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We are now slowly winding our way to the end of marketing course.
After you’ve set up your landing pages, gotten your promo chain going on Twitter (and Facebook, etc.), you are now ready to do some out-of-the-box thinking.
Setting up cross promotions and joint ventures for big marketing pushes takes time but mostly a good group of authors willing to participate–and by participate, I mean doing something other than saying, “I’ll do a guest blog” and then getting it to you the day before.
Ideally for a cross promotion or joint venture you want somewhere upward of ten authors, some newbies but not all. You will need to map out the strategy and get everyone going in the right direction. You may need to offer advice on how to use Twitter and FB, etc. (feel free to direct them here for the basics).
The idea is that instead of you promoting your book, you get 10 people promoting the venture.
I’ve seen several of these now, and they can all work if you are willing to put in the time and effort.
** 99 cent sale (or just a sale) ** in which all ten books go on sale at the same time and are promoted for say 3 days or so.
** Book launch ** Several authors get together to promote the launch book while promoting their own work as well.
** Blog Events ** Such as Penny Zeller’s Christmas Memories Event. Many authors participate and direct traffic to the blog for that time period.
** 30 Days: 30 Books ** This is one I participated in during January. The blog offered a different book for a giveaway every day for a month.
The problem I’ve seen with book giveaways is that it gives no one an incentive to go buy your book. If you’re looking for increased visibility, this can work. If you’re looking to increase sales, not so much.
In each of these ventures, the participating authors created landing pages via guest blogs and blogs on their own sites. They did interviews and tweeted and posted like crazy about the event. They got their friends involved in helping them cross-promote.
So setting these up and running them can be a very good way to raise your visibility. Participating in several throughout the year can also help if you get into the right ones.
Thanks for sharing this post. I would be interested in participating in some joint ventures with other Christian authors.
Hmmm, joint ventures, or joint business ventures? I like your idea because it helps get your book and my book into seperate business circles, hey, that’s all good. Have any of you prepared a business proposal outlining your business plan, your experience and writing, along with a proposal for incresing your platform with documentation and examples so these potential investors know if your proposal is legit – or not? Anyone else doing this?
Mine have all been joint ventures with other authors. We will all get together to do a 99-cent sale or a big blog event. We’ve done blog hops together or found easy ways to tweet for each other.
I’ve tweeted and FBooked and googled others as well as reviewing some of whose books I’ve read and posting reviews for them on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads, and sending to Long Ridge Writing newsletter. I have no control to make my books 99 cents except for the two short stories I’ve self-published. I’ve also traded blog posts.