*and Get Your Fans To Help YOU
Guest Blogger: Rachelle Gardner
→ You’ve got a book out, and you want to tell your friends and fans how they can help.
→ Or you have friends who are authors, and you want to see them succeed.
→ Or you have favorite authors whom you’ve never even met, yet you still want to help their books find readers.
For all of those situations, here are a few simple things that can make a world of difference to an author:
1. Amazon reviews. If you have positive things to say about a book, go ahead and say them! Don’t be false; don’t rave about a book you don’t really like. But write a good review if you can. Reviews are a powerful tool on Amazon that can make a big difference in an author’s sales.
2. Reviews on other retail sites. Barnes & Noble, the Apple store, Kobo, Smashwords… it helps to leave good reviews on any of the retail sites you visit.
3. Amazon “Like” button. See that little “thumbs up” icon on the Amazon page, right below the title and author? Click it!
4. Vote “up” positive Amazon customer reviews. At the bottom of each review, it asks, “Was this review helpful to you?” If you found a positive review helpful, click yes, and it will help move that one higher on the page.
5. Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. The crucial thing about these social networks is, don’t just post “I loved this book!” (although once wouldn’t hurt). Instead, pick several of your favorite lines from the book and quote them in your tweets and Facebook posts; and use the quotes to create fun Pins on Pinterest. You can get a lot more mileage this way, without becoming repetitive and tiresome.
6. Goodreads. Add the book to your “read” list. Write a review. Rate the book. You can also create lists in Listopia, and include the book in a list. There are public lists that anyone can add books to. In existing lists, you can “vote up” a book by clicking “vote for this book.” All of these things can increase a book’s visibility for potential readers.
7. Offer an endorsement. If you’re an author yourself, or if you have a substantial platform or notoriety in a particular circle, your endorsement could be valuable to the author. You could offer to write one that they could use to help promote the book.
8. Blog about the book. This is an obvious one, but I want to offer a caveat. I see many blog tours and allegedly “book reviewing” blogs that don’t actually offer reviews, but instead they’re simply canned synopses and/or author interviews that are repeated throughout the web. This isn’t helpful and doesn’t offer potential readers anything particularly valuable. If you’re going to blog, try to make it your own.
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hope that helps when you’re trying to figure out how to help out an author you love, or when you’re wondering how to ask your friends to help.
Now, if by any chance you’d like to put any of these tips to work right away, click on the image to check out my just-released e-book, How Do I Decide? Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing. If you like the book, then of course, any and all promotional participation is appreciated!
Read more from agent Rachelle Gardner at Books & Such Literary Agency.
Fiction for a New Age 