Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books with Pat Bertram

Book Marketing Buzz: Book Promotion & Publicity Tips: How to Promote Your Books is a continuing series to help authors learn how to promote their books. If you would like to be a guest blogger for our book promotion and publicity series, click here.

Today’s guest blogger is Pat Bertram, author of Daughter Am I, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and More Deaths Than One.

Guest Post:

Writing a book was hard. Editing it was harder, and finding a publisher even harder. Waiting for it to be released after acceptance was murderous, and now promoting the book is . . .

Ha! Bet you thought I was going to say it was hardest of all — most authors find promoting to be an arduous task, but not me. I enjoy it. What’s not to like? I get to meet wonderful people and have wonderful conversations. I get to write articles about anything I want and post them all over the internet. And I get to party.

My books are still so new that they haven’t developed momentum, but I do believe that both blogging and social networking are incredible tools for book promotion. Generally, I make sure that I post an article to my blog three or four times a week, but lately I’ve been posting every day to promote my Daughter Am I blog tour. I stop by Facebook every day and Goodreads almost every day to see what’s going on and to update my status. I participate in discussions. I host a live discussion about writing and the writing life every Thursday at 9:00pm ET on Gather.com. You can find me at the featured article on the No Whine, Just Champagne group page: http://nowhine.gather.com Stop by any Thursday. I’d love to hear from you!

Many people have told me recently that they admire my ability to promote myself without being obnoxious, but the truth is, I learned how to do it from other authors. Or rather I learned how not to do it from them. Sometimes I get dozens of emails in a day from authors asking me to buy their books. I don’t read such emails. Do you? I didn’t think so. That’s why I don’t send them. Why waste the effort on something that so many people find dreary?

If you’re on Facebook (and of course you are), I’m sure you get several event invitations every day. An unknown author has a book released. An unknown author is guest blogging. An unknown author is giving away a book. Do you respond to such anonymous events? Probably not. You want fun. And so do your potential readers. So, when I do an event, I make sure it’s an event. A party.

I’ve thrown three successful online parties so far. My “HALLELUJAH! MY NOVELS HAVE FINALLY BEEN PUBLISHED! LET’SPARTY!” party lasted a week and was full of games, gifts, videos, puzzles. Sure it took time to set it up, but it was fun for people. Or at least it gave the illusion of fun, which is the same thing when it comes to the Internet.

In May, I threw a “PAT BERTRAM IS TWO YEARS OLD TODAY” party to celebrate the second birthday of my online persona. The idea was just quirky enough that it drew attention. I don’t know that I sold any books because of it, but a lot more people are aware of me now, and that’s a good beginning.

Most recently I celebrated the release of my third novel with a “DAUGHTER AM I HAS FINALLY BEEN PUBLISHED! LET’S PARTY!!” party.

I still have a long way to go before I figure out how to turn networking connections into customers, but meantime, I am meeting some incredible people, and I am having fun. I hope you are, too.

Pat Bertram is a native of Colorado and a lifelong resident. When the traditional publishers stopped publishing her favorite type of book — character and story driven novels that can’t easily be slotted into a genre — she decided to write her own. Daughter Am I is Bertram’s third novel to be published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Also available are More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

Website: http://patbertram.com
Blog: http://ptbertram.wordpress.com
Blog: http://marketingfloozy.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/patbertram
Facebook: http://www.new.facebook.com/patbertram

Posted in Book Marketing Buzz Guest Authors Tagged: book marketing, book promotions, Daughter Am I, online book promotion, Pat Beatram