Dear Gary,

I first want to congratulate you on completing your new book. I am sure you are excited and eager to market it online and elsewhere. I am grateful to serve as a resource in this regard, and I am happy to help you to the best of my ability. I truly want to see your book be a great success, so will do my best to provide you my honest assessment and guidance based on my knowledge and experience in marketing.

As I previously explained in my emails responding to your questions, there are a number of things that you can do to market your book:

• Promoting it on social media using social media pages
• Utilizing email marketing
• Getting listed on recommended book lists
• Making changes to your existing website to promote the book and setup a special landing page
• Creating a press release and distributing it to local news outlets across Oklahoma
• Utilizing keyword research and SEO strategies on your site
• Creating videos that you post to YouTube and on social media that would cover topics of interest related to your new book

These, of course, are not the only ways you can promote your book, but they are the ways that I believe would potentially yield the best and fastest results.

In the sections below, I explain what types of things I recommend and then I have some proposed solutions with some estimated costs. If you have any questions regarding the services or prices, let me know and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you great success 🙂

All the Best,

Lisa Li

Social Media Pages

While you can promote your book on your personal Facebook profile, your reach will be limited for a few reasons – personal profiles are designed for posting and sharing content with friends, family members, and acquaintances. The features available for personal profiles is limited. For example, if you wanted to pay to promote a post, you would not be able to. Another example is if you want to see how effective your posts are. Personal profile posts will not have analytics to view. The other limitation is that the only one who can post to your profile is you – if you wanted help posting content, you would not be able to have someone help you, you would have to either give full access to your account, or you would have to post everything yourself.

What you need is a Facebook page. You should probably have 2 Facebook pages, one setup specifically for your new book – You can use the same name as the title of your book. The second page should be for you specifically as an author. With pages, people can like the page and they can easily share the page and invite others to like the page. People who like the page will have the posts appear in their feeds. With Facebook pages, you can have more than one person who can post to it or edit content. This is done by adding page admins or page editors that serve different roles. With a page, you also get the ability to promote your posts to a targeted audience – for example, targeting people who love to read historical books and who are in Oklahoma.

The platforms that you would likely see the most results from are:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. LinkedIn

Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a powerful tool to build up a following of fans for your books. To do email marketing, you first begin building a list. I’ve already added an email sign up form to your site. This needs to be connected to an email marketing platform.

People who sign up for emails will be looking forward to receiving emails and updates from you about your latest book. You do not need to send out emails often, but you can do so on a weekly or monthly basis, or less frequently. The key is to ensure that you provide them with value and calls to action to pre-order your book when it becomes available, to attend your book signings, and engage with you on social media platforms and more.

Getting Your Book Promoted

There are some different ways you can try to promote your book. One way is to try to get your book on the recommended book list sites. Here are the top 4 sites:

Recommended Book List Sites: 

1. Goodreads – You can sign up as an author and follow their guide to engage with readers and promote your books. Click here for more information on how to do that. Their website has a lot of information and resources that may be helpful to you – check out this list of resources.
2. Bookbub – On Bookbub, you can claim an author profile and use their marketing tools to promote your book. They let you sign up for free. Click here for more information on their partner program. Their site features recommended book lists in different genres, it provides a way for you to post updates to people who follow you on their platform, and they attract readers through discounts and special book deals.
3. LibraryThing – LibraryThing is a website for book enthusiasts. It is not designed for hard selling by authors or book publishers – it’s designed for engagement. It has tools where you can create a profile, add your books, answer questions from readers, give away copies of your book to get early reviews, and to join groups. For more information about it, you can click here.
4. IndieBound – IndieBound is a site for self-published authors to promote their books. I know you plan to use a publisher, so this may not apply, but I thought I would list it in case. Authors can seek to have their books listed on the platform, to learn more, click here.

Another method that you can try to use to promote your book is by having it reviewed and promoted by social media influencers that have a large following of book readers. Here are the top ones:

1. Instagram

• Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club (@reesesbookclub): An influential book club that focuses on highlighting female authors.
• James Trevino (@james_trevino): A popular “bookstagrammer” with a large following.
• Regan Perusse (@peruseproject): A book reviewer with a focus on fantasy and YA novels.

2. YouTube

• Hailey in Bookland (Hailey in Bookland): A book reviewer who covers a broad range of genres and publishes frequent vlogs.
• PeruseProject (PeruseProject): The same Regan Perusse from Instagram also has a popular YouTube channel.
• JesseTheReader (JesseTheReader): Jesse reviews a variety of genres and is well-known for his enthusiastic delivery.

