- Would you like to know the best promotional strategies
for self-published books?
Well then, you're gonna wanna listen
to today's guest expert, Julie Broad, stay tuned.
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Today, I am super-excited to have
one of my absolute favorite YouTube content creators,
and it is Julie Broad,
and we're gonna talk about something
that I love to talk about,
and it's promotional strategies.
So can you give me a little bit of an idea,
what are some of the best promotional strategies
for self-published books?
- Yeah, I mean, it's a tough question
to answer generically
because I think the best book publishing strategy
for your book is gonna depend on your goals,
'cause there's just so much hype, right?
You can be an be an Amazon bestseller,
so everybody can be an Amazon bestseller.
There's ways to game the system
to be an Amazon bestseller.
The bad news is you can game it
and sell a whopping 14 books.
That's a great payday, isn't it?
- 14 books, I know,
as long as it's probably $100 per book, right?
(Dale and Julie laughing)
- So, yeah, so it really depends.
'Cause some people really just wanna feel good (laughs).
And so they want that ego stroke of the Amazon bestseller.
But I kind of like to look at
where am I gonna get that book
in front of the most ideal readers?
And so, sometimes, that means getting them
a speaking engagement
so that every person in the audience
gets a copy of their book,
so now you've got 100 people or 500 people
that get a copy of that book.
Does not register on Amazon to do a bulk sale like that,
but you've now got your book in the hands
of a bunch of people.
So that's, it really dependent on what your goals are.
So I'll give you a couple of my favorites.
One is, so I'll go back to,
my first book was a real estate book.
I had realtors,
so my book was a real estate investing book.
And my target market was people
who were brand new to real estate
or thinking that they might wanna get
into real estate investing.
So who else has that same audience
in their audience already, right?
Realtors, mortgage brokers, some specific accountants.
So that's who the people I would go to and go, hey,
here's my book, here's why it's great for your clients,
and I had a ton of realtors, mortgage brokers,
and other people with real estate investors
in their audience promote my book
and even buy my book to give as gifts.
So to me, that's the best way
to get your book in front of ideal readers.
- Is there any particular promotional strategy
that you see is not very effective,
and it's antiquated that people are currently using?
- Yeah, they post a link on Facebook (laughs).
- That doesn't work?
(tuba honking) - I mean, first of all,
Facebook barely shows that link to anybody,
but yeah, I mean, even asking people
to share your book on social media,
I mean, there's some reasons to do that,
it's not like it does nothing,
but in terms of actually selling books,
if you put trackable links out there
and you try to figure out what's getting clicked,
it's, those clicks are not coming from social media,
so that is something,
people aren't selling books on social media,
it's so hard to sell books on social media
with, like, just a straight link.
- If I have the discretionary expense
to advertise through some type of promotional strategy,
what is the best one that I can use
to leverage my exposure?
- Well, I think advertising on Amazon
is the best way to advertise for books.
- Right.
- But I'm biased because I've been donating money
to Facebook forever.
(Dale and Julie laughing)
- Me, too.
- So I have not figured out how
to really effectively advertise on Facebook,
but Amazon ads do seem to be working.
I've had some good results.
I know a lot of people have had some good results,
so if I was gonna put money
into advertising my book directly,
that's what I would do.
- What if I don't have any money,
let's say I'm brand new to this,
I'm really trying to bootstrap it,
what's probably the best promotional strategy
for me that doesn't cost a dime?
- So it's free, but BookLaunchers.com/gameplan,
and I actually cover eight different ways
to sell 1,000 books for under $100.
And frankly, the $100 was to buy posters
'cause I did a big book launch event.
So that's it, like, you don't need to do that part of it,
but that was something I spent money on in that example.
So there's a bunch of ways there,
but a lot of it is finding
those partnerships and relationships that you can leverage
and supporting people,
so by the way, here's a big tip.
If your book isn't out yet,
make friends with people now (laughs)
who'll have your ideal reader in their audience
so that you're not being like,
hey, nice to meet you, promote my book.
(Dale laughs) - That's weird?
- A little. (Julie laughs)
- Oh, darn it all, you've ruined
my favorite way to do things.
How can the viewers get ahold of you?
- Check my channel out, BookLaunchers.TV.
We have lots of tips.
Every Friday, a new video comes out
to help you write, publish, and sell
a non-fiction book.