If You Love a Book Author and Want to Help Her ...
36 Ways to Help a Book Author You Love
Eileen Flanagan, author of
The Wisdom to Know the Difference, wrote a blog post about a year ago telling friends of book authors how they could help the author sell more books. You can read her blog post here:
http://bit.ly/9v5TgA.
I thought I'd include some of the highlights of her help list, add my own comments, and provide many more ways that friends can help book authors to sell more books.
If you have a friend who is a book author, please use these suggestions to help them out. If you are a book author, please share this page with your friends (so they can help you out).
1. Buy your friend's book. Encourage other friends to buy the book. Go to your local library or bookstore and encourage them to buy the book. Buy books as gifts.
2. Don't put off buying the book. Don't wait for the holidays to buy the book as a gift. First, the sooner you buy, the more confidence you'll inspire in your friend. Second, media and other decision makers pick up on a book based on the momentum the book inspires. The more sales at the beginning of the book's life, the more attention it will get from key decision makers, the media, and consumers.
3. Where should you buy the book? First choice: the indie bookstore nearest you (that will help your friend get her book into that store on a regular basis). Second choice: a chain bookstore like Borders or Barnes & Noble (if they start selling the book locally, they might buy books for more stores in the chain). Third choice: the author's website (the author makes the most money when selling direct). Fourth choice: buy direct from the author. Fifth choice: Buy from Amazon.com (preferably from the link on the author's website).
4. Recommend your friend's book. If you like the book, recommend it to friends. Blog about it. Tweet a review or mention. Share a note on Facebook. Recommend the book to your book group. Review her book on Amazon.com, BN.com, GoodReads, Library Thing, and other reader social networks.
5. Tell your friend what you like about the book. Provide your friend with support by telling him something you like about his book. Was it a good read? Did it move you to tears or laughter? Did you learn something new?
6. Help your friend get speaking engagements. If your friend is comfortable speaking, recommend your friend to your Rotary Club, Jaycees, church, Friends of the Library, bookseller, garden club, school, etc.
7. Recommend your friend's website. Link to it from your website, blog, Facebook page, etc. Tweet about it. When your friend writes a blog post, link to it. If your friend tweets something great, retweet it. Feature a quote from your friend's book on your website. Or tweet the quote.
8. Create a Wikipedia page for your friend. While authors can't create their own Wikipedia page, other people can. Every book author deserves a Wikipedia page, since a published book grants the author at least a modicum of fame. On the Wikipedia page, feature a short bio, a bibliography, a link to the author's website.
9. Help your friend with the media. If you know of any newspaper editors or reporters, magazine editors, radio producers or hosts, TV show hosts or producers, columnists, bloggers, etc., send them a copy of the book or a note about the author. Or tell your friend about your connection, and introduce her to your contacts.
10. Pray. Prayer always helps. Pray for your friend and his book. If you're not into prayer, ask your favorite tree to help.
11. Ask. Ask your friend how you can help her. You may have some talent, connection, specialized knowledge, etc. that might be just the thing she needs. Or they might just need some of your time to help pack and ship some books or make a few phone calls.
13. Help your friend make some videos for the book. Every author needs a cameraperson, a scriptwriter, a producer. Again, share on YouTube and other
video sharing websites.
14. Look for specialty retailers. As you drive around your own hometown or a nearby larger city, keep on the lookout for specialty retailers that might be interested in selling your friend's books. Cookbooks in gourmet shows, do-it-yourself books in hardware stores, children's books in toy stores, art or history books at museum shops. Make the contacts yourself or pass them on to your friend to follow up.
15. Look for other sales venues. If your friend's book is about retirement, check out accountants, tax lawyers, etc. who might be interested in buying copies to give to their clients. Health books, children's books, and cookbooks might interest doctor and dentist offices. Health clubs might be interested in exercise or diet books. Again, make the contacts yourself or pass them on to your friend to follow up.
16. Suggest catalogs, associations, and other special sales opportunities. If you receive mail order catalogs that feature books like your friend's book, tell her abour the catalog. The same with associations, groups, corporations, etc. that might be interested in buying bulk copies of your friend's book.
17. Help them sell rights. If your friend's novel would make a great movie and you have a connection to an A-list actor or producer who might be interested in making the movie, introduce your friend to your connection. The same with TV producers, audio publishers, agents, etc.
18. Be a mentor. Provide feedback on your friend's marketing ideas, book proposals, news releases, book covers, etc. Share your experience, if you have any, on marketing, writing, publishing, printing, design, etc.
