Top six tips to promote your brand new book

Colleen Reichrath-Smith and I have set aside April  and May as the months we really promote our newly released book A Career in Your Suitcase. We are so determined to make sure that more people get to hear about it than ever before (this is its 4th edition) that we share here our top six methods. Feel free to copy our ideas. We’d be flattered.

1. Make a book trailer. We use Camtasia to make ours, combining not only recordings of we authors speaking about the book, but also book jackets, our photos and some music. I pay my son to make them for me and it takes him about five hours. Videos are the most shared items sent out via social media, so it was no-brainer that we made one too, sending the link to all our supporters so they can share it too. Here is the link to our book trailer.
2. Create a website just for the book. If you only plan to publish a few books then it can make sense to give each their own unique website, using the book name as its URL. Colleen is a career counsellor so it makes sense that she manage our site. Be sure to keep your site dynamic with an active blog, a call for contributions (we want your portable career stories) and links where people can buy the book in print and kindle format. Here is the link to career in your suitcase.
3. Create and send a press release. As the publisher at Summertime Publishing, it was vital that I create a database of expatriate clubs, organisations, websites, magazines and journalists, who were interested in my niche – books by and for people living abroad. My list so far has about 400 names on it and so, as soon as a Summertime book is available on all the Amazons worldwide in print and kindle format, I prepare a release that inlcudes all the relevant information about the book, written in a way that people could lift the text and use it as it is. I offer review copies and add contact details, suggesting the authors may be available for interview or to write articles for their publication. Our press release will go out in April. 
4. Run a worldwide book tour. Grab every opportunity to present the book, at book signings, by giving workshops and by donating books to libraries. Take photos of every event so you have more stuff to share on the website and via social media. But a book tour does not simply work if it includes you in person. Additionally, create a proof PDF of your book (put the word ‘proof’ on the pages so folk can’t copy it), create a Facebook event and invite everyone you know to do a review of the book on Amazon, or Goodreads or on their blog or in a magazine in exchange for a free PDF/kindle copy. If you see folk in person then you can give them a ‘real’ book to review. A review is a great way to get the word about your book out there. The official date of our book tour is 19th April. On that day we will be sure to have a Google Alert set up for Career in Your Suitcase to be sure we ‘catch’ every mention of our book out there and then, in turn we will share that with our networks too. We have also set the #careerinyoursuitcase4 hashtag on Twitter for people to use so we can track all tweets. 
5. Do a live book launch where you live. We always encourage authors to run a book launch event for their book once it is freely available on Amazon worldwide. We usually run the Hague events at the American Book Centre, because they have a room upstairs for just this kind of event and we can do our own catering. In addition, ABC, advertise the event to a database of book lovers and buy a stock of the book too, so it is win-win-win. They often even put a display of the book in the window too for a few days! We invite all our local supporters, the press and even ExpatTV along as well as all those who have helped with the book – editors, designers, proof-readers and so on. It’s a bit of a celebration. We run ours from 6-8pm on a Friday usually, and have drinks and a few nibbles on offer. During the launch, we have an MC who supports the work of the book. We will have Canadian Deborah Valentine, who is executive director of a local expatriate support network called Access. Then Colleen and I will read extracts from the book for 10-15 minutes before we open for questions.
6. Join Kindle KDP select. When you produce a kindle version of a book, you are encouraged to enrol in KDP select. This means that you can select a five day period in which the book will be available on Kindle for FREE. We have set our KDP days for just before our live launch (12-16 May) but after the worldwide virtual book tour. This will allow us to give promotion another boost and keep momentum going.

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