5minpromo

Bubbling soda water.

If you’ve just tuned in, every day for the month of July I am sharing a five minute promotional task you can do to promote your book(s) – and, because I have a new book out (isn’t it pretty?), I’m doing each of those things myself. Without further ado, here’s day 2’s task.

5 Minute Promo #2

Set up a Twitter account. If you don’t yet use Twitter, trust me that it’s so easy it’s something a grandmother (that’s me) can and does do every day. If you are unsure, there is a good guide here. And, once your set up, I’ve previously blogged about ways to make use of Twitter.

If, like me, you already have a Twitter account (mine’s here), your five minute task is to head over to your account and make sure it’s up to date: is your profile picture current, is your bio the best it can be, and how many people are you following?

Right, timer’s on: go! Once you’re set up, feel free to Tweet me @sallymurphy and I’ll check you out.

If you a regular follower of this blog, you might know that today is release day for my new book: Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape. If you are not a regular follower, firstly, welcome and secondly, you know that it’s the release date etc. And, by the way, isn’t the front cover amazing?

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post: 5 Minute Promo.

As an author, I’ve long been aware just how important it is to promote my own books. Sure, my wonderful publishers do their bit, but they have lots of books by lots of authors to promote. Wheras me, I only have my own books to focus on, and generally one at a time. But I’m busy – sometimes frantically so – writing new books, working my way through a PhD project, visiting schools, festivals and conferences, not to mention running a household. So, my promotion can’t take hours and hours every day.

Ont op of that, the most important time for me to be promoting my new book is in the first month of its release. Bookshops get new stock in every month. That means my book is only new for a month. If I want it to sell well, it’s important that I promote heavily during that month, in the hopes that it will sell well the booksellers will continue to stock it, and stock my subsequent books.

So, putting those two things together: the need for quick promotion ideas, and the need to do them especially in that first month, I sat down and brainstormed 31 things (one for each day of the month) that could be done in five minutes or less.

And, because I like sharing, I’m going to share those 31 things, one each day. So, if you have a book to promote, or have one coming out soon, you can play along at home. Every day I will post a new five minute tip, and give examples. If you join in, let me know how you are going, either by commenting here, or on twitter (feel free to follow me).

So, enough about what I’m going to do. Let’s get on with it. Here is the first idea.

5 Minute Promo #1

Write a blog post announcing your new book . Make sure you include the cover image, and a link to where the book can bought. Give some details about the book. (If you don’t yet have a blog, then use the five minutes to head over to a free blog platform such as wordpress or blogger and set up a simple blog).

Here’s my post (or you can just scroll down) which I combined with a post about Poetry Friday, because that’s my usual Friday post, and because it will spread the word to my poetry network.

Playing along? Set your timer for five minutes and head off and write and post that blogpost, then leave a comment below with a link and I will check it out.

sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author