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I am a first time author and am looking to build buzz around the launch of my book. Does anyone have any interesting pre launch marketing ideas?- besides the ever popular blog site.

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4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

As part of your launch I would

  • try to get onto a few podcasts like: Automate my small business, Small Business Big Marketing, Tech Nation, Interviews with Innovators, and maybe this week in startups Etc. They are looking for good interviews and this is a great topic to cover.
  • get into newspapers - yes people still read them, and more importantly they are still a "trusted source" that you can point at to say "here is an article about my book". We engaged a journilist to write the article (around $300) and bought an advert in the target publication (around $800) this worked out well for us as that one article netted us at >$500K worth in sales.
  • find speaking gigs, if you can start up and talk, I can't but it works very well for those who can.
  • get some early reviews going on key sites like Amazon.
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up vote 2 down vote

There is very little provided information here to build on. The following variables would be extraordinarily relevant:

  • The type of book
  • The target market

Regardless, here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Write guest blogs articles on other peoples blogs
  • Distribute the first chapter for free on your website
  • Get booked on talk shows (tv and radio)
  • Get reviewed everywhere
  • Attend book publisher events
  • Seed pre-sales with everyone you know.
  • Do a guerrilla publicity stunt (see note below)
  • Identify organizations with an affinity for your subject matter and explore premium opportunities.
  • Write a summary of the concept and distribute for publication to journals
  • Review other people's book in overlapping space for publication

That is all without additional information. . . .

(If your subject matter is politics and you are trying to promote book sales you could run for president. It seems to be working for Cain.)

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up vote 1 down vote

I would suggest crowd sourcing your book unpublished book. I think this web site http://bookhunch.com/ will help with that. If not satisfied with this you could always send your unpublished mock ups to limited/privileged/signed up readers. (like in software industry we conduct a limited beta to get reviews before lunching the whole product commercially.)

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up vote 0 down vote

Share your content with everyone. Make sure you're the first source for the topic. Don't sell, just engage. If they find you interesting and trust your insight then they'll come asking you for more. Participate in related forums, answer sites, comment on blogs, write guess posts, reply to tweets. Be the best source for the knowledge.

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