There’s a lot you can do that’s free and effective; I’m listing 10 ideas below. Before acting on them, though, ask yourself these questions:

• Is my book as good as it can be? Does it look and read like anything I’d find in a bookstore or library?
• Is my book’s cover appealing and appropriate for the genre?
• Is my book professionally edited?
• Do I know who will love my book? And do I know as much as possible about those people so I know where I’ll find them both online and offline?

All of this is important because readers are interested in good books. Not so-so books. Not books you rushed through to meet an arbitrary deadline.

And, you need to be marketing to people who read the kinds of books you write. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time.

10 free book promotion tactics

So, presuming you’ve laid the foundation with a solid book, here are 10 free book promotion ideas to try. Implement one, then track what happens. If you see activity that suggests it worked, do more of it.

1. Create a Pinterest board for your book and its topic. Add two pins a week.

Pinterest is a good fit for lifestyle, food, and fashion books targeting women. Be sure to watch the video at “Quick tip for selling more books on Pinterest,” too.

2. Invite a key influencer for your book to guest blog for you.

An influencer is someone who is both active online and respected and followed by your target audience. “Key” refers to the influential people at the very top of your list. They’re the influencers who have the most clout and audience respect.

For more information, read “Who are your key influencers?”

3. Create a group about your book’s topic or genre on Facebook.

Facebook groups are where people gather online to talk about topics they’re interested in. Unlike Facebook pages, groups are designed for engaging and conversing.

To learn how to do it, read “How to create a Facebook group.”

4. Partner with the author of a book on a similar topic to pitch article ideas or talk show segments where you both could be interviewed.

Reporters usually need more than once source for an article. When you pitch an appropriate idea that gives them two sources, rather than one, you increase your odds for success. Similarly, talk show producers like the balance that comes with more than one expert source for an interesting topic.

“Promoting your book: 8 ways to pitch media outlets” explains how to do it.

5. Pitch an adult education center on a workshop based on or related to your book.

Use that experience to refine the workshop before pitching it to conferences or creating an online training program. It’s a great way to get more mileage from your book’s content.

6. Offer to use Skype to do an out-of-town book club appearance.

Book clubs allow you to interact with readers in a way that’s meaningful for both you and them. Learn where to find book clubs and how to work with them in “Authors and book clubs.”

7. Create a tie-in with a nonprofit organization or a charitable event. 

If it’s well-thought-out, the partnership will support the organization while helping to generate book sales.

Make sure there’s a connection between your book and the organization or event, or that it’s a cause you feel strongly about.

8. Collaborate with local authors to plan a “local author day” at a popular bookstore or library.

There’s power in numbers. When all participants promote the event, you all benefit from a larger turnout than any of you can generate on your own.

9. Send a digital copy of your book to five people who read books in your genre and ask them to consider reviewing it.

Authors always need more reviews, and the best way to get them is to give books to the right readers. Sending a PDF file doesn’t cost a thing. To learn how to send a Kindle mobi file as a Facebook Messenger attachment, read “Send review copies through Facebook.”

When you send your book, be sure to include the Build Book Buzz Reader Book Review Form. You want to make it as easy as possible for readers to write those reviews.

10. Post your book announcement press release on free press release distribution sites.

The word “distribution” is a bit disingenuous because these services don’t actually distribute your press release to the media. They host it on their site, where it might be discovered by a journalist. Still, by including a link back to your website in your press release, you’re helping your site’s search engine optimization — SEO.

Learn how to write this essential media relations tool in my e-book, Get Your Book in the News: How to Write a Book Announcement Press Release.

Take action

The tactics you should use will depend on which ones will reach your ideal readers and what you’re comfortable executing. There’s enough variety here to give you solid options, though.

Which of these can you implement today?

What other free book promotion tactics can you recommend? Please share your ideas in a comment.

I wish I hadn’t done that: Tales from the book promotion road

By Randi Minetor

We sat at the six-foot table in the middle of the Wild Birds Unlimited store in a small Connecticut town, and we waited.

The owners had invested in 15 copies of our latest book, our magnum opus: Birding New England, an overhaul and relaunch of publisher Falcon Guides’ Birdfinding series. The new format replaces the text-grayed pages and black-and-white photos of the original series with hundreds of full-color bird photos and specific information on where to find each species.

