How to use Pinterest to promote your book

You’ve heard of it. You’ve looked at it. You may have even played with it and thrown around the term “repin” with your close friends. You know it’s powerful, and you want to engage with it to promote your book, but you don’t know how.

Look no further.

At its core, Pinterest is a virtual style-board – a place to collect and share images relating to your personal interests. At a basic level, people use Pinterest to post and share images and content linking back to an original source. Because there are millions of people using Pinterest, the potential to have your content shared is enormous, making it an effective means for book promotion.

How to Use Pinterest as an Author

The ultimate goal of a Pinterest account is to have people follow your boards and repin your pins, thereby promoting your book and you as an author. To encourage this, it’s important to have a strategy and stick to a plan. Though there are countless ways to use Pinterest; the following tips will help you establish a foundation for a promotion strategy that is adjustable yet effective:

Create Effective Boards

Boards are the cornerstone of Pinterest accounts. Having effective boards full of high-quality images that link back to your website are necessary to drive traffic to your website. Some boards to consider having as an author are:

• Character Boards – Create a board full of images relating to or associated with your characters. It can include images of the characters (or what they look like), items they’d use, things they’d enjoy, and so on.
• Photo of Places – Does your book take place in a distant land? Share photos of the landscape, monuments or significant places in your story.
• Inspirational Quotes/Writing Tips – These are some of the most frequently repined images on Pinterest.
• “My Books” Board – Not everyone who comes across your pins will recognize immediately that you’re an author. It’s important to have a board specifically for your books or published works.

Keep in mind how you label or tag an image. Make sure you’re accurately describing the image and using relevant hashtags or keyword terms.

Use Original Content

While it’s appropriate to repin the pins of others, and to pull images from different places online, the only way a person will be directed back to your website (other than through the link in your profile) is if they click on an image and are directed to your blog. Make sure when you pin your photo, illustration or stock image, it is pinned from your website.

Share Boards through Social Media

Now that you have your boards created and full of unique content linking back to your website, it’s time to share the images through social media. Tweeting direct links to new pins and updating your Facebook status with Pinterest updates ensures that your audience knows about and can access your Pinterest account through whichever medium serves them best.

Invite Audience Participation

Some of the best ways to get people to interact with your Pinterest account and book is by having them interact with your boards. Hosting a contest, having a give-away, or asking your readers for suggestions on boards (through your blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts) gives incentive for sharing and engaging with your book.

There is no one way to use Pinterest; the amount of success you have is directly related to how much effort you put into your boards. Play around and try things out. Have a sure-fire tip? Share it and let us know how you use Pinterest as an author.

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Phase 2 of a successful book marketing campaign: Once you submit your manuscript.

The Indie Book Writers Blog | Self Publishing | Get Published

In an earlier post, I introduced the idea that there are three phases of a successful marketing campaign. The first phase is Before You Submit Your Manuscript. Phase 2 is Once You Submit Your Manuscript. This is when you truly begin to prepare the groundwork for the launch of your book.

Here are the key things to focus on during this critical phase.

• DEVELOP YOUR BOOK’S MEDIA “HOOK.”
Sometimes called the “elevator pitch,” this is the two-minute speech you would give to get media outlets
interested in featuring your book. Above all, make sure your pitch is brief, clear and unique. Don’t just talk about your book, but make sure you talk about the topic of your book in your pitch.

• PLAN YOUR BOOK LAUNCH EVENT
One of the key elements of your marketing plan should be a book launch party. This is a way to generate

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The 3 phases of a successful book marketing campaign

The Indie Book Writers Blog | Self Publishing | Get Published

Marketing your book can be as fun and creative as the actual process of writing a book — if you have the right
plan. In fact, developing a marketing plan is one of the most important tasks you need to complete in order to promote
your book successfully.

As with any good book, a good marketing plan has an effective beginning, an engaging middle and a powerful end. Think about it in three phases:

PHASE ONE: Before You Submit Your Manuscript

PHASE TWO: Once You Submit Your Manuscript

PHASE THREE: After Your Book Is Available for Sale

Over the course of the next three posts I am going to address some key things to think about during each of these phases to help you create the most successful marketing plan you can.

PHASE ONE: Before You Submit Your Manuscript

The time to start thinking about your marketing plan is before…

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How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish a Book?

The way I see it self-publishing a book is much like planning and launching a business. It is very easy to spend way more than you set out to. A good self-publishing plan can help you keep your spending in check and keep your priorities where they should be. Here is a breakdown of some of the costs you can expect when self-publishing:

Beta Readers: Free – $200. You will need some willing participants besides your friends and family who will give you their honest opinion before you start the process of turning manuscript into book.

