Hi, guys, we’re on hiatus again while I get the next episode of Space Traipse: Hold My Beer ready. It’ll be 2 weeks this time, because I also need to do major revisions on my current novel to send to my mentor by the end of the month. 

Today we’re joined by author and blogger Jo Linsdell, who is here to share some ideas for blog posts that promote your book without you being a pushy sales-person. (This is a topic close to my heart!) Find out more about Jo at her website www.JoLinsdell.com

When writing blog posts for your author blog, you might struggle with how to avoid falling into the “buy my book” territory. The good news is that it’s actually much easier than you may have thought.

An easy way to plug your book without being a pushy sales-person, is to talk about related topics and drop in a mention of the book. You use the book as an example for the point you’re making/topic you’re discussing.

Here’s a few ideas of the types of posts you could try:

  1. Discuss why writers should also be marketers.

We all know that even the best book in the world won’t sell if nobody knows it exists. Marketing is therefore a part of being a writer. For this topic you could talk about why marketing is important and maybe use an example or two of ways you’ve tried marketing your own book. In my case, I wrote a book about virtual book tours so I could easily do a blog post on the topic of tours. It could be to promote that book, but also my other books as I’ve done virtual book tours for each of them.

  1. Share a press release for your book or upcoming author event.

This one is pretty straight forward.

  1. Share tips and highlights from events you attended.

This doesn’t have to be an event for your book. It could be another authors book signing or a conference. For example, I organise an annual online conference called Promo Day. During the event there are free webinars about book marketing and author branding, and opportunities to promote your own books. Attendees could post about that fact that they’ll be promoting their book during the event, or share about what they learnt during the webinars and how they hope to use the information for their own book.

If you go to a book signing, you can easily plug your own book in the post by mentioning what you liked about it and what you’d like to include when you do an event for your own book.

  1. Talk about book marketing and the strategies you’ve tried. Ask readers for input.

Again, this one is pretty straight forward. You highlight the methods you’ve tried for your own book.

  1. Share about special deals on your books.

Another easy one.

  1. Share the best book marketing advice you ever received.

Give an example of how you put that advice into practice for your own book.

  1. Talk about best selling books in your genre and why you think they are selling.

Include in the post how your book compares to the best sellers. Why your book should be in the best seller list for your genre too.

 

  1. Showcase fan photos of them with your books, drawings of your characters, etc…

Let your fans doing the talking for you.

 

  1. Share about a writing retreat you took part in, or would like to attend.

Talk about why you took part/would like to take part referencing your book in the process.

 

  1. Share a video about your book.

Video can be a great way of grabbing reader attention, and gives a nice break from plain text blog posts. You could share a book trailer for your book or one where you do a reading from the book like this one I did for The Pendant, the first book in my KOSMOS series.

 

Have you tried any of these? Got some suggestions for other types of posts you could do? Leave a comment below. We’d love to hear your feedback.