Book Marketing with Bloggers

A great way to get some exposure and "talk" about your book is to identify bloggers who would be passionate about it. I have done this quite a bit for Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage Your Chronically Ill Friends. This is pocket-size, 94-page book, so the expense of giving them the actual book wasn't a significant investment. If you're limited in how many books you can afford to give away, you can send it to them as a document.

Note: As a blogger and editor, however, I can tell you I get about a dozen books a week to review. Those that are actual books that I can take with me to McDonald's playground or to a waiting room always receive priority. I know I can print out the others, but how many people are going to use up their ink on printing out 250 pages? Not me!

If you do send an electronic copy, be sure to add some kind of incentive to read it, such as a free gift or mention of the review and the link to their web site to your entire newsletter list of subscribers.

1. I found bloggers who would be most interested by reviewing the topics that come through from bloggers in my Google Alerts each day.
2. I searched technorati.com and the individual blogging directories
3. I did a search on my name and organization to see who had already blogged about us or one of our events.
4. I posted on my "bulletin board" at MySpace for people who were interested in a free copy to contact me.
5. I invited everyone to let anyone else know who may be interested in blogging about it or reviewing it, such as columnists, or especially editors of newsletters and magazines.

Lastly, I did this big pitch to bloggers right before National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, which we sponsor. The fact that there was an event gave the blogger some motivation to finish the review early or at least mention the book while posting about the event.

Remember not to do a strong "pitch" asking for a book review. Rather tell the blogger, based on their topics and style, you thought they may be interested in your book. You can also offer to email them 10-20 pages so they can see if they want to request the boook.

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Lisa and Joel Copen have a variety of experience in founding a nonprofit that receieves over 80,000 visitors per month, music and sound editing, web design, and book marketing and publishing. They look forward to your ideas to make the series of ebooks on book promotion a practical tool to help you sell more books!