Cover Design: $200 – $1000. Unless you have graphic design experience, I wouldn’t attempt this as a DIY. I pass up so many self-pub’d books due to poor cover design.

*Proof Reader and Editor: $500 – $3000. This is a critical step! There is nothing worse than a poorly edited book. Save lots of $$ here if you happen to have a close relationship with someone who is an editor or an editor that is willing to barter with you.

ISBN: Free – $250. ISBNs are free in Canada, but must be purchased in the US. The cost is $125 for 1 ISBN or $250 for 10. You will most likely need an ISBN for your ebook and a separate one for your paper copy (Kindle books do not use ISBNs). If you are planning on releasing multiple versions or titles 10 is the way to go. Most self-publishing companies also offer a free ISBN, but they will be listed as your publisher. With your own ISBN you can choose your own publishing company name.

Book Layout and Formatting: $150 – $350. Depending on the shape of your manuscript, the intricacies of your design ideas and how many changes you need to make after submitting to the designer.

Author Photo: $200 – $700. If you know someone who is a photographer, great, save some money here! While a professional author photo is not required to publish a book it sure makes the back cover  look great and you will need one for putting together your media kit for marketing the book down the road.

Book Listing: $25 – $300. Depending on your self-pub service they may charge a fee for your book to be made available for book sellers and online retailers.

Ebook Conversion: Free – $200. With some dedication and technical knowledge you can do this one yourself in Microsoft word. Otherwise choose a service provider that can format your ebook for you.

Book Printing: You don’t actually have to order your own books beyond your review copy but I highly recommend having some to send to reviewers and media. It’s also a good idea to include book parties in your marketing plan, and you should definitely have books on hand to sell for those. These costs vary greatly but as a basic idea you can view how Createspace determines cost per copy. You can also view aCreatespace royalty calculator.

Proof Copy: $20 – $50.  Once all your files are submitted you will want a copy to go over to double and triple check for errors. You may want extra copies to enlist other to put their eyes on it to see things you may have missed.

Book Marketing and PR: $50-$20000. There are a vast amount of things you can spend money on when marketing your book. A few examples: review copies $5-$10, author website and hosting $60 – $600,  book Trailer Free – $800, materials like bookmarks, postcards etc. $50+, advertisements $20+, online marketing plan $200+. A great way to keep these costs down and give your book a great head start is to start building up social media followers at least a year in advance and work on it daily, with a goal of a minimum a few thousand followers.

These are some costs that should be considered but every book is different and so will each self-publishing experience.  I would recommend getting quotes from all your providers before starting out on your project.

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You might also like:

• Directory Of Self-Publishing Companies

 

 

Five tips to building your platform as a self-published author

The Journal Writer's Handbook

Reading back over my last few entries, here’s the heads-up on the key steps to building an authentic marketing platform for your book – and for it to feel easy rather than utterly terrifying or a real ball-ache:

1. Make friends with a local journalist or editor. Remember they need copy to keep their publication in business. As a writer you deal in their life-blood. They will love to receive your press release as a local news story.
2. Build an authentic network off-line by engaging in activities you are genuinely interested in and feel compelled to contribute to. Let your network be a by-product of your participation rather than its raison d’etre . This way people will get to know the real you rather than the networking you.
3. Offer yourself as a speaker to a local group or society. You could tell your writer’s story, or speak on a subject that you…

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Life as a self-published author #3

The Journal Writer's Handbook

The internet is a mind-boggling place with so many different sites that writers can use to connect with their readers, ‘meet’ other writers, write about their topic, share their ideas, and find new channels to market. At a recent writer’s workshop hosted by crime author Jen Hilborne here in Swindon I noted down the URLs of at least 12 different author networking sites. Even for someone fairly technically ‘connected’ this was bordering on the brain-numbing – I dread to think what it was like for those who’d just got their email account up and running.

Technology is moving at a tremendous pace, with new sites springing up every day to help us build – or dilute – our online profile. From my perspective I’m sure there’s more I could be doing but at the moment the most I can manage is
blogging, Facebook, Linked-in, e-mailing and tweeting to get the word out…

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Book Marketing Goals Pyramid – Breaking the process down into bite-sized bits

Marcie Brock, Book Marketing Maven

So after yesterday’s Writing Goals Pyramid, you pretty much had to know we’d be applying the same principal to book marketing, right? And voila … here it is. The fact is that book marketing is an ongoing process. It should properly begin as soon as you decide to write your book, and continue until you decide you don’t want to do it anymore (or forever – whichever comes first). I know a gal who wrote a book almost 10 years ago, and she’s still booking seminars and classes all over the country based on that one book. How is that possible? Because she never stopped marketing it.

The first step is setting an overall goal. Yours could be a number of books sold, or it could be hitting #1 on Amazon. Whatever it is is probably achievable if…

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