The #1 Rule

Don’t repeat work. Make every interaction count. Convert book promotion into career promotion. Be organized, be prepared, and kick ass!

Homework Assignments

Self-Assessment – Make Four Lists

• Things I’m Already Great At
• Things I’m Not Great At
• Things I Love To Do
• Things I Hate To Do

Your promotional plan should maximize your existing skill set AND the things you enjoy enough to practice until you are great at them.

Sometimes we need to do things we’re bad at, or that we hate to do. This is where you save your money and outsource! 

Spend your time wisely.

Get Organized

Time is precious. Save yours by doing the following:

• Make sure you have a file structure that makes sense & lets you easily find everything you need.
• Save all the metadata for each book in one easy to find place.
• Store all the metadata for all the books in a series in one easy to find place.
• Make a resources file for each book and make it easy to find links to vendors, your cover, any graphics you have. Make multiple sizes of each book cover in advance.
• Convert book resources to career resources: when you contact someone for a blog tour or an ARC, ask them if you can add them to a permanent list and contact them about future ARCs/opportunities. Only add people who say yes.

Choose Your Fighters

There are a million places to get distracted on the internet. You know your strengths & you’re getting organized. Now decide where you’re going to battle.

• Make sure you have the basics for a website: list of your books in series order, links to buy them, information on how to join your newsletter.
• Make sure you have a newsletter and commit to sending out an email every time you have a new release.
• Find your social media home and commit to it. Let go of the ones you hate—people can probably tell you hate them. Give yourself permission to toss them in the garbage.

Further Reading