Bella’s Scribblings: Marketing Plans

Apparently I have a marketing plan for my book! I’m very pleased because I was starting to panic when I got asked for the third time what my marketing strategy had been for my book and my answer had been to do a very convincing impression of a retarded goldfish.

I then scurried off to investigate whereupon (that’s a very good and much underused word by the way…) whereupon I discovered lots of wonderful advice about marketing your debut novel. Off the page jumped a very scary piece of advice that said you need to start marketing three years in advance.

So I went to check on the progress of the time travel machine the child is working on and sadly it’s not quite ready for use yet. Cue lots of nail-biting and hair pulling (all my own I’m not that strange).

After a large glass of Baileys (I’m still ‘tidying up’ after Christmas) I had another look at the amassed advice. All of it was very helpful and logical:

• Understand who your audience are (I love you guys – sorry maybe too much Baileys is a bad thing – no surely not.)
• Establish a social media presence (I waste a lot of time on Twitter so I think that counts)
• Interact on Social Media and don’t just sell your novel (This I am very good at I post about all sorts of stuff about my cat, my child and a variety of other things that you probably didn’t want to know – apologies)
• Promote your book on Social Media – Ah not been very good at this one.
• Set up relevant author pages (I have one on Amazon and Harper Impulse – Oh and Amazon.com because that’s a different site.)
• Set up and promote your website (I have a website but I’m a bit pants at promoting it)
• Make people aware of when it will be available (available now as an ebook Paperback 23rd April – ticking that one off now)
• This wasn’t on the list but I also made a few posters and handed them to friends and family and asked them to put them up in staff rooms at work

So you see I did have a marketing plan after all!

Bella’s first novel, It Started at Sunset Cottage was released on 12th February by Harper Impulse. She was a runner-up for the New Talent Award at the 2013 Festival of Romance and a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Every fortnight, Bella will be sharing her experiences and advice as a new author. She also has her own blog – www.bellaosborne.com

by

Bella Osborne

Bella’s first novel, It Started at Sunset Cottage was released by Harper Impulse. She was a runner-up for the New Talent Award at the 2013 Festival of Romance and a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.