book marketing efforts to these two tools.

Effective book marketing tips

Joel Friedlander shares at CreateSpace that smart book marketing tips cover both online and offline strategies. Koozai says that key to marketing success if integrating offline and online marketing.

Advantages of implementing online book marketing tips include:

• Reduced printing, postage and distribution costs
• Shorter time to deliver book marketing ROI reports
• Ability to reach larger numbers of readers
• Opportunity to learn about and work with talented graphic designers
• Static book marketing presence (i.e. author website, blog)

Rewards of integrating offline book marketing tips into promotional efforts include:

• Establishing deeply personal relationships with book readers
• Greater reader trust
• Stronger reader contact systems
• Media pro relationships
• Exposure to more writing opportunities
• New skills and sharpened talents

Get out and meet book readers in person and readers can create a lasting impression on the very people who could become your greatest supporters. Media pros may also become friends, running your press releases and feature interviews.

Actionable book marketing tips

So, what are effective book marketing tips? Imagination and courage take the limits off of book marketing tips that lead to increased book sales. Book marketing tips that you could start using today include:

• Contact community colleges and teaching creative writing courses (clear with college administrators that you can sale your books at the end of the courses).
• Telephone or email book club presidents and schedule an appearance at several upcoming book club meetings.
• Reach out to magazine and newspaper editors. Write a daily, weekly or monthly column for the periodicals.
• Design postcards and send via direct mail to book lovers. Some design and print firms allow you to purchase vetted mailing lists from them.
• Attend book and cultural festivals.
• Attend events that are related to your book’s subject matter.
• Bring contact lists with you (ruled paper and a clipboard work well!) when you attend events. Encourage attendees to add their name, street address and email to the contact lists.
• Highlight all of your books in a professionally designed brochure. Mail the brochure to contacts you meet at book festivals, community college classes and public speaking events.
• Create flyers and pass at least 10 flyers out a day. As part of our book marketing tips, places where you could distribute or pass out your flyers include beauty salons, barber shops, cafes, hotels, airports, bookstores, newsstands and gift shops.
• Reach out to radio station managers and/or DJs and schedule online and offline radio interviews.
• Write and distribute a press release once a week or once a month.
• Develop an online email lists and send contacts a weekly or monthly newsletter.
• Build social media pages. Book marketing tips indicate that you could gain more traction from your social media pages if you design and add visually appealing front pages to your accounts.
• Participate in online book club chats.
• Link book author blogs to Amazon.com and other online book retail websites.
• Take out an ad in local newspaper (some community newspapers allow you to run ads for as little as $25 per issue).
• Incorporate SEO strategies in online book marketing tips campaigns.
• Build a book marketing tips campaign. List out which actions you will take and how frequently. For example, you could build a spreadsheet and indicate that you will send one press release, attend one public speaking event, posts images, quotes and updates to social media accounts and participate in one book club meeting once a month.
• Measure the results of your book marketing tips action steps. This way, you will know what to tweak and what to continue doing absent any change.

Effective book marketing tips take authors offline. They also take advantage of online marketing tools. Among these tools are social media, email, newsletters, blogging, press releases and online radio interviews. Offline book marketing tips connect authors and readers in a way that online approaches can’t. Authors who incorporate both approaches into their book marketing campaigns could develop richer relationships with readers, potentially increasing their book sales.