10 Biggest Marketing and Book Selling Mistakes

I already have enough content to write a complete book on how to screw up a marketing campaign for book sales. I swear, I a wreck sometimes. I probably won't bore you with all of my silly mistakes, but a few of them are pretty big.

1) Have a Marketing and Book Sales Plan. I never took time to write a plan. And thus, I don't have one. New ideas float around in my head, and I do things by the seat of my pants and then don't keep track of what I have done. Kind of frustrating to be running here and there in my mind and not going anywhere.

2) Sloooooooow doooooooooown. Wow, I have made so many careless mistakes. Here's a great example. I posted info about the book to a few of my adoption listservs and it has been almost hilarious. The first time, I did a nice HTML flyer and found out that when it translated to digest form it didn't contain the links. So I wrote an apology post to the list and included a link, but then I got distracted and didn't post the complete link. So the third day I had to write yet another post giving the correct link. So everyone is thinking "Geez, I can't imagine what her book looks like if she can't even write an email!"

3) Don't get a Post Office Box set up at a company that is going to go out of business. I had advice that it was crucial not to use my own home address for book sales, so I went to Postnet, which was a really cool place to get a physical address when you don't have an office. I was thrilled. Until they closed down.

4) If you get a post office box at a company that goes out of business, don't forget to change the address at your online store. Now people are sending me checks to the wrong place. Isn't that just dandy? I figured it out and fixed it this morning.

5) If you have an online giveaway, make sure that you get the emails of the people who enter it so that you can track down the winner when she/he wins. Duh. Or maybe not. Save a few bucks if you don't ever have to give it away -- hey, not my fault, I can't find her. Just kidding. I posted the announcement here but haven't heard from Jennifer yet.

OK, that's about it for now, but as you can tell I've been an accident waiting to happen through this whole process. I suppose that marketing and book sales tip #6 could be:

don't try to take time to market a book when you have 11 kids (10 over 13) living with you and a grandchild on the way, 2 more than part time jobs, and a budding speaking career). Of course, nobody else probably needs that advice.