MOVING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS - NEW WAYS TO MARKET AND SELL YOUR BOOKS by Miko Johnston
Miko Johnston is my guest today and she has some great ideas for authors.
Two
years ago, my husband fulfilled a decades long dream – we left California for
his home state, Washington, and settled on Whidbey Island. Thanks to a local
writers group, I found a community here and made a new circle of friends.
During that time I too fulfilled a decades long dream – signing a two-book
contract with a publisher. My first novel was published last year and the
sequel was just released. Happily ever after? No way.
Nowadays
publishers, including Amazon, expect the author to handle publicity and sales.
Like many writers, I struggle with how to promote my books and find venues to
sell them. If you’re with a small publisher like I am, bookstores treat your
work as if it was self-published; they’ll only carry it on consignment, taking a
substantial percentage for themselves, often charging an additional ‘shelving’
fee. Who can afford that?
Time to
get creative. Other writers in my group had similar experiences, so we banded
together and found other options, where there’d be enough potential customers, low
overhead, and not too much competition. Here’s what worked for us:
FARMER’S
MARKET – Our town holds a Farmer’s market Saturday mornings from late spring through
early fall. We rented a space and began selling our books. Meeting with the
public and being there to talk about our work generated many sales, on average
ten books each week. Our success was largely due to the variety of genres we
carried, from mystery to memoir to historical fiction, but tourists snapped up
our short story anthologies, which focus on the island. And unlike produce, our
books didn’t rot if they were left in the car.
CRAFT
SHOWS – Last year we sponsored a book night at a local pub. This year we’ll
participate in at least two holiday craft shows. Books make great gifts, and
having them signed by the author makes them special. They’re easy to wrap and
thanks to media rates, inexpensive to ship. Next year, look for our booth at
the Coupeville Arts Festival in August, a two-day event that brings out
thousands of shoppers looking for unique items.
“LOCATION
LOCATION LOCATION” – Author Avis Rector focused her book on Whidbey Island history.
Go to any local Chamber of Commerce, or stay at one of our inns, and you’ll find
her novel. Her earlier children’s book about visiting a farm is still available
at farm stores throughout the country. Another author, Rowena Williamson,
always features a Scottish deerhound in her novels, which she promotes on
deerhound websites. My own unpublished mystery takes place in a library,
inspired by my experience in library administration. It would be a great
addition to a library gift store when it’s published. If your book ties in to a
locality, profession, or activity, see if you can connect it to a related venue.
No
guarantees that any of these ideas will make you a best-selling author, but I
promise they will expand your readership by introducing you to a wider audience
and connecting with readers with whom you share an interest with your
character’s world. Good luck.
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Miko Johnston is the author of A Petal In The Wind and its first sequel, A Petal In The Wind II: Lala Hafstein. Her short stories appear in
the Sisters in Crime Anthology LAst Exit
To Murder and Write Around Whidbey.
Her buy link on Amazon is
Miko first contemplated a writing career as a poet at age six. That
notion ended four years later when she found no 'help wanted' ads for poets in
the Sunday NY Times classified section, but her desire to write persisted.
After graduating from NY University, she headed west to pursue a career as a
journalist before switching to fiction. She is a founding member of Writers in
Residence:
Comments
I would strongly suggest working the markets with other writers to provide a diverse selection of books. We always ask browsers, 'what do you like to read?' Often the answer is, 'everything'. Thanks to a group that includes writers of mystery, suspense, political thrillers, historical fiction, fantasy, romance, YA, memoirs and non-fiction, we carry 'everything'.