3. Blogs

• Modern Mrs. Darcy (https://modernmrsdarcy.com/): A popular blog that covers books and reading.
• The Book Smugglers (http://thebooksmugglers.com/): A blog that reviews speculative fiction and romance.
• Book Riot (https://bookriot.com/): A hub for book news, reviews, and commentary.

4. Twitter

• Emma Watson (@EmmaWatson): Actress and activist Emma Watson shares her book recommendations through her book club “Our Shared Shelf”.
• Roxane Gay (@rgay): Author Roxane Gay often tweets about what she’s reading.

You would need to identify the influencers that have an audience that matches your target market. Next, you need to look at their social media profile and look for a way to get in touch with them and see if they would be willing to review and/or promote your book to their audience. Typically social media influencers have a fee for promoting products to their audience – the cost will vary and depend on their popularity and audience size. Some will do it in exchange for free goods.

Website Changes

Promoting your new book on your website is very important, this is why I made the changes I did to the site. There are other changes to the site that can go further to improve the effectiveness of your site and increase sales of your book.

Based on your previous emails, you are interested in adding the following to your website:

• Add the ability to order your book online
  • If you would like to have the greatest reach, I recommend using Ecwid, a shopping cart platform that makes it easy to track and manage sales across multiple platforms like Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and more. The free plan allows you to sell a few products from your website, and if you want to expand to other sales channels, then you would need to upgrade to one of their paid plans.
  • If you only want to sell your books through your website, I can add a simple shopping cart system to the website, OR I can add an online order form. The online order form would be able to accept orders and payments, while a shopping cart system would have products that can be added to a shopping cart and then the customer goes through a checkout process.
• Social media feeds
  • To add social media feeds to the site, your social media profiles need to be compatible and connected to the site. This typically involves some kind of setup process. Some social media platforms require creating an API key (it is typically a set of unique digital keys that you get from the social media platform settings and paste into the social media feed plugin). There must also be an appropriate place to put the feeds, as some of the feeds may require a lot of space.
  • Instead of adding the social media feeds directly to the site, you could instead utilize the blog. Simply create a new blog post for each post that you put on social media. This has the benefit of helping your SEO and bringing free, organic traffic to your website by having relevant content directly on the website. Then you can post links to your blog on your social media – this would bring people from social media to your website where they can actually buy the book. You can still link to your social media pages – they are on the contact page, but I can add them elsewhere and at the top of the site and in the footer section to give them more exposure.
• Landing page for your book
  • When you are promoting your book, it can be helpful to use a simple URL (or web address) to promote it so they go directly where you want them to go. The best way to achieve that is using a domain name specifically for that purpose. The domain name can be set to point to a particular page on the site, in this case you can get the lydiemarland.com domain name and have it point to the page on the site for your Marland book. It would not require a separate site or setting up a specific page, it would utilize what is already there.

Press Release and Distribution

Because your book covers a story relevant to Oklahoma’s history that has been of great interest in the past, a press release may be a great way to promote your upcoming book locally across the entire state. The press release could discuss the letters discovered and your coverage of the story, and explain how it is all in your new book. You could also pair this with a book signing event(s) in the OKC, Moore, and Norman areas.

You would need to arrange book signing events with local libraries and local bookstores. When you have specific plans made, then it can be promoted on social media and in the press release, giving it more exposure. If you do events like this, it would be good to add an event calendar to your website to showcase the upcoming events, for example, if you have a book tour. I can do that for you, when the time comes.

With a press release, the news media across Oklahoma may take interest in the story and cover it. To get them to feature the story, it would require manually submitting the press release to each TV station and newspaper.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is important for free organic traffic from the search engines like Google and Bing. There are many keywords that are highly competitive, which will cause your website to rank too low to be seen in the results. When you target low-competition keywords, you increase the likelihood of your content appearing in the search results on the first few pages. I can conduct research using my keyword tools to provide a list of keywords you can try to target, while giving you an idea of the average number of monthly searches for those keywords.

Using the list of keywords, the website can be updated to include the keywords wherever appropriate in the text and image tags. I can also go through each page and set a more effective thumbnail, title, and description that will be used in the search results and on social media.

Video Marketing

Videos are a powerful marketing tool that can dramatically increase conversion rates on a website. I can create a professional promo video for your book and it could be featured on the site and on social media. It can generate interest and excitement using visual and audio effects, with a compelling video script that sparks their interest and directs them to buy your book. It can feature narration, background music, stock video clips, the photos you have, and more.

Informative videos can be helpful as well. Something similar to very short documentaries could be an effective tactic to generate interest and create content that people will want to share.

