Promoting your book alone is like running up a steep hill into a headwind. You can do it, but it’s not much fun until you to get to top. I’ve learned that sharing promotional strategies with other authors works better than doing it alone. Publishing companies, especially small presses, realize this too. Black Opal Books, the publisher of my Kate Caraway mystery series, provides its authors with an email so we can share ideas, voice complaints, ask for advice, and help promote each other’s books.

Here are seven promotional strategies my fellow BOB authors and I use:

1. Connect with your Local Independent Bookstore

When Brandy and Ben Bowers bought the local bookstore, Watermark Book Company, and planned their grand opening, I contacted local authors and asked them to send me an author-information sheet, which included a list of their books, ordering information, cover images, headshot, short bio, and contact information. I gave these to the Bowers and suggested they invite these authors to attend their event. They were happy to. The authors promoted this event on social media. On the night of the opening, the store was packed. The Bowers sold a lot of books, and the authors made a great connection.

2. Utilize Your Critique Group to do More Than Critique

Carole Price offers the following advice: “My critique group promotes each other’s new books on social media and mentions them in our newsletters. We also appear together on panels where we discuss our WIP. Being a member of International Thriller Writers gave me the opportunity to promote to a larger audience in their magazine The Big Thrill.”

3. Search for Reasonably Priced Promotional Services

Keith Steinbaum of the Poe Connection shares: “I use a very friendly author site called Bostick Communications.  This company sent my book promo for my novel, The Poe Consequences, to a myriad of book-blog sites, and within three weeks I was approached by at least twenty bloggers asking for both e-Books and print copies. There is a fee, but in return I received reviews from most of them on Amazon and Goodreads, as well as their own blog sites. Bostick also provided me with a forty-five-minute online promotional radio interview based out of Alabama. There’s no way to know how many people follow these particular blog sites, or listen to that radio show, but Bostick Communications certainly gave me what I was looking for.”

4. Attend Local Book Fairs

Geza Tatrallyay provides: “For me, what works best is participating in local book fairs. I have been at Bookstock in Woodstock, VT twice, promoting and selling my books. The table cost $120. I made it back in spades and some — maybe three or four times that! I will be there again this year promoting the ‘Twisted’ trilogy. I also have the opportunity to get to know the community. These events are posted on my website. I am on Hometown Reads in San Francisco where we spend half the year.

5. Develop Writer-Author Contact Lists

R.R. Brooks shares: “I’ve developed writer-author contact lists connected with release of my fantasy volume. These arose from critique groups, University of North Carolina Asheville writing classes, local published authors, and from contacts made in an international fantasy author blog fest. I also swapped writing of reviews and book jacket promotions (blurbs). Participating in book fairs and library events with other authors provides a valuable source of information on how to connect with the community. One has to stretch the definition of local in this day of social media, but local writers and authors have proven to be important parts of my promotional campaigns.”

6. Print Business Cards with your Cover Design

Mark Reutlinger suggests: “I have business cards made with the cover design of my books on one side and purchase/contact/pitch information on the back. I carry them in my wallet (and my wife in her purse) and hand them out to people I meet while traveling. It’s proven to be a great way to get the word out, easy to carry around, and most people don’t mind taking one.”

7. Cross Promote with Authors who Write in the Same Genre

Saralyn Richard offers: “I’ve found it beneficial if authors of the same genre and similar readership cross promote on social media. The result is geometrical in reach. Everyone in the group follows through in sharing, retweeting, and advertising and that’s what makes it work.”

We’d love to know what promotional strategies work for you.