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How to Promote Your Book (Even if You Hate Marketing)

May 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

You wrote your book and now you have to market it. You know you’ve got to do it. But you procrastinate, hoping someone else will do the marketing for you.

Your book, which you spent hours, days, months, and years writing requires marketing.

Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan (Photo credit: EmaStudios)

What do you do?

You can’t use Harry Potter’s magic wand to establish your platform and marketing plan.

Or can you?

No, magic doesn’t last forever. You must roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty with marketing.

The good news is you can market your book even if you hate marketing. The solution is easy. Stop saying you hate marketing and you won’t attract negative thoughts, feelings, and beliefs around marketing.

What you resist persists

Debbie Ford, a #1 New York Times best-selling author and international expert in the field of personal transformation and human potential, says “What you resist persists.” She’s right.

If you keep resisting the marketing of your book, it won’t get marketed. It will sit in boxes (if you ordered copies) or sit online.

Accept that marketing is a part of being an author and writer. Even if your book is published by a traditional publisher, you’re still responsible for some of the marketing. You can’t get away from it.

Turn That Marketing Frown Upside Down

Whether you like it or not, sales and marketing are a part of an author’s life. You may as well become friends with marketing instead of resisting it. When you do this, the tightness in your chest, face and shoulders will decrease. You’ll feel more relaxed and won’t freak out when you hear someone mention ‘marketing.’

Forget about the pressures of marketing. Think about how much fun it is. Think about it from a networking standpoint. You’re meeting and greeting people and showing them your great product, your book.

Once you’ve embrace marketing, use the following easy steps to promote and market your book.

1. Use social media. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are the ‘Big 3′ social networks. You can tweet excerpts from your book or chapter titles. You can set-up a Tweet Chat and ‘chat’ with readers. Set-up a Facebook fan page and hold a contest for your book. It’s simple! Write an ad for a contest, choose a winner from the millions of entries, and make someone happy by giving them your book for free! Use LinkedIn to promote your book. Find questions that pertain to your topic in the Answer/Question section of LinkedIn. Answer questions and provide a link to your author website or book website. Join groups that pertain to your topic. Or, create your own group.

2. Ask your family and friends to spread the word. Family and friends will be delighted to help you out, right? If they support you and your writing they will. Don’t be shy about asking them to speak about your book at work, the gym, etc. As long as they know ‘who’ your target audience is they won’t have a problem spreading the word about your book.

3. Hold a meeting at your community’s business center. Do you live in an apartment complex that has a meeting room? What about a condo or townhome complex that has a business center? Ask if you can book the room for two hours and invite people from your area to check out your new book. You can speak for 20-30 minutes or longer. Not only is this a good way to promote and market your book, its’ a good way to get to know your neighbors.

4. Become a guest blogger. Find blogs and or websites that are in alignment with your book and pitch website owner’s guest blog topics. It’s a win-win situation because you get to promote you and your book and the blog owner provides fresh and unique content to readers.

5. Asked to be interviewed. Sign up with Reporter Connection or HARO and help people out. You may not be thrilled with phone interviews, but you could always do an interview via Skype or email. I know some people, old school types, ‘poo-poo’ email interviews, but people are busy these days. Sometimes you have no choice but to do an email interview. Plus, they’re easy and convenient. No one says that you can’t do a follow up phone interview.

6. Conduct a teleseminar or webinar. There are plenty of platforms to use from GoTo Meeting to Instant Teleseminar 2.0. Some are free, while others have a monthly fee. Use the service that works for you. You don’t have to hold a two hour teleseminar or webinar. You can hold one that’s 30 minutes. When you become more comfortable, you can hold one that lasts one hour.

7. Become comfortable with saying “I’m an author or I’m a writer.” Keep repeating that you’re an author or writer. Imagine how it feels to be a New York Times best-selling author. Feel and own it. Don’t be shy about it. Imagine how it would feel to have people come up to you and say, “Your writing helped me get through a difficult time.” Your writing inspired me to follow my dreams.” Go to that place within your mind’s eye and ‘feel’ it. Visualize yourself as a successful published author/writer, and you’ll be one.

So there you have it. If you want your book to succeed, if you want to succeed, you have to embrace marketing. It’s a part of an author’s life. It’s a part of a writer’s life. You can’t run away from it. You may as well accept marketing into your life.

Let’s face it. You’re a writer for two reasons: 1) to solve people’s problems; and 2) sales and marketing.

Your book is ready for millions of readers to read it. But who will know about it if you don’t market it. How will you solve a person’s problems if you don’t market your book? People are waiting for you and your book. Don’t let them down.

This means feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

This means persevering when you want to give up.

