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How
To Become Your Own PR Consultant Every
author dreams of landing on the New York Times bestseller list.
I do and if you’re smart, you do, too.
Why does it matter? Landing
on the New York Times bestseller list means you have ARRIVED. Not that your work is finished by any means, but at least
getting on the list of all lists means that there’s someone in the literary
field who is confident your book will become well-known. It doesn’t mean that you have sold more books than anybody
else; it simply means that the public agrees with you that you have one of the
best books ever written for a certain time frame.
If your book stays on the list for longer than a week, you can be assured
that you have not only become a literary star, but your sales figures have
quadrupled. And isn’t that why we
slave away day and night writing and revising and submitting and waiting for the
coveted acceptance letter? What
I am about to propose to you is a strategy that works.
You can become your own PR consultant without spending mega-bucks to get
the job done. All it takes is a
little common knowledge of what it takes to become a best-selling author. Many
things have to be accomplished before your book sales rise dramatically and it
is only then will you see a significant increase in sales.
First of all, you have to be dedicated and believe in your book, and what
author doesn’t? However, you must
go that extra step to prove your book’s salability and the first thing to keep
in mind is acknowledging the fact that not only are you trying to sell your
book, you are selling “you,” too. By
this, I mean that you are the one that is responsible for your book’s success.
Taking the right steps towards making your book a viable selling tool
greatly increases your chance at success. To
become a successful PR person, one very important thing must be acknowledged:
the number one place that sells more books than any bookstore in the
country is Amazon.com. I
had a talk with a well-known publicist a few weeks ago.
She was pitching her company to me in the hopes that I would hire her to
take on my PR work. The prospects
of getting my name out there via radio, television and print media sounded
downright enticing until she came to the point where her fee was discussed,
which made my pocketbook scream for mercy.
I declined her offer, figuring I could do everything she was doing thanks
to the Internet. But, one thing
stood out in my mind that she told me before we ended the call.
She said that Amazon.com was the number one spot that people buy books. I
couldn’t agree with her more. After
all, that’s where I bought the majority of my books, also. But
having your book up at Amazon isn’t going to do you much good if you don’t
have a website with links directed to it. An
author website is your number one selling tool.
The majority of those who buy books at Amazon.com won’t even know your
book is up there unless you have a website announcing it.
Sure, the search engines will pick it up at Amazon.com, but why not
ensure your book’s success with a website with all the important information,
too? Once
you have a working author website with links to Amazon.com and other places to
promote yourself and your book, the second thing to keep in mind in becoming
your own PR consultant is how you are going to present yourself to the media.
That’s where learning how to write a captivating press release comes
in. If you’ve never written a
press release before, you can view how others have written theirs at such places
as PR Web (http://www.prweb.com).
Once you have learned what makes a great press release, there are other
places you can submit your release to: * Free-Press-Release.com (http://www.free-press-release.com/submit/) * Paashan News Service (www.paashannewsservice.com/submit.shtml) * Click2newsites.com (http://www.click2newsites.com/press.asp) The
next step in becoming your own PR consultant is learning how to have an
extensive web presence. You can buy
ads in magazines or you can do what I have done and write free articles and
plaster them all over the Internet. Many
promotion-savvy authors have done this and you can, too.
Write up articles related to your book and self-syndicate them to
websites looking for material. Be
sure you keep your rights and make sure that the publication accepts material
that has already been published and you’re good to go!
This is called free advertisement. There
are many places that accept free articles. I have found that this is a
great way to sell your books because along with those free articles, you send
your bio that includes your website url, which tells potential customers where
to buy your books. A
few places to submit your free articles are: *
Success-Talk.com (www.success-talk.com) * All Freelance Work.com (www.allfreelancework.com) * Family-Content.com (www.family-content.com) Becoming
your own PR consultant takes a lot of work, but once you learn how to use the
search engines to find what you want, everything falls into place.
Don’t spend mega-bucks on large publicity firms when you can do this
all yourself. With the money you save, you can invest in other things,
like building a media kit that will have publications begging you for interviews
and media placements. The bottom
line is that with the right amount of dedication, you not only can turn your
book into a best seller, but you will turn your name into a household name, too! Dorothy
Thompson is an author, freelance writer, editor, journalist and anthologist from
the Eastern Shore of Virginia. She
writes for many publications including The Eastern Shore News and The Daily
Times, as well as her own online writing magazine, The Writer’s Life (www.thewriterslife.net).
She is also the author of NO MORE GOOSEBERRY PIE (Writers-Exchange
E-Publishing) and the founder of the ROMANCING THE SOUL series of new age
anthologies. The first in the
series, ROMANCING THE SOUL—TRUE STORIES OF SOUL MATES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
AND BEYOND will be published in June 2004 by Zumaya Publications.
Other books in which Ms. Thompson is involved in is a paranormal
co-authored with Heide Kaminski, an internet relationship book co-authored with
Maureen Allan, a how-to book on soul mates, a how to writing book, a humor book,
and an emerging PR company, The Writer’s Life PR.
Dorothy enjoys hiking in the mountains and communing with nature in her
sanctuary. You can email her at thewriterslifepr@yahoo.com
or visit her author website at www.dorothythompson.homestead.com.
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