“That’s it,” I decided at the start of this year. “Book promotion is critical. So this is the year I figure out how to market and advertise books.”
I wasn’t talking about media releases or even book trailers. My team and I know how to work with those. I wanted to learn how to leverage Amazon and social media in order to maximize exposure and profit.
Figuring that I’d tackle Amazon first, I dove in and immediately realized I’d jumped off a cliff without gauging the depth of the river. I felt severely challenged, but not in a good way. It was like the program I had purchased was talking a language I recognized but couldn’t quite make sense of.
I stayed the course and returned to Amazon-land whenever I had a gap in my work schedule. By the end of three weeks, I had grasped the concepts. I had also realized that it would take years to develop the kind of marketing expertise I wanted to tap for myself and my clients.
I happened to mention my struggles to my writing coach client Barbara Hinske, who has made herself into a book promotion machine. That’s when she told me that in 2018, she had turned over most of her marketing to @KeriBarnum, the executive director of New Shelves Books, one of the country’s top agencies specializing in book sales and marketing. “She’s doing great,” Barb said.
Now, I’ve worked with Barb for a lot of years, so I know how many marketing companies she’s hired and fired within months. “The results they’re getting just aren’t as good as what I can achieve on my own,” she would say. The fact that Keri had upped Barb’s book sales for a couple of years, handling not just one book, but multiple titles, was pretty darn impressive. So I checked her out.
It turns out that Keri has personally created and managed more than 2,000 successful book sales campaigns, several of which have led to USA Today bestsellers. She’s an expert in Amazon and social media ads, and she excels in creating high-impact, profitable ads that clients can duplicate for future use. Translation: She can set up a campaign and let you run with it or run it for you.
So Keri and I got on the phone for a few hours over a couple of weeks, and I realized I had my solution. I didn’t need to become the book promotion expert. I just needed to bring one on board, which is precisely what I did.
In partnership with my self-publishing company Incubation Press, Keri focuses on everything from delineating the target market and positioning of your book to handling online promotion and ads. She also weighs in on everything from titles to covers. After reviewing two of my projects with her as well as more than a dozen books by my clients—some published, others still being written or revised—I’m even more impressed.
So, if you’ve got a book that you’re going to self-publish or that’s already out there, I would highly recommend you reach out for a free consult. I bet you’ll wind up being as excited as I am about your book promotion. And I have to tell you, excited and book promotion are not exactly words I’m in the habit of stringing together. In the meantime, please check out our new book promotion packages at https://incubationpress.com/promotion/.
As always, you can reach me at Linden@IncubationPress.com or Linden @OneStopWritingShop.com.
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