Book Launch Lesson #1 from an Online Book Launch Trek with Denise Cassino

I am experimenting with an old, trusted friend, Denise Cassino.

And it occurred to me that if I blogged about this book marketing experiment I am doing with her as I went, my blog vistors could learn from the trek I am taking. To do it themselves or to enlist Denise's help.

So this is the first in what I--the marketing expert...Ahem!...am learning from another marketing expert as we work toward the launch of my newest book.

I have referred to the book in this blog infrequently because A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques (www.budurl.com/RetailersGuide) is really aimed at retailers more than authors. Though authors with published books really are retailers when it comes to accruing new readers. Readers, after all, are your end-customer. Selling to the end-using customers is the definition of retail, folks! Further, one of the things the book talks about is how authors can do signings, workshops, etc. in retail stores of all kinds. (-:

In fact, author Shannon Yarbrough says, "I jumped at the chance to review A Retailer's Guide only because I knew I'd find something I could use toward my own book marketing and indeed I did."

Now I am researching how to make Amazon help with a book launch so that I can pass what I learn from a strategic approach to that kind of promotion on to you. I'm working with Denise Cassino (dencassino@gmail.com) who helps launch products (yes, another word you won't like applying to your book but you book is a product!). And I'll be asking you in little baby steps to help me out. You'll benefit, of course, by participating in the steps as needed and,later, when I send you a special edition of my newsletter, Sharing with Writers , on propelling sales on Amazon.

I used to be a bit skeptical of the "bestselling-on-Amazon" approaches to marketing; many smacked of misleading tactics. Denise's approach does not. It's more like authors recommending books (or products) to others, recommending books and products they can believe in. It's like word-of-mouth with Amazon acting as the measurere, if you will.

We all know that word-of-mouth is a wonderful marketing tool. You tell the guy at the supermarket that you love a book, he believes you, buys it and loves it and then tells someone else. Anyway, I'm excited about sharing this with you, You learn as I learn.

As an example, today was my day for narrowing down the tags (or keywords) I establish for my books on Amazon. You can do that, too, even if you aren't your own publisher. The ones I chose are "Product Management" and "Direct Marketing." Denise tells me I can add more later but right now, I need those to take hold and soar on Amazon.

I chose those categories because they were the ones that described my book but had the fewest competing titles on Amazon.

The next step is to ask you to go to my page and click three times. Now, that won't take you long, I promise.

Here are the clicks: You click one each on the tags "Product Management" and "Direct Marketing." You find the place to do this under "Tags Customers Associate with This Product." Then if you feel comfortable doing it, scroll a bit more an click on the fifth star where it says to Rate This Item to Improve Your Recommendations.

The benefits to you? The follow-along process in this blog (information will also be in my newsletter). I'm even thinking about writing a f r ^ ^ booklet that I'll publish when I'm done. You can learn about that (if and when) on this blog or in my newsletter.

One does learn more by doing. In fact, you can begin to work this as I give you more information, one step at a time.

So, won't you help? Go to http://www.budurl.com/RetailersGuide and follow the steps above. Just keep scrolling to the specific sections. These sections are right above the "Customer Reviews" so if you get to the reviews, you've scrolled too far.


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.