Marketing and promoting your e-book

e-Books are all the rage – and in many ways quite rightly so. The hardware is hot, with the Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Amazon Kindle literally flying off shelves. e-Books themselves are experiencing incredible growth – up 158% this-versus-last September and while still a small fraction of the overall book market ($39 million in September versus $1.1 BILLION) the market shows no sign of slowing.

It’s also a market where independent authors and publishers can compete toe-to-toe with ‘the big guys.’

e-Books have proven to be an incredible market to … well, market. Here’s some ideas on growing your e-book sales with smart e-book marketing strategies (and in the process, quite likely growing your print book sales too… watch for more on this later).

e-book marketing via your web site

Your website is already a natural tool (and hopefully an SEO optimized one…) for marketing the print version of your book. Add your e-book.

Don’t forget to add a purchase link to the e-book on Amazon or B&N. Make sure to note that it is available on Apple’s iBookstore.

promote your e-book on your blog

You do have a blog, right? You are already marketing your print book there (maybe creating posts from excerpts of select chapters every couple weeks or so…) Your e-book makes this even easier – since the content is already digital and easy to cut-and-paste.

market your e-book through your newsletter

If you have a newsletter for your business, web site, organization, etc – your readers are of course interested in what you have to say. An e-book provides another avenue for your readers to become purchasers. Make sure your e-book (and print book) are mentioned in EVERY newsletter your send.

build e-book awareness through your mailing list

It sounds simple – but you’d be surprised how many authors don’t mention their book (print or ‘e’) in their communication pieces. EVERY email you send, along with every post card you mail, should have a link to your book.

use your e-book as an event follow-up

If you presented at a conference, made a sales call, produced a webinar, exhibited at a trade show – all these can be great resources to send a ‘thank you’ note, and in that email include a link to your e-book.

e-books as sales collateral

It might seem counter-intuitive to give something away that you’d really like to sell, but if your e-book relates to your industry you just might be able to create added revenue (and drive future e-book sales) by using your e-book as a ‘leave behind’.

extract part of your e-book as a ‘white paper’ and syndicate the content

“Syndication” is a method of distributing content. It can seem a bit complex and confusing, and is far beyond the scope of this quick article – but you can find a ton on the topic out on the web. You can create amazing awareness for your e-book by releasing a contained part of the book as a ‘whitepaper’. It, of course, has to be content that can stand alone and is relevant to your topic – but it’s a great way to build interest in the e-book itself. Syndicators are sites that take content (like e-books, webcasts, blogs, etc.) pull it all together from broad sources and then make it available to subscribers.

market your e-book by sharing it with influential bloggers

Giving away content is a great way to reach out to bloggers. EVERY blogger is continually looking for great content to write about – let them have a copy of your e-book.

is your e-book (and print book) part of you LinkedIn profile?

Groups you join and your status should all be made aware of your e-book.

promote your e-book via your Twitter feed

Are there some great ‘one-liners’ in your e-book that you can use to deliver traffic to your web site? Does your book have stats or facts that lend themselves to tweets? Don’t forget to use a hashtag to encourage readers to comment and create conversations.

e-book marketing with a media release

You can reinvigorate your media release campaign by updating it on the release of your e-book.

Filed under: Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble Nook, e-book marketing, ebooks | Tagged: e-book marketing, E-Books | 5 Comments »