The Key to Book Promotion Success: Have a Plan

One of the great things about online book promotion is that there are so many options. Websites, reciprocal linking, SEO, virtual book tours, blogging, podcasting, RSS, social networking, multimedia—so many different ways to market your book, each with its own spin and variations. If you’re like me, you keep a list of all the different ideas you think of to promote your books. Sometimes, it’s a very long list. So long that it can be hard to get going or know where to start. And so the list sits idle, with maybe a checkmark here or there, but essentally uncompleted.

To avoid being overwhelmed with the many options for promoting your book online, it’s important to have a plan. Go through your list of ideas and prioritize them. Or, if you’re looking for new ideas and how to execute them, check out my book The Web-Savvy Writer: Book Promotion with a High-Tech Twist. From your prioritized list, create a monthly plan for online book promotion (or an annual plan, if you’re really ambitious). Schedule in time to enter blog posts, update your website, create that podcast, and more. Break larger promotion projects into chunks that you can list separately.

By having a plan, you’ll get much farther in your online promotion efforts—and reach your profit goals that much faster.