I can’t remember where John came across this but he read a promotions strategy once that said to do 5 things every day to promote your book. Well, I’ve never really tried it and I’m not sure he has for an extended period of time either. That’s one of the bad things about releasing books through your own press. We always run out of time and it’s invariably John’s projects that get the short end of the stick when that happens. You would think that it would be easiest to promote his books and one of the good things about him being an author and an editor for the press is that any events we do always have at least one of our authors at them. But it’s somehow harder to promote his books than our other authors.

So I’m starting a new initiative. I’m going to try to do something every day to promote one of John’s books. I will aim for 5 things but if I only get one done that will be good enough. I’ve already found that the task can expand because of the other authors. For instance I spent most of my time doing Amazon Lists and wound up adding a lot of our other titles as well.

Yesterday’s 5 Things
1. mailed a review copy of Discouraging at Best
2. added books to all of my Amazon.com lists (this will count as 2 things since I have so many lists)
3. see above
4. started a new ‘Best of Bizarro’ List
5. searched and clicked titles on Amazon

1 Comment

  1. Anonymous

    Promo Stuff

    I might have told John about this method of promotion! But if I did, I can’t take credit for it: I heard about it from Carlton Mellick III. It’s an essential method, I think. It also helps to keep a dated log in which you itemize everything you do so as not to duplicate yourself. Also, it’s a good idea for all authors to keep an ongoing list of email contacts to whom they can send press releases, updates, events, etc. I’ve been doing that since THE KAFKA EFFEKT came out in 2001 and have 15 or so pages of contacts now.

    D. Harlan Wilson
    http://www.dharlanwilson.com
    http://www.dreampeople.org

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