So you’ve finished writing your book. The months of writing, editing, and reading back through your story are over and you’ve decided to self-publish your work. Now it’s on to the next step: promoting your book so that your message gets out there in the world. Here are a few ideas to help you get started on marketing your self-published book:

• Contact program directors for local radio stations and ask them to set up phone-in interviews with you over the air. You might even ask them to sponsor some kind of promotion which involves giving your book away to their listeners.
• Create a Web site that provides readers with the opportunity to buy your book. You can list excerpts from the book and advertise the option for customers to sign up for a newsletter. The newsletter should list any special promotions you’re doing or any events you’re going to participate in.
• Send press releases to a variety of media outlets: newspapers, magazines, news shows, radios, etc. Set aside time each week to resend these until you start to get responses for interviews or articles.
• Market to online bookstores: Online bookstores are gaining more and more of the market share each year. One of the great things about them is that they give equal placement to both self-published books and those from major publishers. If you do your research, you can take advantage of this and cash in on a great opportunity. What not start off at the top? Amazon is the largest online bookstore and it sells millions of book every year. You can list your book for sale with them by registering on the Amazon Advantage page.
• Create promotional products. Mouse pads, book marks, coffee mugs, and posters are all good ways to help with marketing your self-published book. These products could include your book’s information, the cover art of your book, some of your favorite quotations from the story, and of course, a few of the ways your book can be purchased.
• Set aside approximately 5-10% of your products for different kinds of giveaways. These can be given away at book signings, through radio contests, in Web site promotions, at book fairs, or just to people you talk to on the street. It may seem counter-productive to give away your book, but having people read and recommend your work is wone of the most effective ways of marketing your self-published book.

Selling, promoting, and marketing your self-published book can seem like a difficult concept but once you get working on it, things will fall into place and it will become easier. Just remember that in addition to being a writer you now must become a salesperson for your book. And who better to sell your story than the person who knows it best?

CMYK Graphix Inc. is a professional printing company that can help you self-publish your book as well as assist you with some of the promotional materials you might need. For more information about self-publishing your book, contact the expert book printers online at Cmykgraphix.com, call them at 1-800-698-2071, or email them today.