After years writing her western-horror-romance epic fantasy, Mrs Pamela Promo is ready to unleash her novel on the world. She’s got an eye-catching cover, top class editing and proof-reading, a killer blurb, and identified her target audience.

So what’s the problem? Promotion.

Pam starts her promotion campaign by offering 10 free copies to competition winners. Then she sends out free copies to every book reviewer in the world. Every minute she tweets that her book is available. Every hour her Facebook status plugs her book, and as a reminder, she pokes her family, friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers she added for the sake of it. Her neighbours get postcards, letterheads, business cards, stickers, and glossy signed photos of Pam looking glam. She attends major events in town to read her book, and visits every bookstore in the city to make sure her book is on the shelves. She tried to get a book signing sorted, but ran out of time because…

…That was just day one.

Day two, she does it all again. Rinse and repeat for the next few weeks until book two arrives….

Wow…No wonder she’s called Pam Promo!

Marketing is important for traditionally, self, and e published authors. However, we must maintain the balance between selling ourselves, our book, and WRITING. There’s no point in marketing like mad if there’s only one book to buy. A catalogue of quality work sells by itself hence why some bestsellers don’t even have a website. *Gasp!*

Top authors write under pseudonyms so they can release lots of work sooner rather than later. Top authors aren’t tweeting, facebooking, blogging, myspacing, linkedin…ing, etc several times a day because they’re busy writing! We’re writers, so write!

As an author, I hereby swear to NEVER harass my readers. I won’t re re re re retweet my book release date. I won’t friend you on Facebook just to stalk you when it’s time to buy. I won’t contact you via Myspace because no one goes there anymore. Instead, I will use my skills to notify you of a release date, and then get back to writing so you can get back to reading.

Enjoy!

PS. To all the agents, publishers, and readers reading this, don’t get jealous. Your tips are in the book due 2012-2013.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net