Early promotion is a key strategy for authors writing a book to promote their personal brand.
Early promotion gives you an opportunity to jumpstart your book’s success and tilt the odds of your book’s success in your favor.
It’s never too early to begin to promote your book!
Authors who don’t begin promoting their book until it’s at the printers or in stores are sabotaging their book’s success and undermining the ability of their book to build their personal brand. Authors should begin promoting their book while writing it.
Authors must promote their book while writing it.
6 ways to simultaneously write and promote your book
Here are 6 ways you can get a head start on your book’s marketing and promotion while writing your book:
- Expert testimonials. Identifying and contacting experts in your field, including authors of competing books, is one of the most efficient ways you can market your book while writing it. Begin by assembling a “wish list” of high-visibility experts in your field, and ask them to allow you to send your book’s table of contents and a sample chapter, or two, to them for their comment. Expert pre-publication testimonials can generate instant credibility for your book.
- Speaking. Begin getting the word out by speaking locally about the your book, the benefits it offers, and the problems it can solve. Each time you speak, you’ll become more comfortable with your topic and able to discuss it more confidently. In addition, by saving time for audience comments and questions. you’ll undoubtedly uncover new topics to address in your book. Start with local associations and business networking groups, then explore explore opportunities at local colleges and adult education groups. Find out who’s teaching courses in your area of expertise, and offer to deliver a short presentation to their class.

- Teleseminars. Teleseminars and teleclasses are similar to speeches and presentations, except you don’t have to travel; you can speak to a worldwide audience of hundreds from your computer. Explore resources like Instant Teleseminar and Go to Meeting. instnt
- Article marketing. There are two aspects to article marketing. One is to approach the major magazines in your field, both consumer and trade, and offer them an opportunity to excerpt a chapter from your book in the issue closest to your book’s publication. The other type of article marketing consists of writing short, 500-word, articles and submitting them to article portals like ezinearticles.

- Blogs and social media. Blogs and social media offer authors numerous promoting opportunities to blog about their book and share their writing experiences. By sharing important content ideas, plus the personal ups and downs of writing your book, with your followers builds anticipation for your book. More important, once your book appears on Amazon, you can create prepublication momentum by encouraging your followers to pre-order copies.
- E-mail newsletters and tips. Newsletters and tips sent via e-mail permits you to promote your book in an editorial, as opposed to an advertising, format. By sharing some of your advice and ideas while writing it builds familiarity with your forthcoming title and teases your market into wanting more.
Finding the time to write and promote
None of the above are tremendously time-consuming. Once you have identified your book’s table of contents and begin writing, you can easily co-ordinate your pre-publication book marketing with your writing.
Look for opportunities where you can adapt subhead topics in your book’s table of contents into potential articles, blog posts, speeches, or tips.
With a little advance planning, you’ll quickly become used to making each idea and each word you write into both content for your book and content for your marketing.
More important, you may soon find inspiration and pleasure in sharing your information with prospective readers, looking forward to their comments on your blog posts and their questions during speeches and teleseminars!
As in so many other aspects of getting published, success is a matter of commitment, consistency, and habit. In many cases, the result of simply taking the time to plan how you can co-ordinate the writing and promotion of your book and implementing your plan as efficiently as possible.
Building and promoting your personal branding success with a book is a reward for planning, commitment, and consistency.
Author:
Roger C. Parker is a “32 Million Dollar Author,” book coach, and online writing resource. His 38 books have sold 1.9 million copies in 35 languages around the world. Roger has interviewed hundreds of successfully branded nonfiction authors and shares what he’s learned at Published & Profitable and his daily writing tips blog.
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This is a very helpful post and a good, timely challenge, as I am working on two books at present. The first point, showing how to get expert testimonials, even well before the book is finished, is particularly helpful. Thank you!
Dear Des:
Thank you for your kind words.
Congratulations on the two books that you’re working on.
One thing I’ve found is that experts don’t necessarily want to see a full manuscript: a detailed table of contents and two sample chapters is usually enough.
Best wishes on your success; keep us informed!
Roger C. Parker
Great post, I guess a lot of writers get tunnel vision and focus entirely on the book.
Dear Paul:
Thank you for commenting. Your idea of “tunnel vision” is really on-target.
Best wishes–
Roger
Great tips. For someone just starting out, these may take time to set up. However, once getting used to the steps, it is fairly easy.
Thanks for sharing.
Do you want to keep your blog alive and thriving?
Dear Nezine:
Thank you for sharing your perspective: yes, like so many things, it may take time to set up a system, or a process, but–after that–it’s easy to keep moving forward.
Best wishes
Roger
These are all valuable lessons. Many authors don’t realize how planning upfront can make a world of difference when it comes to building your brand with a well-written, well-placed book.
Angelique Caffrey
http://www.yourwrittenbook.com
Dear Angelique:
Thank you for your positive reinforcement of the importance of up-front planning.
Roger
Great tips. Thank you.
Dear Joseph:
Thank you for taking the time comment. I appreciate it.
Roger
Thanks for your article Roger. You make a great point about the need to start promotion early, versus waiting till books have hit the shelves. That is a mistake I’ve made in the past and now as I prepare my next book I certainly won’t be repeating it. You bring up great ideas for this type of promotion. Keep up the great work.
Dear Marcus:
Thank you for your comment and sharing your previous experience.
Best wishes on your forthcoming book.
Which of the ideas made the most sense for you?
Keep us informed on your progress.
Roger
Roger, excellent suggestions! Thanks! I attend a lot of networking events and there is usually only one speaker, however, often everyone gets the opportunity to give a 30-60 second introduction. Ivan Misner, the author of a new book Networking Like a Pro talks about the 12×12x12 Rule, including having 12 words that roll off your tongue. If you make those words about the value -add of your book, it’s a way to be memorable and practice for eventual promotional interviews.
Dear Kate:
Thank you for sharing Ivan Misner’s 12-12-12 rule, and relating it to the idea of adding value to a book. And, as you say, it’s a way to be memorable as well as practice for eventual promotion interviews.
Best wishes on your success. Keep us informed!
Roger C. Parker
[...] 6 Ways to Promote Your Book While Writing It Blogs and social media offer authors numerous promoting opportunities to blog about their book and share their writing experiences. By sharing important content ideas, plus the personal ups and downs of writing your book. [...]