It's Never Too Late to Promote Your Backlist Books!

I hope you aren’t stuck in the last millennium. In those days it was a given that books were dead after ninety days.

This is the Internet age and you can now reach millions of people with minimal effort to keep old books—even really old books—alive. Rev up your marketing machine. Maybe your new readers aren’t aware of your old titles. Reissue the old one (but don’t call it a second edition!) even though it will have new pages in the backmatter that list all your titles with links and maybe an excerpt from your new book to encourage readers to buy the new one, too.

Here are some other ideas for promoting your old books:  

• You could also offer an old one for 99 cents when they buy your new book.
• Or offer it free to your Goodreads or Facebook customers in return for a review (remember they’ll see your ad in the backmatter for your newest book and maybe buy that one, too!).
• Bundle your new book with an old one at a discounted price that is less than the new one alone and bill it “Great reading for you and for a friend for less than it would cost for just one book.” 

If you have other ideas about how to promote backlist books (the ones you've published yourself or the ones that were traditionally published) , send it to me at HoJoNews@AOL.com with your name, your old book’s title, and its buy link and I’ll publish it as a tip in this blog and perhaps its companion SharingwithWriters  newsletter, too.

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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 how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including 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. 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 .