How To Get Free Advertising
A Few Quick Ideas to Reveal the Potential of Free and Low-cost Advertising
By Anastasia Ogden
Become a speaker or guest lecturer. Basically, do all you can to promote your book direct to your target audience. If your book is aimed at students, then offer your services to local colleges and universities. Your book can, in fact, form the basis of your talk or lecture.
Alternatively, you could just drop in odd facts about your work as you chat about something else. US Author A. L. Williams reports sales of over 7,000 copies of ‘All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, But All You Can Do Is Enough’ at just one of his seminars in Los Angeles.
And Melvin Powers, super book salesman and head of a major publishing company, has lectured in the U.S. college system for many years. A brief description of his courses is mailed to over one million potential students, each time accompanied by a write-up for his books.
Places to think about giving lectures or talks include: libraries, schools and colleges, bookstores, clubs, churches, civic groups, Chambers of Commerce, writer’s groups, professional meetings, and anywhere else your target audience can be reached.
A useful trick is to give something free to everyone who attends one of your lectures. U.S. Art Fettig of Growth Unlimited, for example, gives a free copy of one of his verses, illustrated and ready for framing. Quite naturally, that verse includes his name, address and phone number. He reports numerous bookings and sales through this means alone.
Other marketing tips practiced mainly by U.S. author/publishers include organising an author signing session, inviting the media, or arranging a series of lectures on a national, even international tour.
Write articles, letters and fillers for target magazines, especially where they relate to your sphere of interest. You might also earn a fee in the process, but the main aim is to establish yourself as an authority in your chosen subject and, most importantly, to include an address from which readers might obtain further information about the subject of each published feature.
For their book ‘Encyclopedia of Self-Publishing’, Tom and Marilyn Ross wrote articles about self-publishing for dozens of US magazines, including ‘Southwest Airlines Magazine’, ‘Toastmaster Magazine’ and ‘ProComm Newsletter’, each time insisting that details about the book be printed alongside.
Many U.S. author/publishers advocate writing a regular column or series of syndicated articles for numerous magazines and publications. One, Luther Brock, a direct mail copywriter, wrote regularly for ‘Direct Marketing Magazine’, ‘Mail Order Connection’ and ‘Information Marketing Newsletter’. He reports that no further advertising was needed by him to furnish all of the business he could ever cope with.
Dr. Jeffrey Lant, a major U.S. publisher, writes a business self-help column which is syndicated to over 500 small business and opportunity seekers’ magazines and he boasts a total readership in excess of 5 million people.
Syndicate a column in publications read by your target audience. In this instance, syndicating basically means writing and issuing an article which appropriate publications are invited to publish, free of charge, as long as nothing is removed and no amendments are made. This means your ‘plug’ for whatever book, included at the end of the article, is also noticed by readers.
These articles, incidentally, can often be combined and presented in book form with very few amendments necessary. Edith Lank, whose ‘House Calls’ column is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers across the USA, combined many of her published features into ‘The Complete Homeseller’s Kit’.
Why a single telephone call, at someone else’s expense, made me £300 in one day!
Nothing in life is free and when someone asks you for advice or information and offers to reciprocate one day, grab the chance. Publishing is a business where operators come to know one another well and will happily swap favours. I’ve had lots of free advertising from publishers who have used my articles over the years and I’ve invariably earned more than where I’d charged a basic writing fee.
One of my most profitable deals occurred when the editor of a leading business opportunity magazine phoned to say he needed information about home publishing and would I mind if he phoned back later that day to ask a few questions? I agreed, not even thinking of asking for advertising space or other reward.
Having spoken to the individual for about an hour one night he said he would include my name and address in the magazine for new publishers to contact me for books and titles with reproduction and resell rights. Very nice and I expected to make a few sales and maybe earn £50 or so.
I did not expect someone to phone, saying she’d read the article and would I fax my list of titles straight away. Which I did. Five minutes later she phoned and ordered £300 worth of products using her credit card!
Moral: Just because it’s free advertising, don’t think it won’t make money!
# How five short letters, and £1.25 sold hundreds of copies of one of my books!
My cheapest ever promotion was a short letter to accompany a copy of ‘Mags to Riches’ sent to editors of business opportunity magazines. I posted five and achieved five reviews: one in ‘Business Opportunity Digest’ sold thirty copies of the book. The others sold ten to twenty copies each, an exercise I repeated several times by sending the letter to other magazines, including some in the United States.
Power of Free-Ads
On September 19, 1990, Ann Landers (U.S. columnist) featured a letter from a reader describing how she had cured her bladder incontinence by using exercises recommended in ‘Staying Dry’ , a trade paperback published by John Hopkins University Press. Besides adding her own recommendation for the book, Ann printed the press’s address in her column. As a result, they received over 20,000 orders within three days and another 35,000 orders within the month.
‘Family Circle’ magazine has a column called ‘Circle This’, which consists of three pages of short items about new and unusual products. Some publishers have sold as many as 20,000 books as a result of one mention in ‘Family Circle’.
|
