How to Promote Your Book Like a Pro!

This is my book. I’ll be using it as an example throughout this post to show you how to promote your own book.

Congratulations on writing a book! Only a select few aspiring authors get started writing a book, much less finish it! You’ve undoubtedly invested enormous amounts of time, focus and love into your book. Now that it’s done, the work of promoting it begins. Here are some ideas and resources to help you do that.

Before going any further, be sure to read my post, Here’s Why Your Book Is Unpublished. If you’d like to know a little about me, click here.

NOTE: You’ll find sharing icons to share this post on social media sites at the very end of this post, right above the comments. Thank you!

HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BOOK AND BUILD YOUR BRAND

The first thing you need to do is build a platform, which essentially means expanding your online presence in ways that help you reach people and make them aware of who you are and what you have to offer.

A platform is now a make-or-break factor for publishers considering a book proposal. Authors today are expected to perform the majority of the marketing and promotion for their books. As Jim Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency noted in a Wall Street Journal article called The Death of the Slush Pile, “These days, you need to deliver not just the manuscript but the audience. More and more, the mantra in publishing is ‘Ask not what your publisher can do for you, ask what you can do for your publisher.'” This is a challenge I heartily embrace. Promoting my books is a joy—it’s all about synergy, building awareness and building relationships.

********

Before we go any further, there’s a vitally important question you must keep in mind no matter how you’re planning to promote your book: Why should anyone care? You might be the most adorable person who’s ever walked the earth, but that doesn’t mean that people are going to buy your book. Click here to read “What Makes You So Special? The Magic to Selling Books” by Kristen Lamb.

********

For more information on platform building, check out the book Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, by Michael Hyatt, Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers.




















If you’re an eBook type of guy or gal, then you may opt for Go Global: Building An International Author Platform that Sells by Barb Drozdowich.

Here’s a great article by Kimberley Grabas of YourWriterPlatform.com titled “101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Platform of Your Dreams.”

As Kimberley writes: “The most important aspect to building an author platform is understanding that it’s about engagement; about connecting and interacting with people who are aligned with your message and affected by your story. . . . Establishing and maintaining a link to your potential ‘tribe’ is both the challenge and the reward of building your writer platform.”


Kimberley explains here how a Gravatar (globally recognized avatar) can help you build your writer platform.

The foundation of an effective platform is a blog. A blog is the linchpin around which every other component of your platform revolves. The more valuable the content on your blog, the more apt a reader will be to visit repeatedly and eventually become aware of and buy your books.

When you post something of great value on your blog, send out an e-mail alert to your list and watch the hits on your site jump. Some visitors will in turn feature your post on their sites and link back to you, which brings in their readers, who then see your other content and become your regular readers. Visitors may also notify their e-mail lists about a post that they particularly like. Every positive comment from a third party adds that much more value to your brand. (Lacking clarity about what your brand is? Read “4 Branding Tips for Nonfiction Writers and Authors” by Inspiration to Creation Coach Nina Amir.)

Liberally sprinkle your blog posts with

Philosophical Pablum

In his well-written, well-researched book, American Veda, which explores how India’s spiritual wisdom seeped into America’s cultural bloodstream, Philip Goldberg writes:

The St. Louis-born T. S. Eliot spent two years at Harvard studying Vedantic texts with America’s finest Indologists. Eliot, who learned Sanskrit and Pali (the language of the Buddha), once remarked that the subtleties of Indian sages “makes more of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys.”

I remember a spiritually awakened friend echoing the same sentiment. He told me that he had tried to read some famous philosophers of the last couple centuries and it was like reading nonsense written by children.

Thomas Moore

In Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore explained that the same dynamic holds true for psychology. In the Introduction, he wrote:

This book contains both psychological

Beyond the Body

Heidi von Beltz, a former championship skier and aspiring actor, was paralyzed from her earlobes down in a two-vehicle head-on collision while working as a stunt double in The Cannonball Run in 1980. Unbowed by her doctors’ prognosis that she had perhaps five years to live, von Beltz routinely endured a grueling regimen of physical therapy and muscle stimulation for up to ten hours a day. Nine years later, she was able to sit up on her own. Six years after that, outfitted with lightweight aluminum leg braces, she taught herself to stand.