They’d also bought a plate of Italian cookies.

The cookies, it turned out, were the more popular investment.

Schedule a talk, not a signing

In the two hours we sat in this store on a Friday morning in June, exactly one person came in to purchase a book and have us sign it.

Despite our luring people to the table with the cookies, chatting them up as they munched, and opening the book to selected pages so they could see my-husband-Nic-the-photographer’s gorgeous photos, they walked off without a copy.

I should have known better than to schedule a signing instead of a talk. When Nic and I have the opportunity to perform—our tag-team presentations are filled with photos, tips for finding bird species, and funny stories from the road—the stacks of books dwindle as happy customers buy multiple copies.

Book signings with no talk, however, rarely result in sales for a midlist author whose name does not spark instant recognition.

Pay your own way promotion

In an age when 75 percent of all books are sold on Amazon, face-to-face book promotions have lost much of their power and luster.

Publishers only pay for book tours when the book has a chance of reaching the New York Times bestseller list. As a result, authors who want to travel to promote their books receive little to no financial support to do so.

We who write about regional nature, history, and other nonfiction topics can build our own book tours, paying for transportation and lodging out of our own bank accounts. We can even generate our own publicity for these events. Or … we can stay home and find better, more effective ways of promoting our work.

What doesn’t work, and what does

My first book, Breadwinner Wives and the Men They Marry, had the remarkable benefit of being the first book about women who make more money than their husbands do.

I paid to have a video made of myself speaking at a meeting of professional women. Sadly, it was scheduled for September 12, 2001, so it was attended by exactly six women. Nonetheless, I put together a snazzy hard-copy speaker package, built a list of women’s professional association chapters across the country, and approached them for engagements.

Not surprisingly, many of them responded favorably to my offer to speak to their clubs.

Also, not surprisingly in hindsight, not a single one would pay a speaking fee. Some did offer to arrange for hotel accommodations, and all but one paid for a meal (yes, one of these organizations would not even buy me lunch at a lunch meeting). I scheduled more than 40 gigs from Long Island to San Diego.

On one tour, I barely broken even

I stayed with friends where I could and took advantage of whatever meager hospitality these organizations offered. (This included a stay in one member’s home, where the shower door and walls were covered in black mildew so thick, I thought it was paint.)

I sold hundreds of books at cover price that I had bought from the publisher at a 55 percent “author discount.” Even so, the cash and checks did not quite cover the overall cost of the endeavor. Worse, I learned that the sale of books at such a significant discount didn’t count toward royalties, so in the end, I barely broke even.

I swore then that I would not be sucked into the not-so-glamorous whirlwind of a book tour again.

Put the focus on publicity

Since then, my book promotion efforts have focused on publicity, especially in print.

I create media lists by hand and contact newspapers and radio stations in the areas near the national parks that are the subjects of my books. With luck, such stories attract the attention of the Associated Press, which can take an article in the Kalispell Daily Interlake in northwestern Montana and spread it to newspapers in hundreds of markets.

This strategy helped my first book in the “Death in the Parks” series, Death in Glacier National Park, sell enough books to generate royalties in its first year.

“I wish I’d listened to my own instincts”

In spring 2019, with the release of both Birding New England and Death in Acadia National Park at roughly the same time, Nic and I received invitations to speak at libraries in Bar Harbor, Me. and Barre, Vt., with accommodations included.

What the heck, I thought, let’s try scheduling some other dates around these. I put together a road trip with additional gigs in Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut, and Nic and I spent late May and much of June darting from one place to another.

“I wish I’d listened to my own instincts,” I said to Nic as we drove away from the Wild Birds Unlimited in Connecticut, our last stop on the tour. Other bookstore appearances had been slightly more successful than in the past, but not enough to warrant the effort it took to get there.

So, no more unreimbursed road shows for me.

From now on I heed the excellent advice you’ll find here on Sandra Beckwith’s BuildBookBuzz website and blog, and I will work to promote my books via interviews, guest blog posts, and online promotions while sitting in my home office in Rochester, N.Y. It beats cheap hotels and countless tanks of gas literally burning up my book income.   

What’s your take on Randi’s experiences? Does any of this ring true for you? Please tell us in a comment.