Marketing 101 - Product Part 3

 Stephen King. J.K. Rowling. Stephanie Meyer Agatha Christie, Philip K Dick.

When you hear these names you immediately have an image of the type of writing they do. You immediately remember if you enjoyed their writing or not.

I’ve heard several books recently by fellow twitter writers. Some were very enjoyable (notably Dead of Eve by Pam Godwin and Light of the Moon by David James. As great as these books are the authors are not household names. Yet.

Young Stephen King

So how did the above authors become household names? If I’m honest, movies. And lots of sales.

How do you brand yourself without multi-million dollar movie deals?

David James (Light of the Moon)

Social marketing can help. Reach out to your existing and potential fans on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etc. And please, do not just try to pimp out your book unless you are aiming to be Vince hawking the Shamwow. Interact with people. That means at least pretend you care more about them than you care about yourself. Simple, short, sincere messages of encouragement or whit will get you much more followers than repeating “Buy my book” every hour on the hour. Proof? I gained over 400 followers in the 3 weeks without by saying “Hi, I like your website”. And that is after pruning away all the face twitter accounts.

Be specific. Find something you like about their work. If you can’t find anything you really like, say nothing. Silence is better than lying.

And you actually have to get your work out there. If no one reads your work you have no brand. I would recommend a bit of branding before the work gets out there so you have a base. That’s what I’m doing. My first book will be published next year, but I’m acting as if it is already published right now.

If your book is already published, support your fan base. Be nice to them. Respond to every comment, message, tweet or email possible. The more grateful you are (and appear) the more they will continue to follow you.

BOOKS BY M JOSEPH MURPHY:

Amazon: M Joseph Murphy on Amazon: Paperback and ebook
Smashwords: M Joseph Murphy Author Page on Smashwords
Kobo: M Joseph Murphy Books on Kobo