Sixteen years after the crash, while promoting her memoir, My Soul Purpose, von Beltz, who had devoured countless books on philosophy and spirituality, said she considered herself lucky and wouldn’t have wanted to miss the experience of her paralysis for anything. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” she told Entertainment Weekly magazine. ‘‘I was always so active that I would never have sat down long enough to learn what I’ve learned. I can’t imagine going through this life and not knowing what I know now. I just had to break my neck to do it.’’

The following paragraph from page 97 of von Beltz’s memoir illustrates the start of her transition from body identification to a higher awareness of self:

After the crash, talking with good friends or “losing myself” watching a movie, I forgot about my physical body. This was a new experience for me because I am such a physical, active person. Other people always had reinforced the importance of my body because, even when I was growing up, they reacted to my appearance: I’m a tall and

We Need to Talk

We’ve all been there. Somebody you care about—a family member or good friend—is completely oblivious about how a flaw in their behavior is causing problems with people. So how do you help somebody see the light if they don’t have a clue that they don’t have a clue?

Well, here’s one approach. There are no guarantees it will work, of course. In fact, the chances of immediate success may be small. But at the very least, putting yourself out there like this might plant a seed that will blossom sometime down the road.

WE NEED TO TALK

I’d like to talk to you about something that I think needs to be talked about. I’ve tried to bring up the subject before but you’ve gotten

Walk, Don’t Run

Walking a spiritual path is called just that for a reason. It’s not called running a spiritual path. It takes time to drink in new ideas, to integrate them into your perspective and consciousness, and most importantly, to reflect them in your relationships with God and with others. I like how Paramahansa Yogananda conveyed the importance of patience for spiritual aspirants:

A thirsty man coming upon a lake craved to swallow all its waters. Naturally, he could not drink more than his stomach would hold. Likewise, many thirsty seekers of limited understanding sit by the lake of truth and aspire to drink all of its vast waters and contain all of its mysteries. They do not understand even this truth: that to swallow

The Sun Rises for Everyone

Spirituality encourages direct contact with God, yet without a disciplined commitment to self-awareness, seekers on the road to truth may miss the turn for humility and veer off toward arrogance.

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
Italian proverb

Yes, the further you move down the path of enlightenment, the more distance you create between your

Collaborating With Fate

Live with greater reverence and you begin noticing subtle evidence of divine guidance at work. You bump into an old friend who had popped into your mind an hour before. You receive an unexpected check that is precisely the amount you need to get your car repaired. A chance encounter in a restaurant leads to a terrific job opportunity.

When I’m trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.
Shakti Gawain

Taken separately, these happenings can be dismissed as happy coincidences. Yet as your

Letter to a Teenage Boy

Last year, one of my best friends shared her concerns about her teenage son. I had known Alex (not his real name) since he was born and we had always had a great relationship, so I wrote him a letter. With my friend’s permission and encouragement, I am reprinting that letter here in the hope that other parents will share it with their sons.

The teenage boys of today will play a big role in shaping all of our tomorrows. May they come to know the value of love, compassion and empathy sooner than the generations of men that came before them.

Dear Alex,

When you answered the phone the last time I called, I heard a deeper voice than what I was accustomed to. When your mom later confirmed that your voice had recently changed, my thoughts flashed back to my teenage years . . . and I found myself cringing. At fourteen, I was incredibly naïve; to make matters worse, I didn’t have a clue that I didn’t have a clue. Thankfully, you are much more mature and wiser than I was at your age.

As I reminisced, I found myself wishing that an adult friend of our family had taken it upon himself to pull me aside all those years ago and give me a heads up on what to expect from life and how to handle myself as I approached adulthood. If you would be so kind as to indulge me for a few minutes, I’d like to share with you what I wish someone had shared with me at fourteen. Even though you have been blessed with great parents who I’m sure have already told you all of this, sometimes it’s helpful to hear the same thing from someone outside your family.

