Virtual Publicity Tours – Not Only for Authors

I recently posted about virtual publicity tours, and how authors can use various online promotional strategies to promote a new book. But virtual publicity tours are for more than authors – freelance writers (as well as anyone with something to promote) can also make use of them. Focusing on virtual blog tours specifically, it’s really nothing more than basic blogger relations. Blogger Relations for Freelance

How to Get Decent Freelance Writing Gigs from Forums

A common marketing / networking tool for new freelance writers is the forum. You can join forums in just about any niche – sometimes they’re stand-alone sites and sometimes they’re an add-on community to another resource. But how can you use forums to get decent freelance writing gigs? Here are a few tips that I use regularly to get high-paying gigs from online forums: Join

Why Author PR can be more Important than Book PR

We all know that you have to promote your books if you want them to sell. We should also all know that book PR is a great component of that whole process – the part where you show your book is relevant to potential readers, bring it to their attention, and get some buzz generated. But when working on a book PR campaign, I think

Using Your Writing to Market Your Writing

As a freelance writer, you have a free marketing tool at your disposal – your ability to write. When marketing your freelance writing services, how can you leverage your ability to write in order to attract more clients? Try these writing-related marketing tips to showcase your writing ability while bringing in more work: Start a Blog By setting up your own blog, you get to

Marketing Plans for Freelance Writers

Coming from a marketing / PR background, I understand the importance of marketing plans, and consider them vital for any kind of business or independent professional. Yet as a freelancer, I can also understand the reluctance in writing a marketing plan that’s too formal and detailed. Some writers simply don’t know where to start or how to plan their yearly marketing strategies. Others don’t know

Connecting With Customers

We talked the other day about an example of an editor personally connecting with a buyer (in this case, me) after a purchase. It was an excellent example of relationship building with your target market for your book. So today I want to ask you… how else can authors build a relationship with their audience, whether one-on-one or not? I’ll kick it off with a

Case Study: Building a Relationship With Your Audience

First of all, let me apologize for my long absence from All Book Marketing. Today seemed like a good day to get things back on track after a particularly pleasant exchange with an editor who demonstrated an important element of book PR: building a relationship with your audience. It’s no secret that I’m a big advocate of author blogging to promote books and interact with

How to Use Testimonials to Sell an E-book

Authors can use testimonials to sell an e-book in a number of ways.. They can be used on the e-book sales page, email newsletters, blog posts, the author’s business site, or just about anywhere the e-book could be mentioned. Here are a few ways people use testimonials: Fake Testimonials Under no circumstances do I endorse this kind of use of testimonials. People essentially use stock images

A Trick for Finding High Paying Web Writing Gigs

Here’s a trick that just occurred to me tonight while getting the next freelance writing jobs post ready for All Freelance Writing (I haven’t tried it myself yet): Go to a site where you can find freelance writing jobs. Search for the term “freelance writers.” Now, instead of just looking for actual job titles for freelance writers, look for freelance editing jobs where the term

Should You Write a Free E-book?

People write e-books for several reasons. One of those reasons is to make money. So why would any e-book author be willing to give their e-book away for free? If you’re planning to write an e-book, how should you decide whether to charge for it or give it away? It really comes down to why you’re writing your e-book in the first place. If your

Cold Contacting Prospective Clients

Cold calling or emailing prospective clients to offer your services can be an effective way to bring in business as a freelance writer. However, many writers are turned off by the idea because they lack confidence. I haven’t used cold contacting in quite some time, because I’ve been kept pretty busy with referrals and my own sites. I came across a company running a service

The Benefits of Publishing E-books

Let’s compare a few publishing models authors might consider: traditionally-published books, self-published books, and e-books. Each as their own benefits. For example: Traditional Publishing – There’s a certain amount of respect that comes from being a published author, you’re often paid an advance, and there’s a publisher to help with the marketing of your book. Self-Publishing – You can become a self-published author without getting

Book Marketing Author Interview: Heather Beck

Heather Beck, both a screenwriter and published author of What Legends are Made Of and the Fable Farm series, was kind enough to share her marketing insights with me on marketing anthologies and series, marketing books versus her screenwriting, and the marketing effects of being published at a young age (Heather, now twenty two, was first published at nineteen). Do you predominantly work through publishers,

Why Timing Matters When Marketing Your Book or E-book

Time really is money when it comes to choosing the best time to publish your book or e-book. If you time your book’s release well, you can get more publicity and build more sales. Here are some of the reasons why the timing of your book or e-book’s release can be important in your book marketing efforts: You can take advantage of industry issues in

Book Marketing Author Interview: Kristen Fischer

Kristen Fischer, self-published author of Creatively Self-Employed, is one of the more effective authors that I’ve come across when it comes to using blogs as a marketing and PR tool to promote a book. Find out how she embraces the DIY style of book marketing with CSE and her upcoming book through Super College LLC. What can you tell us about Creatively Self-Employed to give

