I’m always looking for free or low cost marketing ideas. This week I’ll be sharing three new ones I’ve stumbled on recently. It’s too soon to say if I’ll get any results from any of these, but since the price was right, I thought I had nothing to lose.
The Independent Author List is what it says, a list of independent authors and their books. Authors can promote literary events, or share how their books came to be written. The owner of the list markets it on most major social media websites. There is a $20 set up fee.
Do readers seek out books written by independent authors? I don’t know. Probably not too many. But for $20 I thought this one was worth a try.
This free service helps arrange speaking and other events for authors. Authors can set up a profile and include a video of them speaking. Anyone who wants to organize an event agrees to guarantee a certain minimum number of book or ticket sales to the event. The idea is to avoid authors from speaking to empty rooms or doing events that result in only 1 or 2 sales.
This one is intriguing to me because I’ve always done well when I have spoken to groups or done book signings. I just haven’t had time to set up more events. It seems that the authors do have to set up events they want to hold, but the website streamlines the process.
This site offers free book publicity. Fill out a form, write a unique book description (not just your back cover copy) that gives readers more, and provide links to your book trailer or other videos. They also have users who write book reviews. This site is an Amazon affiliate, so they do get a commission on sales.
Nearly 800 authors have signed up for with AskDavid, and the site has an Alexa page ranking of just under 121,000 (when I checked it today), so there is some good traffic.
Will any of this help? Hard to say. But I’m willing to try free or low cost ways to get the word out in different places. Stay tuned, and I’ll let you know.
Does anyone else have some thoughts on how well these strategies might work? Or has anyone else found other free ways to market books?