Two to three months after the typical book hits bookstores, sales usually start to diminish, sometimes for as long as eight or nine months.
Many authors go into panic mode, frightened that their sales can’t possibly regain momentum.
Book publicist Lissa Warren knows the feeling. And she tells her clients that the slump is to be expected. But rather than sit and fret, she jumps into high gear.
She encourages her authors to write op-ed articles for major-market newspapers, and to reassess the market potential of themselves as well as their books. Authors who aren’t particularly strong doing radio interviews, for example, should focus their publicity efforts elsewhere.
She also pitches non-traditional media such as the author’s alumni magazine. And she starts a grassroots web marketing campaign by contacting people such as bloggers who might be willing to write about the book.
“Other blogs link to their blogs, and their blogs link to other blogs,” Lissa said. “It just forms this really neat community online where they discuss books. We try to get mentions in e-newsletters. We try to do emails about the books to various organizations whose member lists we’re able to get. We also try to get in touch with the people who edit various websites and offer them all kinds of freebies related to the book.”
Lissa has dozens more ideas that she pulls out of her bag of tricks, and she shared them earlier this year during a teleseminar called
“How to Revive a Dying Book Marketing Campaign.”