Book Marketing and Authenticity

If you’re like most – marketing and authenticity have an “oxymoron” ring.  Can you really be authentic while you’re marketing your book?

Thanks to the “new” world the Web where social networks are king, “marketing” and”authenticity” are being forced into a single cohesive sentence with magnificent results.

This isn’t the book marketing your parents’ generation knew.

The first step in marketing your book on the web is to have a website – the best author website you can afford.   Can you afford free?  I thought so – check this site out.

Once you’ve got a beautiful author website, then it’s time to get online and start authentically promoting and marketing your book.

Kassia Krozser writes in the Art of Conversation:

The marketing potential of social networking remains blurry. Today’s online users don’t like to be marketed “to”. Once upon a time, there was this top-down approach to selling to consumers. If your marketing department still believes that’s the case, fire the whole lot. The sellers have lost control of the conversation…and attempts to regain the upper hand have fallen flat. Very, very flat.

So how do you market your book without LOOKING like you’re marketing your book?

One way is marketing through message boards, forums and other online forums. However, the way to use these old school “social networking” tools is NOT to shamelessly self promote your books. Posting “buy my book” messages on every board is a sure fire way to turn the buzz negative around your work.

Instead, the key is to turn the focus outward instead of inward. What problem does your book solve? Even fiction books solve a problem… a need for entertainment. When a fiction writer posts a pithy and entertaining post on a forum, the reader’s first response is to want to read more.

I one time found myself at, of all things, a Southern California Real Estate Company’s blog as the result of a pithy and entertaining post. Sure enough, there on their blog were equally well composed posts talking about the expertise of the Real Estate Company’s staff.

Unfortunately, I’m not in the market to move to SoCal… but had they offered a book… well, I would have been a potential customer!

Yen over at the Book Publicity blog write in the post Marketing through message boards:

We all agreed that it’s impossible for a corporate entity to use message boards without completely turning off users.  That doesn’t mean, however, that an individual author with expertise in a certain area can’t become a member of a community with such a message board (and perhaps mention his / her book in the process).

The key to being listened to on message boards is being a genuine and longstanding member of the community — many discussion boards have ranking systems for posters and even on those that don’t, members will only recognize / respect posters who have proven their interest and expertise over time.  So forget about the sleek marketing pitch and tell your authors to start planning ahead if they want to go down this road …

By the way, rather than trying to “slip in” a mention of your books on those message boards, instead craft a signature file which lists your web site or blog.  That way you can subtlety promote your work without turning off other users.

Marketing your book can be really easy – and possibly fun – when you keep your focus on being authentic.

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