Article Marketing to Sell Books and Build Your Platform

Edie here. No, you're not seeing double. I messed up. The post by Karen yesterday was the one she sent me for December. So you got it two months in a row. To fix my mistake, I unpublished the one from yesterday and below is her NEW post! Please forgive me. Mistakes happen to us all. 

Article Marketing to Sell Books and Build Your Platform

by Karen Whiting @KarenHWhiting

Businesses know that articles drive people to their website and inspire them to buy their products much more than paid ads. The power of article marketing also applies to selling books. It’s a great way to introduce your book’s benefits. Articles can also build your platform and followers to help you garner a book contract.

ROI for articles

Magazines include their reader numbers and online ones usually have social media sites with the number of followers listed. Others can actually tell you the number of hits per article you wrote.

For my Growing a Mother’s Heart book, I wrote articles on Enjoying Mother’s Day, Lessons from Bible Moms, and being a more observant mom. One went to a magazine with a readership of 110,000. Another was an online magazine where the editor shared that the article had more than 240,000 hits in four days. Some magazines and sites I’ve written for have millions of readers and one on of my articles was number one on a site with more than 2 million readers. Those are big audiences. An interesting article with a good bio can result in growing your followers and book sales.

That means regularly writing for large magazine audiences builds a platform. Those figures can be added to your proposal to help garner a book contract. Sometimes the articles can attract attention of media or meeting planners that extends the reach for guest spots and speaking.

Article topics

Every book is filled with article ideas. Look through your book content and research material to choose several article topics. Reader feedback also inspires article ideas. Talk to people about your book and note the questions they ask as those can also inspire article ideas. Mine those ideas and start a list of article topics. 

Once you have the list, check out magazines with readers who are interested in the topic. Then pitch the idea and use your book as proof of your authority to write on the subject. 

This can extend to a secondary readership too. For my One Year Princess Devotions, I wrote a few articles for popular Christian teen girl magazines on mentoring younger girls. These girls are too old for the book, but they are older sisters, babysitters, and influencers of young girls around them. They can use the book as a mentoring tool.

Target the Right Magazines

Check out magazines to pitch the article ideas. Use a market guide to find matches or do an online search. If the book is about beaches, search for beach publications. Study the magazine to see what they might want. One beach magazine might like to showcase activities to do while another might like to share about the local plants or sea life or the lifestyle of a vacation at the beach. Check your research and article ideas for matches that also might connect to your book’s title of contents. Then pitch the idea.

As you analyze possible magazines to write for check the bio and be sure you could include your web site of book title and link. You might add that you are available to speak.

PDFs of Article Collections

Over the years you may have written a lot for a particular audience or an evergreen topic, such as articles for parents or Christmas articles. Pull those together into a collection for the ones you still own the rights, and sell that as an article bundle or use it as a giveaway for purchasing a book. I use those with a homeschool market for the times they give out the cvs email list for anyone who contributed freebies and agreed to be on my mailing list. That has given me more than one thousand names for me email list. Those are contacts you own for newsletters and eblasts. 

I used three different pdf bundles as prize options on my launch latest team for anyone who invited a friend to join the team. One of the team members invited a friend who joined and invited 30 people and ten of those joined plus one of those new members invited a friend. Thus, my launch team grew with people I didn’t know but whom team members identified as people who would love the book, my target audience. The reviews they write will help with marketing to perspective buyers.

Many magazines offer pay as a bonus for marketing your book plus build your writing credits and expertise.

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Article Marketing to Sell Books and Build Your Platform from @KarenHWhiting on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Karen Whiting (WWW.KARENWHITING.COM) is an international speaker, former television host of Puppets on Parade, certified writing and marketing coach, and award-winning author of twenty-seven books for women, children, and families. Her newest book, The Gift of Bread: Recipes for the Heart and the Table reflects her passion for bread and growing up helping at her grandparent’s restaurant. Check out her newest book Growing a Mother’s Heart: Devotions of Faith, Hope, and Love from Mothers Past, Present, and Future. It's full of heartwarming and teary-eyed stories of moms.

Karen has a heart to grow tomorrow’s wholesome families today. She has written more than eight hundred articles for more than sixty publications and loves to let creativity splash over the pages of what she writes. She writes for Crosswalk. Connect with Karen on Twitter @KarenHWhiting Pinterest KarenWhiting FB KarenHWhiting

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