Where Do I Find Time to Promote My Novel?

Book Marketing Question: I am currently a college student. On February 14, 2012, my debut novel Founders’ Island was published and distributed among bookstores. However, since then I have sold hardly any. The most I have sold are maybe ten or eleven copies. This is mostly because I am too weighed down by my education to sell books.

How do I sell books while still trying to obtain a high GPA?

Another issue is that I do not live on my own. I live with my mother and stepfather.

Currently my major is Creative Writing, but I am seriously considering changing my major to a field where I am guaranteed to make money to pay my bills. It was very clear to me that I will not be able to make money as a writer.

John’s Book Marketing Answer: You can do a lot of book promotion in 15 to 20 minutes a day. Promote your novel via bloggers and book reviewers who review novels like yours. Just Google for them, i.e. – “fantasy novel reviewers” or “thriller bloggers” or similar searches.

Contact one blogger or reviewer every day with an offer to send them an ebook copy of your book for review. Contact them a week later to see if they have any questions about your book. If they’ve decided to do something with your book, chances are they will let you know at that time.

In that follow-up email, you can also ask them if they’d like to interview you via a Google Hangout or podcast.

Here’s another post where I talk about a 20-Minute Book Marketing Plan: http://askjohnkremer.com/selling-rights-whats-a-good-price. In this post, I outlined how to build your book’s value by doing a little bit of marketing every day.

Side Comment for you only: Of course, it would help if you priced your book competitively with other novels. At $39.95, your novel is way overpriced. You need to republish it as a Kindle ebook (if you can still get the ebook rights back from PublishAmerica).

Your publisher obviously doesn’t care if you sell even one copy. I’m judging this based on their price for your novel.