Introduction: This blog focuses on promoting your novel using non-fiction book-promotion techniques. It is based on a comment I made to Catherine Levison, who had asked her followers on Facebook for ideas on practical ways to promote her new novel – she wasn’t sure, since her four previous books had been non-fiction … instead of fiction.
Read on to see my comments to Catherine, which should be useful to anyone who’s written (or who is thinking about writing) a novel.
Hello, Catherine Levison, my friend Jube Dankworth mentioned me in her post about 15 minutes ago. I’m an expert in book promotion (including novels), as well as a one-time literary agent. I’d be glad to talk with you, to provide you with guidance on marketing and promoting your novel using non-fiction book-promotion techniques – or, I’d be glad to more directly help you market and promote your novel.
First, let’s discuss your question about literary agents, since I’ve been one. My late wife and I owned and operated a lit-agency, Barnett Literary Agency, for about 10 years, and I have recently re-started it to help a long-time book promotion client take his latest work to main street. If you were to get your book published through a literary agent, it would most likely be a small publisher. For example, my two published novels were taken to market by small publishers. Even with my publishing industry connections as a lit-agent, that was the best I could do. Whenever you’re published by a small publisher, you still have to focus on doing your own promotion, as they’re not going to do much of that for you. If you still want to go that way, whatever you do, don’t tell your agent (or publisher) that you don’t plan on writing another novel – as I think you sense, that would be a kiss of death.
So, given that you have a novel that you’re probably going to self-publish – why not, since you’ll have to market it yourself, you might as well make all the money instead of just 10 percent – you need to figure out how to promote your book. This is something that I learned how to do for myself in the 80s, and did so well that several of my publishers retained me to promote their other books. I’ve been doing that for clients authors and publishers since the mid-80s. I’ve also written a new book for writers and wannabe writers that I’ll be publishing later this spring – “Write Now! … Writing, Publishing and Selling YOUR Book to Attract New Clients and New Speaking Gigs While Transforming Yourself into a News Media Expert.” I focus the second half of this book on promoting your books – so I’m in a position to help you with either good advice (which is free) or more directly. Some strategies you can use include the following ideas.
First, create promotion efforts that tie into the theme of your novel. For instance, my second published novel, The Kelly Incident, (which I co-wrote with my late wife, under the pen name Anna Karyl) involves UFOs – the book is a fictional retelling of a well-known UFO encounter in 1955 – one of the 26 people involved was my late wife’s cousin, so we had all the facts. As the author of The Kelly Incident, which is now available on Amazon Kindle, I often comment on breaking UFO news (which occurs very regularly) on the blogs and groups and sites that attract UFO “fans.” Whenever I make such a comment, I always mention that my observations are based on work I did on The Kelly Incident, and no matter what I say on those online UFO platforms, I always wind up selling a chunk of books. So figure out what your novel talks about, then position yourself as a published-author expert in that book’s topic area. Then, whenever news breaks (use Google Alerts to find this breaking news), make comments about the news on topical blogs and groups and such, and you’ll sell books.
By the same token, as an expert (which is another way of defining a published author), you can also become a news media topical expert. This subject is a major part of my forthcoming book, “Write Now! … especially this part of the book mentioned in the title: Transforming Yourself into a News Media Expert.” Regarding this book, if you’re seriously interested in successfully promoting your own book, contact me off-list and I’ll send you a draft copy of Write Now!, which tells you a lot about how to become a media expert. By the way, if this approach to book promotion appeals to you, for your novel or any/all of your other books, I can help you make that happen – that’s what I do for a lot of clients. If you read widely on this topic on the Internet, you’ll find that some “experts” will claim this approach doesn’t work for novelists, but they’re wrong. I’ve seen Brad Thor and the late Vince Flynn on TV, playing expert in their field (espionage and government intrigue). More to the point, a few years ago, I hosted a History Channel program, Modern Marvels – Submarine Disasters. This program included both the late Tom Clancy and the amazing Clive Cussler in the program who are experts on submarine disasters and marine archeology because of their novels featuring Jack Ryan (Clancy) and Dirk Pitt (Cussler). So this approach can work – more important, it can work for you.
You can also reach out to “fans” of your topical area. A great example of this approach is Lawrence Block, who some years back created a character (his “Hit Man“) who – when he isn’t killing people on a contract basis – is also a stamp collector. As he travels the country on his murderous assignments, he takes the time to visit stamp shops and pick up rarities for his collection, and in the process, the lead character tells you a lot about stamps and collecting. As a result, Block has been invited to speak at philatelic conventions and to be interviewed in stamp-collecting magazines. I’m sure it has helped him to sell a lot of books. So, focus on your topic’s novel and fans will turn you into experts, just as has happened for me with the Kelly Incident.
Catherine, these are just a few of the tactics and techniques you can use to build your audience base. There are many success stories surrounding these approaches. For instance, the author of the book The Celestine Prophecy sold 70,000 copies – most at whole life expos and other new-age events – before a publisher paid him a million-dollar advance to allow them to republish it. That’s just one novelistic success story, and there are many others. Yours could be among them, and I’d be glad to help, either with free advice or with more specific marketing support services. Go to my website (www.barnettmarcom.com) and check out my other blogs on book promotion. Most are focused on non-fiction books, but I learned a long time ago that what works for non-fiction can often (almost always) be made to work for novels as well. I’ve used these techniques for my own two royalty-published novels, as well as for clients’ novels, so I know they work.
If you’d like to continue this, please message me on Facebook, or contact me at ned@barnettmarcom.com or 702-561-1167. I’d be glad to help.
Note: This blog is based on material included in my forthcoming book, “Write Now! … Writing, Publishing and Selling YOUR Book to Attract New Clients and New Speaking Gigs While Transforming Yourself into a News Media Expert.” My new book will be published later this spring.
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