Do you know why I was so naïve and unaware as a teenager, Alex? It’s because I was

The Butterfly Has Time Enough

Diverting course on a moment’s notice to follow your guidance can take time, an often scarce commodity these days. Yet the more time you devote to pursuing what you feel guided to pursue, the more time you seem to have for everything else.

It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step into the unknown, as for children, the days are long with the gathering of experience.
George Gissing

You may find yourself shifting from being chronically late to feeling like

Every Cell Awakens and Rejoices!

Drawing by Paul Foreman of mindmapinspiration.com

Your intuition will often express itself not as a thought in the mind, but as a feeling in the body.

The mind can assert anything 
and pretend it has proved it. 
My beliefs I test on my body,
 on my intuitional consciousness, 
and when I get a response 
there, then I accept.
D. H. Lawrence

Trust that feeling, honor it, listen carefully to the message it conveys. If it causes you

The Universe Will Make Arrangements

As you walk your spiritual path, be kind to yourself and do not get discouraged when you slip up. Taking two steps forward and one step back still moves you in the right direction. When you are ready to learn more, the universe will make arrangements and the appropriate opportunities will present themselves.

Going slowly does not prevent arriving.
Nigerian proverb

As awareness grows, you realize that there is never a time when you are not presented with such opportunities, because you are always ready to take a step forward.

Don’t go through life, grow through life.
Eric Butterworth

Every step forward leads to another step, and another step beyond that. Shove

Knee Jerk

This brief story from The Big Book of Small Business, a book I wrote with Tires Plus founder Tom Gegax, is an excellent reminder to avoid being so self-absorbed that we fail to consider what the person in front of us is going through.

Several years ago, I found myself hunched over my laptop on a flight from Minneapolis to San Diego. I was trying to nail a deadline under less than ideal conditions, made worse by the oaf in front of me who fully cranked his seat into my lap. Agitated over this guy’s boxing in my six-foot, two-inch frame, I sank my knees, already pressed into his seat, a little deeper to send a message. Forty-five minutes later, a woman

Maybe You Should Take Your Eyes Off the Prize

Your thoughts, words and actions are pebbles tossed into the lake of your daily life, creating ripples that extend far beyond your immediate vision. Each of these pebbles subtly alters the unified field (the complex web of divine energy that we call the universe), presenting you with fresh new opportunities and experiences that can imperceptibly heighten your awareness, expand your perspective, deepen your wisdom and rearrange your priorities.

Hence, by the time a long sought-after goal is within reach, you may not find it as meaningful as it once was. Perhaps your original goal is ill-suited for your current level of consciousness. Perhaps the ripples that would have emanated out would have been incompatible with the ripples produced from other people’s actions in the near and distant future. Or perhaps there is a more desirable and appropriate result waiting behind a door that has yet to reveal itself.

Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a

Every Moment, Every Day Is Spiritual

Brother David Steindl-Rast (photograph by Jim Nichols)

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a separate
 department of life, the penthouse of our existence.  But rightly understood,
 it is a vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being.  Someone 
will say, “I come alive when I listen to music,” or “I come to life
 when I garden,” or “I come alive when I play golf.”  Wherever we
 come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.  And then we
 can say, “I know at least how one is spiritual in that area.”  To be
 vital, awake, aware, in all areas of our lives, is the task that 
is never accomplished, but it remains the goal.
Brother David Steindl-Rast

Wise words. Spirituality is

My “One Minute U” Video

As long as I was making a video for my book, Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything, I thought I’d also make a video for One Minute U, a site I subscribe to and get daily e-mails from.

Here is info about the site:

One Minute U lets you learn anything fast with FREE one minute educational, how-to video clips. We offer thousands of free educational, DIY videos about every

Relish Today, Be Excited for Tomorrow!

The quest for enlightenment is a wonderfully exciting journey. The more consciously you live, the sweeter life becomes.

Ironically, as you expand the scope of your awareness, the scope of your non-awareness expands as well. You glimpse the vastness of how much there is to know and humbly realize how little of it you comprehend.

If answers to crucial questions continue to elude you, do not despair. Rather, be excited that there is so much yet to learn!

I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try and love the questions themselves as if