Promotion is one of those constant things. I don’t think you ever stop promoting. So to keep me on track, I decided to publish my book promotion/marketing plan along with a Score Card of what I think is important. Check back periodically for an update.
Score Card (Last Updated: 04/13/10)
Total Book Sales (2 months of data): 120
Amazon Average Sales Rank: High: 153,142 Low: 897,956
Reviews: 4 (Average 5 Stars)
- Latest Reviews Are Here
Blog Mentions: 11
Get Your Biz Savvy guest post
A Smart Bear guest post
Shot of Inspiration guest post
Blogging Innovation guest post on Free Range Innovation
The Bloggers’ Bulletin guest post
A Smart Bear post
I Hate People guest post
The Communications Strategist guest post
The Bloggers’ Bulletin guest post
47 Hats Guest post
Americans Best Business Practices Review here
I Bike NoAa article here
Accomplishments to Date
Book Pages on My Blog: I decided to just add a couple of pages to my blog as opposed to a full up site. Not sure how well that will work but we shall see. I also added a complete contents page and an errata page. See here for the root.
Amazon Author Page: It’s done and looks pretty cool. Check it out here. I also setup the Look Inside. It’s pretty amazing what they have done.
Book Grader: The one bad thing about Amazon is that they don’t track trends. Thankfully, bookgrader.com does. I am not sure yet how to make the data actionable but at least I have a starting point. The Amazon Sales Rank data comes from there.
Free Book Excerpts: My publisher does this anyway but I decided to add some pdf’s of certain sections on the book page. I also put some up on my blog. You can see my excerpts here and my publishers here.
Facebook Fan Page: It has not proven too useful yet but it’s early. You can check it out here
Facebook Updates: Updates to my personal page have generated a lot of interest. I also point friends to the books fan page.
Twitter Account: I just started the twitter account (@frusfreetechmgt), so my follower base is small but I am following (and being followed) by my blog twitter account, which has way more followers. This one should be an interesting one to follow.
Book Signing: I had one on the 20th of January and it was well attended. Mostly friends but it was great to see everyone and get the feedback. I even sold several books. Thanks to everyone for coming out. The second one was on the 22nd of February in Silicon Valley. Still more people came out and I sold even more books. So, overall, a good experience.
Give Away Review Copies: I have given out about 25 so far. Most were to friends and co-workers but I did send some off to bloggers that I respect. We shall see how this works.
LinkedIn Group: I set it up but have not yet put anything on it.
Experience Blog Posts: Writing about my promotion efforts seems like a way to both educate and generate buzz. I always love the play-by-play of a work in progress. The posts I have done so far have been well received. The guest one has had the most responses.
eBooks like Kindle and Nook: I just submitted the book to Amazon for inclusion on Kindle. I also just put it up on Smashwords.com. Check it out here
Planned
Excerpted Guest Posts: Several bloggers I know have already said they would let me excerpt some of the book as a guest post. I still need to reach out to more but I have high hopes for this.
Give Away More Review Copies: Need to give away a few more but the ball is now rolling on this.
Interviews: I have at least one planned and several others in the works. I have heard that these are not as effective as other media (like book reviews and blog posts) but hey, it’s worth a shot.
Barnes & Noble Information: Need to bite the bullet and do the B&N author stuff. It’s just such a pain to do.
Twitter Give-a-way: I am planning on giving away some books on twitter to get people to re-tweet. Not sure exactly how this will work out but give-a-ways seem to generate some buzz.