19. Form a mastermind group. Create a group of five or so knowledgeable people who can help your friend with the writing, publishing, or marketing of his or her book. You can meet regularly (at least once a month) live, via phone calls, or via online webinars.
20. Write a testimonial. Or write an introduction to the book. Blurb it (give a great selling quote that can go on the back cover of the book).
21. Social network for your friend. Tweet about your friend's book. Retweet his tweets. Engage in a conversation with her on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Write comments on your friend's blog. Interaction and activity increase any person's visibility on the Internet and the search engines.
22. Champion your friend's book. When you visit bookstores, make sure they have your friend's book in stock. If they do, then put the book face out on the bookshelf.
23. Seed your friend's book. If you can afford to buy a few extra copies, start leaving them around town. Leave a copy on the bus. Donate a copy to the library. Leave a copy in a waiting room. Every additional book out in the world helps to generate exposure for your friend's book while also increasing the word-of-mouth about the book.
24. Host your friend. If your friend wants to do a book tour and you live in a city he wants to visit, offer to put him up at your home. Drive her around town to her media appearances and book events. Pick him up at the airport. Take him back afterwards. Do whatever you can to make their book tour in your town the best ever. You can, of course, also help her set up a tour in your town, with media interviews and author events.
25. Recommend your friend's book to your reading group. If you belong to a reading group, suggest your friend's book as part of your reading program. Or at least tell your reading group about the book.
26. Sell their books at your events. If you speak, do seminars, or display at trade shows or fairs, offer to sell your friend's book along with your book, crafts, tapes, or whatever you sell.
27. Reciprocal link. Set up links from your websites to your friend's book or author website. Better yet, create a special page recommending your friend's book or speeches and then link to his or her website.
28. Interview them. If you host an Internet radio show, podcast, or teleseminar series, interview your friend.
29. Create other products. Help your author friend generate other products to sell. Interview them for a CD or DVD product. Create a joint webinar. Compile a collection of articles written by your friend and other friends.
30. Add their blog to your blogroll. If you write a blog, add your friend's blog to your blogroll. It's a simple thing to do, but another link is added notice to the search engines that the writer's blog is important.
31. Blog about your friend or her book. Post an article about the book, a review of the book, etc.
32. Interview your friend on your blog. An author interview is one of the best ways to introduce a new book author to a wider audience - even if your blog has a small audience. Every added audience provides impetus to growing awareness of the author's website, book, and brand.
33. Host a blog tour visit from your friend. Volunteer to me one of the host blogs on your friend's Mega Blog Tour.
34. Share their book in the literary social media such as Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing.
35. Help out on Amazon.com. Amazon is the big kahuna of book sellers, especially when it comes to ebooks, so helping an author get found on there can give them a big boost.
You can certainly do these things on other bookstore sites as well (nothing against copying and pasting a review, for example), but Amazon tends to have more cool features to help an author get found.
Here's the list (any one of these things can help):
- Write a review on Amazon, even if the book already has quite a few and/or you've reviewed it elsewhere. There's evidence that ratings and reviews factor into the Amazon algorithms that decide which books are promoted on the site (i.e. certain books are recommended to customers who bought books in similar genres). If reviewing isn't your bag, don't worry about writing paragraphs-long in-depth studies of the book; maybe you could just pen a few sentences with a couple of specifics about why you liked the book.
- Tag the book with genre-appropriate labels (i.e. thriller, steampunk, paranormal romance). You don't have to leave a review to do this; you just need an account at Amazon. A combination of the right tags and a good sales ranking can make a book come up when customers search for that type of story on Amazon.
- Give the book a thumbs up. This takes less than a second and probably doesn't do much, but it may play into Amazon's algorithms to a lesser extent than reviews/ratings.
- Make a Listmania List and add your favorite authors’ books to it. This creates another avenue for new readers to find books. It's better to create lists around similar types of books (i.e. genres or sub-genres) than to do a smorgasbord, and consider titling it something description so folks will be more inclined to check it out, ie. “Fun heroic fantasy ebooks for $5 or less.”
- If you have a Kindle, highlight and share some wise or fun quotations from the boo. If enough people share their highlights, they’ll show up at the bottom of a book’s page.
The above Amazon.com suggestions are excerpted from an original blog post by
Lindsay Buroker.
36. Buy your friend a copy of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. Okay, this is a little selfish on my part, but your friend will love the gift and gain incredible value from reading the book and acting on all the ideas in the book.
Roughly chop the cucumbers, bell peppers,
tomatoes, and red onions. Put each vegetable (one at a time!) into a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse
until it is coarsely chopped, then put into large bowl before adding next
ingredient. Do not over process!
