So let’s say you’ve published your book (hooray!) — no doubt with the help of your stellar nonfiction book proposal. Your work is done, right? Not exactly. Your next step is crucial: you need to get people interested enough to actually buy your work. That’s where the marketing efforts comes in.
In the final “Book Publishing” installment of our Profit From Your Passion series, we talked with a variety of publishing experts about how to promote your book, even if you can’t afford to hire a publicist. One of the biggest lessons learned? Don’t stop writing:
There are literally thousands of magazines and websites that regularly hire freelance writers (see our How To Pitch column for leads), and if you’re interested in penning an op-ed or trend piece around one of the topics in your book, it can be a great way to actually get paid to promote your own work. “It’s important to think about not only the topics that the author has the authority to write and that may interest them, but also how it ties in to the book,” says [Dana Kaye of Kaye Publicity]. “If your audience mostly reads a lot of hard news, then you want to be pitching CNN, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times. If your audience reads more lifestyle stuff, then going to women’s lifestyle publications and websites makes sense.”
For more book-marketing tips, including advice on how starting a blog can help, read: 6 Ways to Effectively Market Your Book.
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