Book Marketing Failure Transformed To Success

When Steve Weber started marketing his book. He did what everyone told him to do and ended up spending $20 on marketing for every book sold. Here’s what really worked:

1. Blogging
2. Myspace
3. Free Review Copies ONLY FOR AMAZON TOP REVIEWERS

From the Small Press Blog HT Steve Weber

How did you learn the techniques in “Plug Your Book?”

SW: It was all quite by accident. I didn’t relish the idea of spending time on book promotion. When I started promoting my first book, Google advertising was all the rage. I’d heard these “pay-per-click” ads were really effective, so I bought thousands of dollars worth of Google and Yahoo ads. I also tried other expensive things that turned out to be ineffective, like hiring an expensive publicist and mailing thousands of review copies.

All those things that sounded like great ideas were horrific failures — I was spending $20 on marketing for every $1 of sales. So I ditched my traditional marketing campaign. I started blogging, joined MySpace, and worked at getting some Amazon Top Reviewers to read and review my book. That’s when my book started selling, and it was such a revelation. All those things I’d been spending money on were a waste of time, while the grassroots techniques that cost virtually nothing were extremely effective. I though it would be very helpful for new authors to know about these techniques, and that was the inspiration for “Plug Your Book.”