HEARTICLES: Articles with Heart

THE ART OF SELF-PROMOTION: The ability to market one's work is the difference between a hobby and a career Writers, like it or not, cannot escape the fact they are small business owners. And to succeed in any small business, we need a business plan and a steady stream of activities to generate buyer awareness and desire for the product. Here are some easy tips to help you with self-promotion. 1) PROMOTION AND MARKETING - Learn the difference here . Promotion is the 'what' in sales. Marketing is the 'why'. Don't just show potential readers your book. Tell them why they need to read it. 2) BRANDING - Do you write a series, or excel in a particular time period or genre? Recognize your brand and focus your efforts in that direction. This will also help you target your reading audience. 3) ENGAGE - Be more social on social networking sites. Go to the readers, don't expect they'll find you . Being social means talking to people, sharing ...

Probably one of the most confusing parts of selling books, or any product, is marketing and promotion, but not many understand the difference in the terms. Before we begin, we must go back to the 5 Ws: Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Marketing includes all of those things. Promotion is just part of it. In the simplest terms, Promotion tells a customer WHAT you have for sale. Marketing tells the customer WHY they need it. You can't have one without the other. And if your book is on sale, you can include your WHERE and WHEN to that. WHO? That's your audience. Let's break it down with a few examples -- Promotion -- what = the product: Just Desserts Cookbook Marketing -- why =  you need this book because . . . It's full of dozens of seasonal recipes that can be used year-round. All recipes were written and donated by many Tirgearr authors. There are recipes for most occasions. The recipes are easy to make, so even beginners can make them. There are twi...