Using my professional video editing software, I am able to create videos of different sizes, formats, and lengths. So if you wanted some short 30-second or 1 minute videos with some quick facts about the Marlands, I can create them. I can also create a YouTube channel for you. YouTube is a powerful tool for organic search traffic – YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google. If you would prefer to create the videos yourself, I can show you how using beginner-friendly tools that include templates.

Proposals

Here, I am presenting you with three comprehensive packages, each flexible and customizable to your needs and budget. I will explain each service in detail, its benefit, and its cost.

Proposal 1: Basic Package – $349~

1. Social Media Setup ($60 per social media page): Establishing a professional author’s page on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram) can greatly expand your reach. A separate page for your book can help engage potential readers. By creating these pages, you can share book excerpts, your writing process, author events, and more. This interaction fosters a community around your book and can lead to higher sales. With this service, I will create a custom profile picture and banner image, setup the social media page, and add links to it on the website. You should have at least a Facebook page setup for you as an author. It would be best to have one setup for your book specifically as well.
2. Email Marketing Setup ($50): Email remains a direct and effective way to communicate with your audience. I will set up an account for you on a reliable email marketing platform, create an engaging newsletter template, and show you how to send updates about your book. This service will help you maintain constant engagement with your readers and remind them of purchasing and reading your book.
3. Website Updates ($299): By updating your website to prominently feature your new book, you make it easier for visitors to learn about and purchase your book. I’ll set up an online order form, integrate social media feeds, and ensure that your website is a one-stop shop for everything your readers want to know about you and your work.
   • Website Updates (changes to design, layout, content, etc.) – $150
   • Ecommerce Functionality
     • Online Order Form – $99
     • Shopping Cart System Setup – $200
   • Social Media Feed Integrations Setup (for all supported platforms and pages) – $50

Proposal 2: Standard Package – $874~

Includes everything in the Basic Package, plus:

1. SEO Optimization ($150): A well-optimized website can dramatically increase your visibility. I will perform keyword research and optimize all pages of your website for search engines. With effective SEO, your website (and therefore your book) can appear in more search results, potentially leading to more awareness and sales.
2. Book Listing Assistance ($100): Recommended book lists on top websites can lead to a surge in visibility and credibility. I’ll guide you through the process to get your book featured, which can increase your readership and give your book the recognition it deserves. I will take care of what I am able to on your behalf, from
3. Press Release ($275): A well-written press release can generate buzz around your book. I’ll craft a compelling press release and distribute it to local news outlets in your state. This exposure can increase awareness and pique the interest of potential readers.
   • Press Release Writing (up to 700 words) – $25
   • Manual Distribution to Oklahoma News Outlets – $150
   • Nationwide Distribution Service – $100+ (depends on the number of outlets and distribution service)

Proposal 3: Premium Package – $991~

Includes everything in the Standard Package, plus:

1. Video Content ($99-245+): Videos are a highly engaging form of content. A promotional video for your book can draw in potential readers, and short informational videos about your book’s topic can create intrigue and conversation. I will help you create these videos for social media sharing, increasing your reach and engagement.
   • Promo Video
     • Quick and Simple Video Editing (up to 2 minutes) – $99
       Basic video editing, limited effects, simple transitions, background music, and AI-generated narration.
     • Standard Video Editing (up to 2 minutes) – $200
       Includes everything with the quick and simple editing plus a simple logo intro/outro with sound effects, AI-generated narration, video transcription, video script writing, advanced editing techniques (ie. removing a greenscreen from the background), and more.
   • Simple Social Media Videos (up to 1 minute) – $45 each
2. Secondary Domain ($18/year): A secondary domain name that redirects to a landing page on your existing site can target specific marketing campaigns or book promotions. This strategy makes it easy to direct potential readers to exactly where they can learn more about your book or make a purchase.

I hope this detailed breakdown has given you a clearer picture of each service’s potential impact. Remember, all packages are flexible, and we can add or remove services based on your preferences and budget.

If you are wanting to implement some of the strategies discussed yourself, to reduce the cost, I can try to put together some tutorial videos on it so you can learn how to do it yourself.

Alternative Proposal

If you would prefer not to be invoiced for individual services, I have a flat rate option you can consider. Some of my clients want ongoing assistance, so I use a monthly rate to take care of their needs for them.

Flat Rate Contract Work – $500/month
If you are interested in our other services (ie. graphic design, marketing, customization, print design, video editing, etc.), we offer a flat rate service for $500 a month and we will do up to 20 hours worth of work.