promotional tactics

Whether you’re independent or traditionally published, a good chunk of the promotion for your novels is going to fall to you, and while I live by the philosophy that the best promotion is your next book, I do enjoy some of the little things I get to do as an author to help spread the word about my stories.

One of my favorite tools is Goodreads because I don’t just love to write books, I also love to read them. I love to talk about the books I’m reading, and if I am really into a book and want others to know all about it, Goodreads is a great place to do that. There are communities and forums on Goodreads for every type of reader, which means you can virtually gather with fellow fans, share good conversation and recommendations, and even make new friends.

From an author standpoint, Goodreads has a lot of neat tools to help you connect with your readers.Maybe you already know about them, maybe you don’t, but here are a few of the things I love about being an author over there!

Once you establish yourself as a Goodreads author, you take control of your author page and gain access to some of the perks that come with being a Goodreads Author. You can add author pictures, your biography and links to your online sites. Encourage fans to add you to their favorite authors list. There is an “Ask the Author” feature, which allows fans and readers to submit questions for you to answer and then display on your page. There is an option to either blog on Goodreads, or link to the RSS feed on your blog, so every time you post it goes into your Goodreads feed and draws more attention to you, your work and your website. And, of course, there is a space to add samples and excerpts with the potential to draw others to your existing work. You have the option to add intriguing and/or profound quotes from your books. You can host paperback book giveaways, which often draws hundreds, if not thousands of potential readers to your page. The options are limitless.

This morning I set up the Goodreads page for my upcoming urban fantasy book, Siren so people can add the book to the ‘Want to Read’ shelf. I can start gathering potential fans and readers to the page, improving my visibility and potentially reaching a wider audience for a book that will be released in January.I can offer samples and snippets, post about giveaways I’m hosting and get people excited about the release. Because I’m excited about the release, and I want to share that excitement with others, so having a place beyond my blog and Facebook Author page to do that is a beautiful thing.

As with any promotional effort, it can be a lot of work, but connecting with your readers on the social front in a place where you can talk about the one thing that brought you together–books–is a beautiful thing. Readers love being able to see who you are beyond the pages of your books, and Goodreads is a great place to start.

It’s worth the effort, in my opinion, because one of the things I miss the most about university days is sitting in a classroom full of other people who love words as much as I do and having good discussions about the books we were reading.

I mentioned in my last post that despite being up to my eyelids in NaNoWriMo word count, I am also in the midst of promoting my upcoming urban fantasy book, Siren, which is set to release on January 5, 2015. It’s currently available for pre-order on Amazon, so I’ve been working some new strategies for promotion to try and reach a wider audience before it actually goes live.

What I’m doing is certainly nothing new. A lot of authors I know, both indie and traditionally published, release little images like this, but promotion is often a huge pain, so maybe we don’t always put as much effort into it as we should.

I was really proud of how this turned out, and thought I’d share it with all of you.

Every Tuesday until January, I’m going to be releasing a new teaser image with a little snippet from the book on my website, my Facebook author page and a few other social media haunts I frequent from time to time. Here’s the first one.

I’d love to hear what you think! I’d also be delighted if you took a minute to share a few of your own personal promotion strategies in the comment section below!