5 Creative Ways To Market Your Book You Can Do Today

As authors, we look for ways to get our book in front of people to build awareness. For example, I just decided to release my award winning action/adventure novel, The Samson Effect, as a serial release. It started this week, and each Monday I will release another chapter until the book is fully serialized. I am doing this to increase awareness of the book and ultimately to increase sales. Giving away your book to increase sales? Hmmm.... We shall see.

For a great post by an author and publisher on this, check out 6 Reasons to Blog Your Book by Edwin Crozier. To start reading The Samson Effect, and even enter a contest to win a signed copy of The Samson Effect, check out the serial release blog.


Here are 5 more creative ways to market your book:

1. Conduct an interview with your main character. More than likely, you have been interviewed by newspapers, magazines or blogs about your book. If not, you will probably be before long (especially if you are doing your marketing work). Try conducting an interview with your fictional character. Just slip into his or her voice and do a Q&A session. It gives you a great way to tell people about your book in a creative way. You can post a blog with the interview or find someone else to post it. To see an interview with the three main characters in The Samson Effect, conducted last year, check out Interview with Dr. Thomas Hamilton of The Samson Effect.
   
   
2. Host a trivia game show. Do you have a live event that you're hosting coming up soon, like a blog talk radio program, live chat or a tele-seminar? If so, why not incorporate a trivia game about your book, along the lines of a Jeopardy game? Perhaps you can host a literary scavenger hunt with your book as the playing field and contestants having to find details (i.e., What was the color of Micheal's sedan as it pulled up next to Caleb when the scroll was found?) With a little thought and planning, you can come up with something that everyone can gave fun with. And who wouldn't love a signed copy of your book as a prize?
   
   
3. Become an honorary coauthor of my next book. Here is an interesting idea. Write up a suspenseful scene and stop just as the main character find himself in a seemingly impossible predicament. Then, open up a contest for writers to finish the scene. The winning entry will have their work (or an edited version of it) featured in your book. You will want to make sure that you cover your basis by mentioning that this is an HONORARY award--no royalty splits. The winners name will be featured in an intro/preface, not on the cover. They also are granting you total rights and control over anything that appears in the book. Basically, they are entering for the privilege of having a small literary cameo in your book and nothing more. If you cover all your basis well, this may be an interesting may to promote your book. (A signed release form is your friend).
   
   
4. Start a weekly blog where the characters of your book posts articles. This is a great way for your characters to build a fan base. By committing to no more than a weekly blog post, you can spend a little time each week having some fun without over burdening yourself. This is a blog where you characters can let down their hair and you can reveal more about them than you ever could in a book. Every now and then, you, as the author, can make a cameo on the blog. And when you do, you can ratchet up the tension and comedic value by no always approving of the things they are saying/doing on their blog. If you have fun with it, so will your readers.
   
   
5. Write a page 99 post. Ford Madox Ford, novelist, poet and editor, said, "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." This is also known as the Page 99 Test. Do your own version of the Page 99 Test by writing a blog entry that stays withing the confines of page 99 of your book. You can set of the stage, explain the literary devices used on the page, drill down on the conflict within the page, or take just about any angle you want to take. Bill it as "The Ford Page 99 Test Of (Book Title)". You're dying to reach for your book to see what's on page 99, aren't you? Come on, admit it ;)
   

I hope you have fun with these ideas. I also hope they spark many more ideas for you as you think of creative, low cost ways to promote your book. With a little thought and planning, your marketing possibilities are limitless. Have fun.

Tony Eldridge