Some current marketing ploys

This is just snapshot of what we’re doing right now:

Imprints celebration

This takes place on 3 December and guys, WE’RE SOLD OUT. We’re meeting for two hours in a London pub. There will be a chance for attendees to buy books – though there will only be a limited amount there. Some folk will read from their work. We’ll all exchange contact details and marketing tips. We’ll also be giving some tips as publishers and talking about next year’s plans. We’re organising a big book swap as well.

Making a book trailer

I always enjoy doing this though I can’t do it for every book. I ask each contributor to provide a copyright-free image and a tagline. I put them together artistically and find some nice copyright free music. Anyone can do this using Windows Movie maker. Absolutely free images can be obtained from https://pixabay.com/ and free music from http://freemusicarchive.org. Many authors provide pictures they or friends and family have created themselves. This is often an even better solution.

Marketing checklist

We have a minimum checklist that every book goes through. We currently have six titles at various stages going through this. Next time I’ll post a tidied up version of this. Each book is at a slightly different stage.   

Marketing toolkit

This is for proactive authors who can arrange their own book tour. We’ll provide twenty books upfront free of charge. These can go through the till at the bookshop signing and we’ll invoice the bookshop. Then we’ll top up the number of books. It’s important to allow at least ten days between events for this to work, though we can discuss each case individually. At the end of the tour the author may buy the books at cost plus10% within one week of end of tour. Or they can hold on to them until they’ve sold them all and pay us back at normal author discount rate. This amount can even be allowed against royalties.

Cyber launch

We’re now trying to arrange this for each title. This can be quite fun and quite effective. More about this in another post. It can certainly be extremely rewarding with twenty or so authors working on it at the same time.

I need a time machine

There is never enough time to do it all. Always we end up doing what we can manage. And actually, I’m not even sure that a time machine will help all that much. We still all have only so many heartbeats and days on this earth. If we all pull together, though we can make it happen.