Grassroots Book Marketing from the Ground Level
Are you an author? Are you trying to sell your books. I have some unconventional, hands-on tips for you today that come directly from our success at the Tucson Festival of Books. Author Scott D. Roberts whose book Vengeance is Now was being sold from the Author Pavilion - West joined me. We worked as a team to sell his book. All of the authors, who sold virtually nothing that day, all looked at Scott in amazement as he had lines of readers buying his book. Now you want to know what we did that the others didn't do? Here you go...
One-Sheet Flyers: We made up one-sheets with reviewer quotes and Pavilion-signing information. Then we did two critical things with those one-sheets: 1) Scott and I got in line for the Scott Turreau signing (author of books like Presumed Innocent, which is also a thriller and in the same genre as Vengeance). Two important points: 1. the people in that particular line like thrillers (obviously) and 2. we had a captive audience of readers who were bored standing in line. Of course it was interesting talking to the author. Several of them did indeed show up at the booth to get signed copies of Vengeance.
Passed out flyers right before and during the signing. Right before Scott went to sign I began asking people if they liked thrillers. If they said "yes" I gave them a flyer and talked about the book and where to find Scott. Next when Scott began signing at his table I went out in front in the aisle and began passing out flyers to readers. I did two important things: 1. asked if they liked thrillers and 2. found the hook to reel them into the booth to get the book.
How do you find "the hook"? The hook is that "line" or "tagline" that gets people excited. In Scott's case the hook was: You'll never guess the killer. Watch the readers' responses. Do they get excited and intrigued? If so, that is the hook. Once I started pulling people in, the lines formed, and guess what that did? It created more intrigue: why is there a line for that author? And more people got intrigued.
Gross results? Major sales while other authors looked on and wondered why their books weren't selling. We had a lot of comments and questions about what we did. So if you're an author, those are the answers. Use these tips for your next sales activity.
Want to hire 3L Publishing to get you these kinds of sales results? Give us a call at 916-300-8012 or send an email to info@3LPublishing.com. We are running a marketing special in the month of March, ask us about it. For more information, visit www.3LPublishing.com.
One-Sheet Flyers: We made up one-sheets with reviewer quotes and Pavilion-signing information. Then we did two critical things with those one-sheets: 1) Scott and I got in line for the Scott Turreau signing (author of books like Presumed Innocent, which is also a thriller and in the same genre as Vengeance). Two important points: 1. the people in that particular line like thrillers (obviously) and 2. we had a captive audience of readers who were bored standing in line. Of course it was interesting talking to the author. Several of them did indeed show up at the booth to get signed copies of Vengeance.
Passed out flyers right before and during the signing. Right before Scott went to sign I began asking people if they liked thrillers. If they said "yes" I gave them a flyer and talked about the book and where to find Scott. Next when Scott began signing at his table I went out in front in the aisle and began passing out flyers to readers. I did two important things: 1. asked if they liked thrillers and 2. found the hook to reel them into the booth to get the book.
How do you find "the hook"? The hook is that "line" or "tagline" that gets people excited. In Scott's case the hook was: You'll never guess the killer. Watch the readers' responses. Do they get excited and intrigued? If so, that is the hook. Once I started pulling people in, the lines formed, and guess what that did? It created more intrigue: why is there a line for that author? And more people got intrigued.
Gross results? Major sales while other authors looked on and wondered why their books weren't selling. We had a lot of comments and questions about what we did. So if you're an author, those are the answers. Use these tips for your next sales activity.
Want to hire 3L Publishing to get you these kinds of sales results? Give us a call at 916-300-8012 or send an email to info@3LPublishing.com. We are running a marketing special in the month of March, ask us about it. For more information, visit www.3LPublishing.com.
Comments
Post a Comment