Pre Release Book Marketing, Can I Release My Content to the World? and How Do I Get Google to See Me?

We had some excellent questions come in this week dealing with pre-publishing and pre-book launching. This author's book is coming out early next year and I thought I would share some of my answers. These have been edited a little to make them flow better.

1.  This author is developing a best of tips pdf to be used to start her marketing and to have a give away for building an email list.
 
The question is about the words in the footer of the pdf, and do these work.
If you would like to have a step-by-step guide filled with daily, practical tools to create greater joy and reduce stress in your life, you may enjoy my new book [book name here], coming out in the Spring.  Stay tuned!

Yes you should have a notice down at the bottom. I would also add to the footer, your web address, author name and a copyright notice.

XYX.com  •  Author Name  •  @Copyright Author Name 2016

Once your book launches you can change it to say the book is available at Amazon.com

You can also guide your readers to your website to sign up and receive something, this is called a lead magnet, something like a short video training or the first chapter, resources list. This is an easy item to change and update as you move through different stages of your book. Also remember to have your name or the title of the pdf in the header area up at the top.
"Ten Tips to Reduce Stress in Your Life  •  Author Name" something like that.

I worry about people stealing my Top Ten list and also wonder if people might print it out and give it away to their clients. It will have my name on it is that ok? I won't be getting any benefit from the reprints. Or is any publicity good publicity.

Yes, don't worry about people copying it, they very well might. This is a marketing tool, it is fine to have your marketing info on the page.

You might also make the footer notice very general with just the web address, name and copyright.

You can also get in front of people copying it and let them do that, in fact tell them to do that. "This guide may be photocopied and given to your clients, it may not be resold or freely distributed outside of your practice. Please retain the contact info and copyright notice on your reproduction." If you have people distributing your content that is pretty good. Let it fly would be my advice. The more the merrier

Remember nothing is permanent, it is easy to change a pdf and update with different info. Non of this is forever.  

2.  Do you ever get people to pre-order your books, or suggest that?  In other words, if someone liked this PDF, maybe they would be inclined to pre-order the book while it was right on their radar screen.  I'm not sure if there is any way to do this -- and also I would need to check with the publisher on this - but wanted to know your thoughts. [This author is working with a publisher instead of CreateSpace and self-publishing. The problem is publishers own the copyright instead of you owning the copyright. I am in favor of self-publishing but there are benefits to having a publisher. You have to figure the pros and cons.]

Yes people do pre-orders all the time. In fact Kindle is set up to do pre-orders. I am not a big fan of pre-orders. I want to reward people with the real stuff when they actually order a book. It is hard enough to get people to buy your book, but now they are buying nothing and then they have to remember to pay attention to the book when it shows up a month later in their Kindle Reader. People do use the Kindle pre-order to build some buzz and to also to sometimes produce a best seller, just one of the strategies for getting a bestseller and not have any book. Again I am not a fan of this. You have all these people hyped up for your book and there is nothing for them to read, I think it leaves a sour taste in the mouth. also with Kindle if you mess up the pre-order feature and don't get your book up in the specific timeframe they give you, you can get banned for a year. You have to be careful.

There is no pre-order feature in CreateSpace if you were going that way.

Personally I would put all my effort into getting the book done and marketed. I would look at running a promotion when you launch the book. You can set things up so that people will sign up to receive some additional bonus items for buying the book. They can use their Amazon receipt and sign up for a small video series or small email course on stress reduction or something like that. (this is called the Amazon Receipt Strategy) This is popular strategy to do and is a way of grabbing an email address of your buyers. Getting an email address of an Amazon buyer is one of the hardest things to get. Another reason why we put links in our books to get people to download or sign up for something.

But if your really did want to do something like this you could give away a pre-release pdf of the book. Like a special unedited writers edition. Not sure your publisher would like this

Now I don't know what your publisher is able and willing to do. You could talk to them. A lot of the internet marketing publishing strategies are not look at favorably by publishers. They have their way and we have our way. For them it is about selling books for internet marketers it is all about building an email list. The power is in the list. Books make great free gifts for getting an email address. You may also not really be ready to deal with what to do with an email list and selling books might just be the better way to go. On my internet marketing side books are often seen as just a path to get somewhere else, speaking gigs, email list for selling courses (meditation videos), consulting, professional positioning, etc. Selling books isn't the top of the pile. Just saying.

3.  How do I get a google search of my name to link my name to my website?

A lot of blogging. Basically what you want to do is trigger Google to see you as the author of all your content. This is often done by putting a good simple credit line at the bottom of every post starting with the words. About the Author.

I would have lots of blog posts on lots of different topic and at the bottom of each one have an About the Author footer. There is an author tag feature, but you are already on Blogger so Google knows you are the author but you have to tell it over and over. I would also try to do some guest post and again have a nice tight about the author footer. I would also make sure there are some links in there to your Facebook page and when the book comes out, drop in the name of the book and have a link right to the Amazon sales page

a footer something like this from ProBlogger.net

About Stacey Roberts
Stacey Roberts is the Managing Editor of ProBlogger.net: a writer, blogger, and full-time word nerd balancing it all with being a stay-at-home mum. She writes about all this and more at Veggie Mama. Chat with her on Twitter @veggie_mama, follow on Pinterest for fun and useful tips, peek behind the curtain on Instagramand Snapchat, listen to her 90s pop culture podcast, or be entertained on Facebook.

or this from SocialMediaExaminer.com
About the Author, Chris Tweten
Chris Tweten is a growth strategist working at HUBBA, the largest coworking space and startup academy in southeast Asia. He's worked in Canada, China and is now based in Thailand.


or this from Joan Stewart's Publicityhound.com blog on PR

About Joan Stewart
Publicity expert Joan Stewart, a PR mentor aka The Publicity Hound, works with small business owners who need free publicity to promote their expertise. She shows you how to establish your credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, and sell more products and services. To receive her free DIY publicity tips twice a week, subscribe here. See all the ways you can work with Joan. Or contact her and ask a burning question about PR, self-promotion or social media.

If you do a lot of blogging and give Google the tools, Google will figure it out and put the two together.

Bruce Jones
Bruce is the international bestselling author of over 40 books. His latest book is Book Marketing Checklist for Selfpublishers. Bruce also runs the Facebook group How to Publish Your Book with over 1,300 members.

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Building a Book Press Release and Your Own Author Press Kit

Promoting your book to the world when it releases is super important to getting it started. One of the ways to do this is to release a press release to the different news services. These can be paid or free. You can also use this usually one page document in all your other media. A press release tells the who, what, where, why and how about your book.

Lulu.com on of the major print on demand book site has a two part article on their blog, Lulu.com/blog,  on how to write the release. Pretty simple and right to the point.

Part 1 has to do with the overall idea of how a press release works.

PR Part 1: Ready, Set, Press Release!

Part 2 covers the details of the different parts and how to pull them together.

PR Part 2: Write the Best Press Release - EVER!

Along with releasing a press release for your book you should also have similar info on yourself. Every author needs an Author Press Kit. A page on your website that is about you. What you do, who you are, your books, your picture. I often recommend having several different length bios for different uses. Your About page is often one of the most read pages on your site. Think of it as a mini home page.

Lulu.com also put out a great article on how to do this and what you should include

Author Press Kit: How You Market You

I also cover this info in my on-line course, How to Market Your Book

Ok time to get your book marketing going.