The Best Thing I Did to Promote my Book -- Guest Post by Andy Holloman

Original Title: Shades of Gray
Author: Andy Holloman
Publisher: Triple J Press
Release Date: December 1st 2011
Genre: Thriller, Suspense

How far would you go to save your child's life? Could you break the law?

What if your travel business was suddenly in danger of going under because of 9/11?

A single father decides to partner up with woman from the opposite side of the tracks.

Can their partnership deliver the cash they BOTH desperately need?

Could they fall in love?

And will they survive to see the Summer of 2002?

The Best Thing I Did to Promote my Book

-Guest Post by Andy Holloman

I was fortunate to have a teeny little platform that I could “bounce” off when I launched my book in late 2011. To take advantage of this, I had a “pre-launch” period where I took orders for a paperback version of the book and I was able to sell approximately 200 or so copies. Getting the books shipped took a wee bit longer than I anticipated. This was quite fortuitous, however, because during this time,

I was fortunate to have made a writer friend who had a page on his website devoted to “reader pics”.

Since a significant portion of these “pre-launch” buyers were overseas (about 30%), I thought that it would be wonderful to have these readers snap a photo with themselves and the book in exotic locales of their choosing. So I simply printed a short note and put it inside the book, encouraging people to snap a picture and email it too me. Wow! Once the books arrived, the photos started coming in. I received pictures from all over the US, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Whenever I received a picture, I posted it on my website and sent out a few messages to promote the newly arrived photo.

Now the unexpected part of this was that some folks took it upon themselves to REALLY go overboard and shoot tons of photos. One reader even took a whole series of photos of the book in very exotic locales as she sailed from New Zealand back to her home in England.

And these photos took on a life of their own. Readers started seeing the photos and took it upon themselves to shoot even more pics.

I even had people send photos of themselves with their eReader device and the cover of the book popped up on this device.

The promotional value in this turned out to be quite lovely. Photos of readers holding up copies of your book in front of the Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks proved to be quite a treasure trove of promotional opportunities. As a first time author, it was invaluable to have these items to promote the book and get the word out about the novel. There’s nothing quite like enthusiastic fans to encourage others to take a chance on your novel. It even worked well for folks who had eReader devices. Thus I would encourage any writer to put a small blurb in the beginning of their work encouraging their readers to send photos. Folks love to see themselves on the web, and as an author trying to sell more books, I was very, very happy to oblige. Happy promoting !!!