This means tuning out the naysayers who tell you that marketing is too hard and it takes time and money. Don’t listen to them. No one ever got anywhere without doing some work. Your book is your baby. It’s your responsibility to make sure that it’s nurtured and cared for. You’re the one that can make sure it succeeds. Let go of the idea that it’s up to others. It’s up to you.

Market your book even if you hate marketing. People are waiting to hear from you. They’re waiting to read your book. They’re waiting for your solution(s) to their problems.

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How to Become Delectable Creation in Five Easy Steps

May 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Post is from Katy Tafoya, a teacher and coach, who finds joy in helping women claim their passion and expertise. She guides solopreneurs to make their lives and their businesses juicier, more fulfilling and more successful. She also leads the Val Gal quarterly networking dinners which are always open to the public and in the greater San Fernando Valley. If you’re ready to identify, claim and leverage your expertise and live your passion you can sign up for a a F.R.E.E. subscription to her weekly ezine at SuccessForSolpreneurs.com.

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE? See Katy’s blog at SuccessforSolopreneurs.com

“Nothing you have done, nothing that was done toy, and nothing anyone else has ever said you or believed about you erases the inalienable truth that you are a delectable creation.” ~ Victoria Moran

A couple weeks back I read a fun book by Victoria Moran called “Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day.” While it isn’t a business book, I found that it really spoke to the entrepreneur in me.

Right from the onset it resonated with me. I mean how could it not when the very first chapter is “Know That You Are Worthy” and offers up the juicy tidbit that I quoted above, right?

Cover of "Living a Charmed Life: Your Gui...

Cover via Amazon

I think often times, as a female solopreneurs, we forget just how worthy and deserving we are. We forget that we are doing exactly as we are meant to be doing at this particular moment in time. I mean, come on, as Ms. Moran says…are we not a delectable creation?

But I get it.  

Sometimes, we’re so busy putting the needs of others (our spouses, our kids, our pets, our parents, our vendors and yes, even our clients) above our own.

But of course, putting the needs of others before our own needs means that we run the risk of wearing ourselves down. This could lead to lack of joy in our business or our life, frustration at not being where we want to be, or even anger towards those we’re caring for.

Or God forbid, the stress of doing too much for others and not enough for ourselves can lead to seeming depression or illness.

We need to feel worthy – and hold tight to that worthiness – to carve some personal time out for ourselves. And we need to do this both personally and professionally.

As a solopreneur, we are our businesses. For many of us, we’re in charge of all areas of our business. We wear many hats. And let’s face it, as the saying goes…if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!

To help you claim your worthiness I invite you to embrace and practice one (or more) of these five simple ways to get started creating the sacred space in your life that you deserve.

Get Away: Step away from your computer. Walk away from your kitchen. Leave your home or office. Even if you can’t spare more than a few minutes, you need to create the time to actually breathe away from your desk, your office or your family and your home. Go for a walk around the block. See what all the rage is about with a local Zumba class. Get your zen on by heading to some local gardens or greenery. Head out for a cup of green tea on a garden patio. Just find the time, at least once a week to step away from your every day space and indulge in being you.

Get Focused: What do you want? Who do you want to be? What would you like to experience? Get some focus on what you intend for yourself, your relationships, your family, your business.  You don’t have to tackle it all at once. But focus on something you want to do, be or have. Get clear about it – know what you want and what you don’t want – so you can welcome it into your life.

Get Quiet: I don’t know about you, but my thoughts are always yammering away amongst themselves. I find that to get clear on things, to create the space to allow something new, I need to get quiet. That might mean meditating (usually guided) or it might mean listening to calming music. Or it might mean taking a nap (I blame the cat for being such a bad influence). For me, it really just means quieting my thoughts and allowing myself to just be and to process what’s going on around me and being aware of what comes forward in the quiet.

Get Creative: Creativity means different things to different people. For some it might mean writing, blogging or storytelling. For others, it’s art, music or dance. But don’t forget that being creative involves anything that you create…that could mean gardening, cooking, baking, knitting, dancing, or even rearranging furniture. The sky is the limit when it comes to creativity. When you allow your right brain time to work it’s magic, it often influences the left (more logical and practical and well, business senseical) in ways you haven’t even begun to imagine.

Get Worthy: I think this might be the most difficult part for many of us. But for your sake, your business’ sake, your sanity’s sake, know that you are worthy. And that you can take time to focus on yourself, your business or anything else you might want to noodle around with. If you don’t take care of your needs, who is going to take care of them for you? Just deciding to make the time (and actually taking the time) for yourself is one way to declare your worthiness.

Know that you deserve it. You earned it, just by being the dynamic and fabulous woman that you are.

You are worthy.

Why not take a little time and schedule out some time for yourself today.

No really, why not?

What do you do when you need time away? How do you celebrate your worthiness? I encourage you to share with your friends, fans and followers (and with me, if you don’t mind).

