Marketing A Christian Book On A Budget

The Top Seven Ways To Market Your Book Online

~ Professional Book Reviews - Are you in need of a professional book review to share with the visitors on your authors site, at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel or with local book stores.

~ Book Review Marketing - We have the ability to place your book review on 50 separate sites that all have great content and that are constantly updated with fresh content. Unlike other sites that offer one to three month marketing packages, our book review marketing packages are for one full year.

~ Professional & Affective Video Book Trailers - The movie industry has used movie trailers for years. Today, many best selling authors use book trailers as a powerful marketing tool to promote their books. Let us create a affective book trailer production for your book.

~ Video Book Trailer Marketing - Book trailers are a powerful marketing tool when used properly. People are visual and love short clips. Just imagine having your book trailer shown on 50 separate sites for one full year.

~ Press Release Marketing - Need a Press Release? Press releases expose your book to all the right people. Radio stations, television producers, news paper columnists and other media related services. Press releases are used by marketing experts by the 1,000's daily. Our regular press release package includes: A professionally written press release posted on 25 author related sites. The Press release will be submitted to additional sites and exposed to various premier social networks plus the press release will be picked up by powerful feeds and launched into additional networks and communities. The author will get a copy of the press release with the right to use the press release (as written, cannot be altered).

~ Author Website Design and Creations - Every author needs a professional well laid out authors website to professionally promote themselves as author and their books. An authors professional image is just as important as a great looking book cover. We can create single page sites to full 10 page website with all the goodies, social buttons, and we can even set you up to except online payments for book sales.

~Expanded Website Marketing - It's a huge ocean out there online and one can have a great website and still get lost in the mix. It's important for a author to promote and market their website in ways that attract visitors of interest. You can have the greatest website found online and if no one can find it, it's useless. Gaining exposure online to be found on the major search engines, website marketing search engine optimizations, page placement and ranking are all just a few of the factors that are a part of having a successful authors website.

We can help you do design, create, and launch a turn key web site with all the goodies like social buttons, video, and so that visitors can purchase copies of your books right from your site. From 7 to 10 page websites and at affordable prices.

For further information about the above services and other great services visit Christian Book Marketing and lets get your name and book up in lights.

Poets Seeking Book Cover Art with Free Contest

It's been said (quite a few times!) that a picture is worth a thousand words. Even though Magdalena Ball and I are poets, we think the original author may have underestimated, and we'd like you--if you're a painter or a photographer--to prove us wrong.

We are the coauthors of the Celebration Series of chapbooks of poetry.

They include Cherished Pulse (for anyone you love)   , She Wore Emerald Then (for mothers on your gift list), Imagining the Future (for Fathers)  , and Blooming Red, a Christmas chapbook  . Chapbooks have been a tradition in the poetry world since Elizabethan times. The Celebration Series goes beyond the cliched sentiments in most greeting cards - and does it for about the same price.

All four of our chapbooks are illustrated by artists making each a triple effort.

Cherished Pulse and Blooming Red feature artwork from California artist Vicki Thomas. She Wore Emerald Then features photographs by May Lattanzio (see the cover in the Amazon buy-link at the left)  and Imagining the Future a photo by celebrated composer Ricky Ian Gordon.

We are planning a fifth chapbook lauding women's issues and feminist themes. We are looking for submissions to be used on its cover. Yes, it's a contest.

The winner's work will be featured on Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity to be published later in 2011. There is no pay but since Ball runs respected review Web site The Compulsive Reader (http://www.thecompulsivereader.com/ ), and Howard-Johnson is the author of a multi award-winning series of books for writers including The Frugal Book Promoter, they can promise a wide distribution of the cover image, credit, and a biography of the cover artist in the book, and tons of marketing exposure.

See the other chapbooks' covers at www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm.

Here is a poem from that chapbook to give you an idea of its contents:

Ariel
Memory's two voices,
the you-girl
suffering the moment
and the you-now
who interprets.
You promise yourself
you won't fear the secrets,
won't tell what happened
without the feelings.
You deny yourself that
and you become Ursula
stealing your own song,
leaving yourself gurgling
under the sea. You need
the music to tell your story,
to find it, to understand it
to know the truth,
to reach above the
ocean's surface
where
others
live.
If you have something you'd like us to see, please e-mail your creative work to Ball at maggie_ball@bigpond.com with SUBMISSION: DEEPER INTO THE POND in the subject line. We hope to have a decision by June 1, 2011 and we reserve the right to select no winner. If a winner is selected, we may also choose runners-up so those acknowledgments may be used by the winners for purposes of marketing. There is no fee for entering, and only the honor and publication of the artwork for being selected. Oh, yes. And two copies of the finished chapbook. We hope to hear from you.

Having A Solid Book Marketing Plan Can Make A Difference

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.

Christian Book Marketing - For The Christian Author

Dear Authors,

CBM Christian Book Marketing is offering special pricing on many of their author related book marketing packages. From professional book reviews, book review marketing, expanded on-line marketing, book trailer productions and marketing, author press releases and more. Here is a great opportunity to get some great services and some wonderful prices.

Get the word out about your Christian title. Visit Christian Book Marketing while these specials are available and drop them a email requesting information about their book marketing packages.

Celebrate E-Book Week with Free E-Chapbooks

This comes to subscribers and visitors as a gift, but also as an example of how authors--yep, even poets!--might use promotional week and month designations as an excuse to promote. This is, after all, what they were designef for! (-:  It is copied from a special edition of my newsletter but could easily be made into a media release.  If you want the freebie, use the link in the letter, not the Amazon widgets; they will let you buy paperbacks, though!

Magdalena Ball and I are celebrating Read an E-book Week by giving e-book copies of our poetry to all comers from March 6 to 12.


Our chapbooks of poetry include Cherished Pulse (for anyone you love) with artwork from California artist Vicki Thomas, She Wore Emerald Then (for mothers on your gift list) with photographs by May Lattanzio, Imagining the Future (for Fathers), and Blooming Red, a Christmas chapbook. All are priced to compete with greeting cards at any time of year but this is a celebration of F r ^ ^ (and e-books!).

Chapbooks have been a tradition in the poetry world since Elizabethan times. The Celebration Series goes beyond the clichéd sentiments in most greeting cards—and does it for about the same price.

Now the full series is being offered for f r ^ ^ during Read an E-book Week from March 6 to 12 to help raise public awareness of electronic reading. Read an E-book Week’s Web site (http://www.ebookweek.com ) provides information on the latest e-book reading devices, different e-book stores, benefits of e-books, as well as the history and the future of e-books. Visitors will be able to download free reads from different major retailers, authors and publishers during the Read an E-book Week event period. The Celebration books can be read in over nine digital formats on any computer or portable reading device anywhere in the world. This is a revolution for both authors, both of whom started their writing careers when the latest technology was a typewriter and carbon paper for copies. To access the free books, visit:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/maggieball


Magdalena Ball runs the highly respected www.compulsivereader.com review site. She is the author of the poetry book Repulsion Thrust, published to unanimous 5-star reviews. Her novel Sleep Before Evening, published in 2007, was a Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist. You all probably know about my poetry except for the one published quite a while ago by Finishing Line Press, (www.budurl.com/CarolynsTracings ), which isn’t being offered f r ^^ by contractual agreement. For more information on any of the chapbooks in this poetry series, contact either of the authors or visit media rooms at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/
 or http://www.magdalenaball.com/
.

Happy promoting, writing and poetry reading!

Carolyn Howard-Johnson