ROBIN LEIGH MORGAN'S THURSDAY MARKETING/PROMOTION IDEA # 3

One way of getting some attention regarding your book is to get something written about yourself in a newspaper. It is here where those of you who live in a town, especially a small town, have an advantage of us city dwellers. Small town newspapers tend to love to write about their residents, and even more so when it comes to revealing a neighbor has published a book.

The downside of this is usually the why didn’t you tell me about your publishing a book before, I thought we were friends. Most times, I believe, this would have been caused by the other individual’s sheer jealousy, so be prepared.

One of the best ways to get this done is to have this infoation released in conjunction with you doing a book signing at the town’s public library where you’ll be donating a portion of each sale to the library.

If your book has been published by a publishing house contact them to see if they would be interested in working with you on this endeavor. Otherwise, skip the book signing and just allow your local newspaper to write an article about you.

If you’re self-published, like most of us are set-up your own timetable.  Contact your library, and if they agree to your book signing, tell them not to say anything until you’re ready to do it. This will allow you time to order your books.

Remember, if you’re selling copies of your book, you’ll need to collect sales tax on each sale.  To make it easier on yourself, and to avoid having to handle coins, raise the price to the next whole dollar and divide by your tax rate. Now sell the book at this new price and add back in the sales tax

Example:

List Price: $ 9.95

Whole Dollar: $ 10.00
Divide by Tax Rate: 7.50 %  [$10.00/1.0750] = $ 9.30

Selling Price: $9.30

Sales Tax 7.50 %  = $ 0.6975
Total:  $ 9.9975  or $ 10.00

NOTE :

You’ll need to check with your state’s tax laws regarding this matter before proceeding.

If you’re self-published like I am, then you’ve already learned writing the book was the easy part. Now you’ve got to promote/market it, and you’ll have a lot of hurdles you’ll have to jump to over and to make sure you’re doing it right; which is why I’ve decided to share some maketing/promotional ideas I’ve picked up along the way.