In the summer of 2014, several local authors met to discuss the marketing of what they’d written and published. From that first meeting, Authors Innovative Marketing (AIM) has now expanded to more than 30 Members plus valued Friends of AIM. We represent authors/illustrators writing in many genres and marketing print-on-demand, self and traditionally published e- and bound books.

AIM is a group of published authors who share information to better market our books. We work together to promote members and their craft, increase public awareness of our authors/illustrators and their work.  Our goal is to expand readership and increase personal sales.

We meet monthly, providing opportunities for authors to share their recent book activities. Recently, we created a Pass Along Library so authors can read/return each other’s books for reviews and to increase our familiarity with each other’s writing. We have presentations to help us better market our books. Most recently, we hosted two representatives from Toastmasters sharing about the benefits of public speaking.

Social Media Marketing

We have a well-utilized AIM Facebook group page, and have added a public Authors Innovative Marketing-AIM page for marketing author/book events. On our new website: Aimforwriters.com; we list authors, our Speaker’s Bureau, and upcoming events. Some of our authors are listed on our Speaker’s Bureau for public presentations and/or author panels. We have frequent author events, including at book stores, wineries, at a Healthy Food Festival, and at our Christmas Fairs. We have an informal nuts-and-bolts team, which manages the logistics of the group. This team creates agendas, facilitate meetings, recording minutes, manage finances, updates the website, media marketing, and more.

Our largest event is the Night at the Museum Authors’ Book Fair, hosted at our Grants Pass Museum of Art. We had more than 20 authors participate, including several authors who flew in for the event. We market via word-of mouth, e-mail, posters, postcards, as well as on social media, in the newspapers, and on the local radio station. As we prepared for our Night at the Museum Authors’ Book Fair, we coached our authors’ to be more skilled at marketing on social media.  This helps them to be more comfortable marketing themselves and their books in public.

We created a two page flyer with photos of our books and 50-word blurbs about each author. New this year, we created a feather flag for improved visibility. It states Author Book Sale, so it can be used for individual or group author events, as well as at our local book stores. For additional fun, we serve book-themed refreshments. The guests came with great energy, and excitement.