Book Marketing, The BIG Question

[Smitty]

The Big question that every author asks. How does a Christian author go about promoting his or her book? I would encourage you to place a book marketing plan into motion. Marketing a Christian book and title can be quite challenging and finding successful ways to tap into both the Christian and secular marketplace is important. Here is a very simply plan to follow that will help you promote both you as author and your Christian book.

1) Christian Website Design - You must first focus on a home base or platform to work from. Creating a professional authors website is a 10 on a scale of 10. You can also utilize a blog and especially if you have the knowledge and time to create a professional blog that will attract visitors. However, if you don't have a minimum of a year or two creating professional websites and/or blogs to include a understanding of search engine optimization, and how the Internet functions. You could do more damage than good to your professional image as a author.

2) Book Reviews - A professional book review can be a very powerful marketing tool when use properly and I'm not talking about on Amazon. There are millions of titles on Amazon and endless book reviews. It's very easy to with high hopes get lost among the numbers.

3) What does a professional Christian Book Review look like? There are many sites that write book reviews. However, as a Christian author who has written a book to the Glory of God, you just can't in trust your book to any book reviews service. Your book requires a reviewer with a understanding in the word of God, Kingdom principles and that shares a relationship with Christ.

4) Book Trailers - A professional book trailer is also a powerful way and tool to promote and market one's book. People are visual and they love short movie clips. The movie industry has used movie trailers for years and with great success. Today authors from all walks are taking advantage of the book trailer craze.

5) Authors Press Releases - A professional authors press release is a great way to get the word out about your new book release. There are even free press release sites where you can submit your press release for publication.

6) Christian Authors Pages - A Christian authors page is a single page at a website that markets your book to the visitors and readers of that website. The marketing consists of a photo (jpg.) of your book cover, a short description and a link back to your authors website or blog.

7) Christian Book Marketing - Expanded book marketing and SEO. Driving traffic and gathering the attention of potential book lovers can be challenging. The Internet is a very huge ocean of websites, blogs and interactions and changes daily. This is where expanded marketing of your website or blog can help you to find success. At a minimum, you are going to have to create hundreds of links that are found on the major search engines so that people can find your website under various word searches and this requires not only the sites to market on, but also the understanding of how this procedure unfolds.

And most importantly, prayer. Prayer is key in finding success not just as a author, but as a Christian.