Book Marketing Author Interview: Dee Power

Dee Power is the co-author of several projects from traditionally-published books to self-published books to e-books. I’ve interviewed Dee during a live interview on my old BlogTalkRadio show on the subject of writing and marketing e-books, but in this interview I had a chance to pick her brain about marketing all three of these types of publications. Find out how she does it and what

Book Marketing Author Interview: Hannah Stone

I had the opportunity to talk to Hannah Stone, the self-published author of two books on pregnancy loss, Forever Our Angels and Remembering Our Angels, about marketing her books. Hannah’s insights give you a look not only into promoting self-published books, but also how to market to a narrower niche audience and how to build interest and confidence in your work before your book is

Top Ten Reasons to Launch an Author Blog

If you’re an author, you really can’t afford to be absent from the blogosphere. Writing and managing a blog isn’t always easy (especially if you’re determined to do it well), but the benefits of blogging for authors make it well worth it. 10 Reasons to Launch an Author Blog Here are ten reasons you should consider launching an author blog if you haven’t already. Blogs

Article Marketing for Authors: Gaining Exposure Without Losing Value

Article marketing is a pretty popular form of Internet marketing, including with authors. Yet most authors marketing their books through article marketing aren’t doing it as effectively as they could. To understand why, we need to take a look at traditional article marketing. What is Traditional Article Marketing? An author will write one or more articles in their niche. They’ll include a short paragraph or

Book Marketing Author Interview: Tammy Powley

For our first book marketing author interview, I talked with author / blogger / jewelry guru Tammy Powley about her now somewhat unusual experience with book marketing: publishers who do the bulk of the work. While publishers increasingly expect authors to be more hands-on with their book publicity and marketing efforts, they do still play an important role with many authors (even if just trying

Do You Respond to Everyone?

As an independent professional, do you respond to everyone who contacts you? I don’t. I had a comment left publicly for me on a forum today because I didn’t respond to someone’s contact through the forum’s private message system. While a part of me understands their frustration (I struggle to reach colleagues that I know personally half of the time because of their busy schedules),

Marketing Tip: Create a Marketing Calendar

While a marketing calendar can be an important tool in book marketing, it can also help writers of all kinds promote their work more efficiently. What is a Marketing Calendar? A marketing calendar is a calendar (you can choose whether to make it monthly, weekly, or daily), where you lay out your planned marketing activities based on events throughout the year. How to Create Your

Marketing Tip: Forum Posting

Advertising your writing services on writing forums may seem like a natural marketing activity to bring in freelance writing clients, but it probably won’t be the most effective way to harness forum postings to bring in gigs. Here’s why: A forum for writers to network won’t necessarily be overflowing with clients looking to hire within your niche. A writing forum is going to very likely

How to Keep Your Client Relationships Fresh Online

Latoya had a third great question for this week’s reader question set: Question “Anytime I’ve worked with clients for more than a few months, I noticed the relationship gets kind of stale. It becomes a very robotic process of receiving assignments, returning the work, and then receiving payment. So, do you have any advice for relationship building when you work with someone strictly via email?”

Tips to Set Up a Referral System With Clients

Here’s another question from Latoya of Writers Brew: Question What tips do you have for creating a referral system using existing clients? Answer I can’t say that I’ve ever set up a referral “system” with my existing clients. I’m a big believer in natural referrals whenever possible… they just carry more weight. My clients are happy with my work, and they refer me to their

How to Market an E-book

I see a question asked repeatedly by writers and webmasters… “How can I market my e-book?” Well for starters, that’s something you should have thought about before writing it, now isn’t it? But OK… you’ll see the same responses surface each time: Launch an affiliate program. Write a long sales letter. Get testimonials. Submit to article directories. Start a newsletter. Use pay-per-click ads or other

Marketing Tip: Use Business Cards to Get Referrals

As freelance writers, it’s not uncommon to have our work referred to potential clients from past clients or from other writers (or other publishing professionals in our networks). But too many writers stop there, when referral possibilities can seem practically endless if you really put some thought into it. Business cards are just the tool to help you improve your referral network. Here’s how: Online

My Number One Marketing Tip for Writers

People are always asking what the “best” marketing tool or tactic is. While marketing tactics can’t be the same for everyone and every purpose, there’s one surefire marketing rule that any writer would benefit from, no matter their style, level, or niche: Do something to market your writing every single day! Yes, seven days a week. Even on your days “off,” there’s no excuse not

3 Tips to Network Your Way to a Better Freelance Writing Career

It’s no secret that business networking is vital to the careers of many successful freelance writers. Networking is simply the act of connecting with colleagues, potential clients, or others in your industry, and those connections have a tendency to lead to freelance writing gigs; including unpublished ones. How My Network Gets Me Gigs Personally, I get the majority of my clients (both in writing and

Writers: Network for Referrals

One of the most important things you can do as a freelance writer (whether you work predominantly online or off) is networking with other writers. Many of the best freelance writing gigs are never published, but can be passed along by writers in your network who have come across it through their contacts. A strong network can also lead to referrals. All writers will occasionally