ACTION PLAN: Set some time aside today and plan at least one thing you can do before Monday to celebrate YOU and your delectableness.

What do you do to celebrate you and your writing? Share.

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InBoundWriter for WordPress Plug-In Can Strengthen Your Web Content Writing

March 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been testing InBoundWriter for WordPress Plug-In on my writer website, Savvy-Writer.com for a few weeks and have been pleasantly surprised by the plug-in. It’s helped me to strengthen my web content writing. The plug-in forces you to think about your ‘keywords/phrases’ and examine what information people are searching for. Not only does this benefit you, the freelance writer, but more importantly, it benefits your writing clients. It’s a win-win situation! [Read more...]

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Four Simple Things You Can Do Today to Get In Front of More People & Claim That Expertise!

January 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

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“Presence is more than just being there.” ~ Malcolm S. Forbes

Here’s another guest post from Katy Tafoya is teacher and a coach who finds joy in helping women claim their passion and expertise. She guides solopreneurs to make their lives and their businesses juicier, more fulfilling and more successful. She also leads the Val Gal quarterly networking dinners which are always open to the public and in the greater San Fernando Valley. If you’re ready to identify, claim and leverage your expertise and live your passion you can sign up for a a F.R.E.E. subscription to her weekly ezine at SuccessForSolpreneurs.com. [Read more...]

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What’s the Word: Creating a Theme For the New Year

January 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

This post is from Katy Tafoya, a teacher and a coach who finds joy in helping women claim their passion and expertise. She guides solopreneurs to make their lives and their businesses juicier, more fulfilling and more successful. She also leads the Val Gal quarterly networking dinners which are always open to the public and in the greater San Fernando Valley. If you’re ready to identify, claim and leverage your expertise and live your passion you can sign up for a a F.R.E.E. subscription to her weekly ezine at SuccessForSolpreneurs.com.

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE? See Katy’s blog at SuccessforSolopreneurs.com/blog

“I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.” ~ Mae West

Happy New Year!

No, really, my wish for you is that this year you will discover and experience your HAPPY new year. So now that we’re a couple days in, how are things shaping up for you?

Have you made those resolutions? I’m not one for making resolutions myself. Like many folks out there, I found that I made these promises and within days, I’ve broken then. And then I feel crappy, like a failure for not being able to follow through.

So instead, I like to focus on setting an intention or a theme for the year. Following my mentor, Christine Kane’s advice, I choose a word (any word or short phrase) that can become the theme for my year. For example, in the past I’ve used, “let go,” “create,” and one year, “giggle.” I know others have used joy, love, peace, strength, bold, etc. The word can be anything that resonates with you, inspires you, makes you smile or motivates you.

I’ve noticed that for me, the word that I start the year with and the word that I end the year with, are not always the very same word. Take last year for an example…I started the year with “create.” My intention was to spend the year not only creating new products, new services and new business, but I also wanted to remind myself to BE more creative. I wanted to get out there and embrace my inner artist.

Well, about mid-way through the year, my word changed to “imperfection” (which I’ve no doubt you noticed as I wrote about it all the time). I realized that I couldn’t be very creative if I was always striving for perfection.

So to allow more creativity and moments of actual creation, I had to learn to allow imperfection. I had to just do it, and not stress how perfect it turned out. In my mind, it was better to have something out there imperfectly, than to have nothing out there at all because I was still stuck on making sure everything was perfect. This opened the world up for me. In fact, it brought me to this year’s word…expand.

This year I want to expand — my life, my relationships, my products and services, my presence and my business as a whole. I want to be BIGGER and BOLDER. I want to be more audacious and more approachable. I want to be the me I know I was put here to be.

At the same time though, I want to it to be easy and effortless. I mean why make it difficult, right? Which then brought me to the phrase — effortless expansion. This year will be the year for effortless expansion.

Will I change it up mid-way again? Quite possibly. It really all depends how things go and expand. Either way, I’m open to whatever sort of “expansion” the new year brings my way.

I encourage you to find a word that empowers you, brings you joy, has you feeling focused and in charge. It can be a short phrase. It’s not carved in stone, so don’t stress over this.

Get silent and see what comes to you. Then put that word up somewhere where you can see it throughout the day. Let it inspire you. Let it BE you. Then remember to live your life….with intention. And if all else fails, there’s always the 2012 Resolution Generator.

I’d love to know what your word or short phrase is for this year. Feel free to respond back to this newsletter or send me an email.

ACTION PLAN: Pick a word for your year and try it on for size. When it feels right, embrace it! 

I invite you to share a little about who you are, what you do and your successes as solopreneur by joining the conversation at the Success for Solopreneurs community.

I hope you enjoyed Katy’s post!
Amandah

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