Book Sales Explosion by Albert Griesmayr presents 25 tools for effective book marketing. Up front, he encourages authors to share their personal results. While some or most of the 25 tools are not new, he presents updated and timely approaches.
A summary of the tools used precedes the chapters with a brief description and an efficacy rating of Fire 5x potential, Super Hot 3x potential, and Hot 2x potential. This glance allows readers to skip to the tactic(s) they are most interested in using. As Griesmayr points out, it’s unlikely an author will use all 25, but choose the handful most likely to fit into your marketing plan and become proficient at them.
From there, each marketing method is broken down into Tactics (rather than Chapters) with a Description, Examples of Success with samples of others who have done it (complete with links), an Application description, and Resources.
The tactic I found most compelling were the Kickstarter examples. The authors in the examples given raised on average $500,000. That said, they were all from 2014 (don’t let the “Thumbnail January 24, 2020” for each screenshot fool you, as the campaigns themselves were in 2014). My only wish here was that a more current example was used because in today’s world of social media, six years makes a huge difference.
Griesmayr also discusses the following: book sales funnels, the Look Inside feature, free books, Alexa Skills book promotion, affiliate marketing, book translation, cover/genre/titles, bonus offers, pre-order methods, Amazon Best Seller Badge, Pinterest, email marketing, collaborative book promotion (something I have had much success with), video marketing on YouTube/Amazon/elsewhere, Amazon Select Price Promo & Discounted Book Service, Authority Book Publishing, Amazon SEO, Amazon Ads (they are not as easy as you think!), Audiobooks, Facebook ads, Kobo publishing, upsells, and a bonus tactic. While they aren’t new, the way Griesmayr presents the material and providing examples of those who have done it help in that they are all in one book. Once you find tactics that work best for you, there are several books that go into detail on how to perfect them.
Overall, Book Sales Explosion is a good resource for an author who is looking for one-stop shopping for book promotion ideas. The key, as with any marketing plan, is follow through. The ideas are all here, you just have to take action to make them work for you.
Heather Hummel Gallagher is a New York Book Festival award-winning novelist of the Journals from the Heart Series and an award-winning author. She travels via RV with her husband, two Black Labs, and always has her laptop and camera nearby.