Using press releases for marketing or promoting your book or book’s website has become increasingly popular as publishers discover the powerful benefits of using press releases. Send out at least 10 press releases to the print and broadcast media in your area every month. When picked up by wire services, a press release can easily end up generating hundreds of mentions for your book. It’s important to publish a website that focuses on your title; you’ll be able to refer editors and customers and all interested parties to your book information with the click of a mouse. Offer to trade writing a monthly column in a trade publication in your books’ genre, in trade for display ads on the same page. Give away one of your books in a charity raffle at a local function to get more exposure for your book.

The success of any book marketing effort depends on a good book and just plain hard work; its been done many times before and you can do it too. Make sure to test, test, and test some more before you lay out large sums of money. With these book marketing tips you’ll be well on your way to conquering the world of self publishing and book publishing.

Self publication means more money in your pocket and not your publishers.  Let us assume you do go the traditional publishing route for  your first book. If you were able to receive an advance of 6-10 thousand dollars, a very good advance for a first time author, I know many first time authors that walk away with advances of two to three thousand and the royalties are not very good either. This is not because they had a bad agent, it is because they have not proven themselves yet as a marketable author. Oh, yeah I forgot to mention that no  matter how small your advance, your literary agent will take  15% off the top. So let us talk about royalties for a moment. Generally speaking, hardcover books pay royalty rates of 10% on the first one to 250,000 copies sold. So if your book has a  cover price of $25.00, then you will earn a $2.50 royalty on  every copy sold, up to 250,000 copies. This means that if you only sell 10,000 copies, then you will only earn $25,000. Some publishing contracts even stipulate that if your book does not earn back its advance, you owe them! Keep in mind that our agent gets 15% of this too, and all of this is paid after you have earned your advance. Paperback  royalties pay an average of 6%.  That is not much of a salary for all of the work you put into  your book. Do not you deserve much more? We think you do! In addition to the small pay check, publishers can withhold your royalties as a reserve against book returns and you are still responsible for promoting your own book, which can mean hiring a publicist. There goes your advance! What does all this mean? It means, if you are willing to do the legwork yourself, meaning packaging, printing,  distributing, and promoting your book, every single cent from every single sale goes directly into your pocket. So if you sell 10,000 books at 19.99 each, you have made  $199,990. Um…that is a lot of money.  Of course you do have to cover your printing and marketing costs but you will earn significantly more per book and with proper packaging, you can roll your costs into the price of  your book. For example, if your book costs $2.00 to print and market then you up your price to $21.99. Readers will  be willing to pay the extra $2.00 because you have told them, through your amazing packaging, that the book will  benefit their lives the way no other book can. In fact, I have seen books sell for several hundred dollars. If you have extremely specialized and unique knowledge, you can price it at any level that you desire and people will buy  it. The really great thing about self publishing is that you can update your book and re-release it anytime you want and keep the profits rolling in. Self publishing is fun, it is  challenging, and it is very very lucrative.