tips on marketing a self published book

Some ideas at the top of my head:

Go out and build relationships with people (your customers - wherever they may be lurking, potential partners - offline businesses, internet marketers etc).

Spend some money on advertisements - offline or online. Write guest posts on popular blogs, advertise on popular sites, buy solo ads, etc etc.

Give away copies of your book to your potential customers, get their real feedback, get them to write a couple of honest reviews, testimonials, etc.

Eventually you'll want to create a blog where you publish useful information for your target market, brand yourself as an authority, help people, and promote the product from time to time.

As a fellow author, here are a few quick tips:

1. Reach out to magazines and journals in your industry and either write an article for them, or ask to be interviewed.

2. Find blogs/forums in your market and get active by providing valuable advice.

3. Go to MeetUp.com, see who is meeting up to discuss topics around your market - offer to be a speaker.

4. Send a press release to your local paper, tell them your story and what you are trying to achieve.

5. Record a video summary of your book/different chapters/different topics and put them on Youtube, optimising the video for the relevant Youtube taggs and SEO.

These are more than enough steps to get you started

Abul

Hi!
If you can afford it, you should organize a book launch. Invite press and talk about how good your book is!

A great tactic is to look up blogs on the internet that offer book reviews. Begin by commenting on the blogs and offering solid advice to the readers as well as meaningful comments. This will get your name recognized by the blog owner. Include a link back to your Author website (an essential tool for a book author). Check to see if there is a section on the blog with instructions about where to send review copies, if so, offer the blog owner a review copy.

Don't forget about bloggers in the niche you are writing about. Getting book reviews from them would carry a lot of weight as well.

Hope this helps
George

Thanks so much! This is great! I want to print an actual book not an ebook because it's an activity book. Any additional tips will help. Warriors are awesome and full of resources.

Congratulations - welcome to the self-published authors club!

Is your book fiction or non-fiction?'

What we have found works best are:

1. Having your own blog - blogs are great places to create content (which attracts searches and eyeballs), connect with your readers and "warm" them to your style and information, and can act as a great pre-sales lead-in to your Amazon book page...driving traffic to your book will improve your sales substantially. The syndication aspect of blogs spreads the word, various plugins that allow you to bookmark your blog helps cast the net further yet.

2. Issue press releases about your book - one press release submitted across various PR aggregators (free options as well as paid) will not only get attention and some additional publicity offers but will provide backlinks to your website (blog if you followed the recommendation above) and improve your search rankings so more people will find your blog

3. Build an email list by giving away a sample or portion of your work...having the ability to communicate further with your list and market additional books or products to them in the future is well worth the effort

4. Social networking (Twitter, Facebook to start with) - you can begin building these simply by cross-posting your blog posts and get dual use out of your blog writing...this will begin to build a following. You can then proactively build your network by seeking out others by keyword.

Jeff

You did not mentioned that you have a website or not. If you have a website then you need to publish it first in your website. If not then you can publish it in blog. Then it would be easy to market because there are lots of way to market ebook.

Everyone has offered great advice so far, but one thing that's been overlooked is your sales rank on Amazon. People are reluctant to buy a book that has no sales ranking.

What works for me is to buy a copy of my own book about a month after it goes up for sale. It usually starts getting orders from other people immediately after that without any other type of promotion.

Create a website around it, get affiliates, and promote it all across the web using free and paid marketing tactics. Also, it will more than likely get alot of sales on Amazon, but unfortunately... you dont get access to the customer name - Amazon keeps that.

Two words: Video trailer. Video trailers are huge among self published authors...they really are.

You really should build a website at the same time you're working on your book. Build interest in your product. Word of mouth spreads rapidly on the Internet. Blog about what you're doing, and you'll gradually build a following.

I read a blog post from Rachel Rofe today with amazing tips on how to publish a book, google her name and you should reach her easily.

May I add sending out review copies to people in exchange for their feedback on your amazon sales page.

Best of luck!

You can also try finding affiliates to sell the book for you for a commission fee.

You may consider experimenting with many different sources of traffic ... and then keeping the ones which are the most profitable overall. This is a much better formula for long-term profits than simply picking 3 traffic methods and staying with them for life.

Simple enough...

1. Build traffic - can be done through blogs, content syndication, PR, ads, affiliates, etc...
2. Sales funnel - well planned sales funnel where you collect leads, drip information and offers to your customers
3. Sales pages that convert those leads into customers

Do you have a question on one of these areas in particular?

Jeff

1. Build an author platform -- i.e. blog, FB fan page, Twitter and get active on it. Connect with others in your niche through your platform as ask them to review your book and share it. (Michael Hyatt's book "Platform" is an excellent guide on doing this)

2. Reach out to top Amazon reviewers in your niche and send them a copy of your book.

3. Video works. Here's a link to the expert on the subject: Videos for Writers — Videos For Writers

4. Keep writing and adding books to your Amazon presence. Your author page will ultimately be a great selling tool for all your books, and the more books you have, the more people will see your author page.

If you're in the children's niche, click the link in my sig for lots more.....

Wow Alexa, missed that...not unlike the questions still asked often today :-) Says something about our industry I suppose.