Tuesday Tidbit: Market your published memoir as a Christmas gift

If you’ve already published your memoir, remind people it’s a great gift idea for people on their Christmas list.

Books in general make good gifts, but consider promoting your memoir.

Marketing Christian Books* lists six reasons books make meaningful gifts:

• Books don’t go out of style.
• Books are affordable.
• Books are life-giving.
• Books are for everyone.
• Books last.
• A book is a gift you can open again and again.

Your story is important.* You might never know how much it can bless others.

“As writers we seldom know 

the impact our words will have. 

We might write an entire book 

and then learn 

that a single sentence 

made a difference in someone’s life or thinking.” 

Alton Gansky

Your memoir can do that.

So, remind your friends, fans, and family 

about your memoir 

and suggest it as a Christmas gift.

* My new computer still doesn't work well with links so I'll list them below:

Marketing Christian Books: https://marketingchristianbooks.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/market-your-book-as-a-gift-2

Alton Gansky:  http://www.altongansky.com

Your story is important: http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/are-your-stories-important.html

Tuesday Tidbit: How can you inspire people to read your memoir to the end?

You might be surprised at the following stats. They surprised me when I ran across them yesterday.

Sarah Bolme, in her blog, Marketing Christian Books, writes,

• “The average time spent reading is on the decline…. On average, Americans read only 19 minutes per day, down from 10 years ago…. On weekends, Americans between the ages of 25 to 34 read for just eight minutes a day on average.”
• “Most people read only part of a nonfiction book. In fact, a study by Kobo found that religion books were the most abandoned of any genre. In North America, only a little over one-third of all religion books are read all the way to completion.”

You and I want people to read all way to the end of our memoirs.

But we can’t lock them in and force them to read our stories.

Sigh…. So what’s a Christian memoirist to do?

We can entice and persuade our readers. How?

For starters, Sarah says, write compelling prose. (And I’ve posted dozens of blog posts about how to do that.)

Sarah also offers this advice:

• Keep your page count low, under 200 pages. She recommends 120 to 150 pages.
• Readers are more likely to read short chapters because, she says, “People often read in soundbites.”
• If your memoir exceeds 200 pages, consider shortening it or divide it into two books.
• Keep the price down.

Click here to read Sarah’s blog post, An Important Element in Publishing Nonfiction.

Consider following Sarah Bolme’s blog, Marketing Christian Books. In addition to authoring Your Guide to Marketing Books in the Christian Marketplace, Sarah also serves as the Director of Christian Small Publishers Association.

Do you have a plan to promote your memoir?

The closer I get to publishing my second memoir, the more I look for marketing ideas.

I find book promotion painful. How about you?

But you and I know we must do it.

Marketing can seem like grinning at people and saying, “Buy my book! It’s great!” But that’s not the best way to do it.

There’s an art to book promotion and we need to do it correctly.

If you’ll soon publish your memoir, you must become a student of marketing it.

How do you do that? You can buy books, attend workshops and writers’ conferences, sign up to receive relevant blog posts by email, and follow pros on Facebook and other social media.

Below you’ll find links to articles I’ve found helpful.

Sarah Bolme at Marketing Christian Books says, “Most people hate selling. They also hate being sold to. So, stop trying to sell your book and start trying to connect with your potential readers.”  Read Sarah’s advice about creating emotional connections, including Mark Rodgers’ list of seven types of emotional objectives in persuading people.

Jocelyn Green shares helpful tips in her post at Christian Authors Network, including:

• her most effective means of promoting books
• the least effective promotions she’s tried
• connecting with her readers
• the craziest promotional gimmick she’s used
• unexpected doors for promotion
• tips for new authors promoting their first book

The Book Designer offers tips on what to do and not do in publicizing books:

• learn when it’s a good idea to give away free books and when it’s not
• listen to the pros, not your family and friends, about your book’s cover design

The Nonfiction Authors Association shares tips from “the industry’s best, brightest, and most innovative experts.” In this post they answer the question, “What are some of your best tips for leveraging social media for authors?”

Debbie Young at Self Publishing Advice Center encourages the following marketing methods:

• joint promotions by groups of authors
• targeting specialist markets, not just bookstores
• networking with people from your past
• bookish acts of kindness

I highly recommend you follow Sandra Beckwith at Build Book Buzz. She’s a real pro. Check out her post, Who are your key influencers? in which she explains how to find your influencers and what to do with your influencer list.

Sandra Beckwith recommended a post over at Just Publishing Advice. Check out Ten Marketing Mistakes New Authors Make.  

Do you know what metadata is? If not, you need to educate yourself. “Book metadata is all about making your book more discoverable,” says Derek Haines at Just Publishing Advice. It’s “about words and phrases that will help readers find your books.” And that’s what you want, right?

I’ll post more links to help with your marketing strategies, but for now, begin by taking in all the information in today’s post.

Let’s help each other! 

If you have marketing tips to share with us, 

leave a comment below 

or on our Spiritual Memoirs 101 Facebook Page.