Who Sees Your Book Promotion?

In an age where those bookstores are not as abundant as they were back in the early 2000's, authors now need to rely on alternative methods for getting the news out about their latest release. But the real question is, who is actually seeing any of your promotions?

Let's start with social media. If you are on any of these platforms, you have to remember that people are not just "stumbling " across your information. For any of these readers to see your announcements, they have to follow your site. I know this sounds really basic, but we often forget that. I was speaking with another author about just this and she noted that it seemed like the only people following her posts or commenting on her posts were the other authors in the group. Probably not that effective?

Now, let's talk about Blogs and Vlogs. The same think happens here. The only people who would see anything you do are people who even know who you are or how to find you. Without building up that clientele,  the work you do is simply not making any forward progress.

OK, so if this is not working, how about those reviews you get? You got it. The same thing happens here. Unless the reader follows that book reviewer, or they follow your social media, the news is not going to get out to people.

Now what?

This is where you need to really utilize your friends and your personal network. Many authors have what they like to call, their "Street Teams." These are people who do follow the author, but they really work on extending that network for you. When you post something, they immediately launch into sending that information out to everyone they know.

This group also does another important task. If they read your book and love it, they immediately get on all of the "BIG" sites like GOOD READS, AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE and the like and post those great reviews.

The other thing many of these people do is to utilize common "Hashtags" that might draw in readers. For example, around conference time, when I post something about submissions, workshops, pitch appointments, etc, I make sure to use the current RWA conference hashtag. The idea is to tap into those links.

Is there any easy solution to this? Not really! To be successful though, you have to be creative, think outside of the box and really push yourself.

I would love to hear what some of your are doing? Let me know. But please, don't just use this blog post to advertise. I promise, I will delete that advertising.