Facebook – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

As I mentioned in my prior blog post, there is a definite learning curve to this whole ‘promoting your book’ thing. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is this: assume nothing! (Remember Felix Unger’s lesson on what happens when you ASSUME?!).

Anyway, here are what I think are the top 10 tips (in no particular order) for having a successful (eg: well attended) author reading.

Create a Facebook event (you can figure it out; it’s not hard) and then share it on your own page, your author page, and the pages of any friends that will have you.
Make an author page on Facebook, if you haven’t done that yet.
Design some flyers (this can be as simple as a photo of your book, the date, time, and place of your event) and put them up around the town where you’ll be speaking (grocery stores, hairdressers, health food stores…any place that has a community bulletin board).
Ask the person with whom you book your event to send out a press release to any and every newspaper that they can.
Write a press release, so it will be ready when you need it. This can be as simple as your (short) bio, your book title and a little about it, and again the date, time, and place of your talk.
Word of mouth is your friend: tell people and ask them to tell people: their friends, their families.
Make sure you bring business cards, book marks, and any other promotional materials you’ve got to every talk and/or signing you do.
Consider offering a ‘free gift with purchase’ to your book buyers. This doesn’t need to cost you much at all. In my book, there is an Italian grandmother who makes the best gravy in the entire world, so I gave out a recipe for it (from my own Italian Nana, whose recipe really IS the best in the entire world) as a bonus gift.
It doesn’t ever hurt to have chocolate spread out around your book. As people reach for the chocolate, you are also drawing their eyes (and hands!) toward your book!
If you are doing a library talk, they usually will have a sidewalk easel to put out to alert people about your event. Make sure they use it for you!

That’s all I have for you today. Please comment below if you have any additional tips that have worked for you!

Last year I was inspired by My One Word to choose one word as my New Year’s Resolution. I chose “Edit”, which soon morphed into two words, “Focus”. I optimistically wrote my words on an index card (one on each side, so I was still looking at just one word at a time!) and put it on my desk.

As you can see, it soon became surrounded by other words…is that wrong?

This year I chose “focus” again (guess why!) and added “balance” as my second word, after attending a yoga class taught by my favorite yoga teacher (and friend), Kristen, on New Year’s Eve.

Soon thereafter, however, I came across a Facebook post by another friend, Jody, that mentioned the word “hope” in connection with 2012. Then today, another image depicting the word “hope” showed up in my email inbox.

I can take a hint; I’m figuring out that I need to add “hope” to that mix. Therefore, I’m officially adopting “hope” as my third word for 2012. Hey, three is my favorite number anyway!