Marketing your book with an on-line newsletter (part 2)

An on-line newsletter is an effective marketing tool for many products, but it’s especially effective for marketing your book. Here is how to go about designing, developing, and distributing your newsletter:

1. Determine the topic of your newsletter and a good name for it. Just because you are a writer, your newsletter doesn’t need to be about writing. In fact, it’s better if it’s not. There are only a limited number of writers who will buy your book. Instead, make your newsletter about a broad topic related to the book. That way, you will attract potential customers. As writers, it is only natural to want to attract our writer friends to our book, but your real market is with those who are a fan of the topic. So if your book is about turtles, find people passionate about turtles.

2. Once you have determined the topic of your newsletter, begin developing a list of subjects that will become the different sections of your newsletter. For example, since you are writing a book about turtles, you could have your newsletter about turtles as well. Or, you could make the topic of your newsletter larger (conservation, for instance) than the topic of your book in order to make room for future books on similar topics. Anyway, for within the newsletter, you might have a general conservation section (where you put in short pieces about what is currently happening in the world of turtle conservation), you might have an events section (where you list local and national events, TV shows, movies, etc., about turtles), and you could have a section about your current activities (where you would list your activities in turtle conservation as well as how you are doing on the book).

3. Email or blog. You can distribute your newsletter by email or make it into a blog and distribute an email when you have posted a new newsletter. The choice is yours. The important part is to provide information that is entertaining and useful to your readers. Pack it with information that will convince them that you are a good writer and will make them want to hang around for the publication of your book.

4. Don’t make the newsletter about selling your book. Instead, make it about providing your readers with information. The sales will take care of themselves. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore promoting your book when it’s about ready for publication and it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put promotions in your newsletter for pre-publication sales or special sales after the book has been out a while. You should do all of those things but do them tastefully. Your readers will look forward to your newsletters if they know that it is truly a newsletter and not just another hard sell.

5. Be sure to list in the newsletter the launch of your book and book signing events. Your readers will want to keep up with you.

6. Give your readers a means to sign up for notification that the latest newsletter is out. You’ll want to build a distribution list. In the newsletter, ask your readers to send it on to others who might be interested and have new readers email you to be added to the distribution list. Through this, the list will grow and you will have a natural audience for marketing your book.

Marketing your book while you write it (part 1)

It's never too early to start gathering fans for your writing and your upcoming book. Your friends and family, of course, will be instant fans. I'm not talking about them. I am talking about creating a buzz for your topic with the people who have a natural interest in it.

Here are some ways to get started:

1. Identify your topic and related subjects. For example, if you're a non-fiction writer and writing a book about sea turtles, then that's your topic. Related subjects might be: marine life, oceans, sailing, cruising, beaches, dolphins, whale watching, etc. Make a list of every subject you can think of related to your topic.

If you are writing a novel, do the same. Identify the main topic of your book. It might be as broad as the name of the genre or the theme of the book. Then make a list of subjects related to your book. For example, if you are writing a murder mystery where the murder occurs in a hospital, some of your subjects might be: nurses, emergency room, medical mysteries, etc. Save your list.

2. Create a blog centered on your topic. Tell those who follow your blog about the book you are writing in an occasional post. Don’t use the majority of your posts to push your book however. Instead, use most of your posts to just talk about interesting facets of your topic and its subjects. Your point here is to encourage a conversation about a like-interest and to foster a connection with folks who share your interest. When you're ready to publish your book, they may turn into customers, but for now, you're just creating a connection.

3. Writing and posting your blog entry is not enough. It's important to touch base with people who are interested in your topic. Do this by establishing a Twitter site about your topic and start following people who are interested in your topic and related subjects. If you make your tweets interesting, valuable and entertaining, those people will follow you back. When you post a blog entry, tweet the URL to your followers and tell them what you’ve posted. For example, for this blog entry, I tweeted: Just posted "Marketing your book while you write it" to http://www.loubelcher.com/blog/

4. In addition, join social media groups, such as Facebook, My Space, or ones related to your topic at ning.com to find people who are interested in your topic and subjects.

Watch for part 2: Marketing through on-line newsletters.