Distinctive Book Marketing
When the usual book promo tips fall flat, it’s time to get creative. Author Diane Wing shares how she turned everyday moments—like walking her dog or joining niche Facebook groups—into opportunities to connect with readers and boost visibility, all without overspending.
With all the noise in the marketplace, authors need to get creative with the way they approach promoting their work and reaching their audience. The task can be daunting, but worthwhile.
Understanding Your Audience
The first step is to understand your audience. I wrote a series called Chrissy the Shih Tzu Cozy Mysteries. My primary audience includes Shih Tzu pet parents, followed by dog lovers (because other breeds are in the stories), and finally, cozy mystery readers. I reached out to Shih Tzu organizations to get a staff member to review the books. There was one response, but the person assigned never reviewed the book.
Bringing Promotion Into Everyday Life
Being a pet parent myself, I started thinking about places I take my Shih Tzu and my Chihuahua. The park is their favorite place, loaded with dog owners also walking their pups. Since our Chihuahua is senior, we have a wagon we bring on our walks. Seeing my pups in the wagon attracts lots of attention from people walking by, with or without dogs. I realized it was a missed opportunity to promote the Chrissy books, so I had banners made for both sides of the wagon. While there has been no direct conversation about the information on the banners, when my dog stops to say hello to another dog, maybe the humans will read the sign and look up the books or my website later on.
Expanding Community Connections
I also started a Chrissy’s Mysteries book club on Facebook. It’s difficult to track sales from these sources, but the energy of the books is out there and being seen. The key is to take advantage of cost-effective advertising opportunities within the places you and your audience live.
Tapping Into Influencers and Media
For my non-fiction books, I’ve tried other means of getting in front of the right audiences. For my books, The True Nature of Energy: Transforming Anxiety into Tranquility and The True Nature of Tarot: Your Path to Personal Empowerment, I requested my publisher (Loving Healing Press) send copies to a reader on YouTube with 75 thousand subscribers who chooses a book of the month. She chose the energy book and featured me on her show, and said she’d like to have me on another broadcast in the future about my tarot book, which she also loved. There was a significant rise in book sales after the show.
Pitching to Niche Book Clubs
One of my fiction books, Forest of the Dead: Stories of Transformation, is about a cemetery where people’s ashes are buried with a tree sapling. Hidden within its magnificent trees are their stories. In a newsletter, I saw a book club connected to a local historical cemetery and sent a note inquiring if they would consider my book as a future read for their group. They got back to me, saying they had already scheduled for 2025, but they’d keep it in mind for next year.
Final Thoughts on Creative Marketing
Some efforts may not pan out, but you never know unless you try. Let the ideas flow. We’re authors, after all. I trust we have the capacity for some unusual methods of getting the word out about our work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Wing, M.A., is a multi-published author of dark fantasy fiction, cozy mysteries, and enlightening non-fiction. Her work helps people see the magickal, spiritual, loving side of life with a practical edge.
Diane Wing views the world as beautiful and mysterious, filled with things to learn and experience. The path led her to become a lifetime student of metaphysics, mysticism, magick, and spirituality and to achieve a Master’s degree in psychology… and it all shows up in her writing. You never know what’s waiting around the bend.
Diane Wing grew up in a household where her vivid imagination could thrive. Crafting short stories and poetry from an early age, writing remained part of her life throughout her 25-year corporate career. Diane seeks to help the reader find the flame of their own unique path sparked by her stories and insights for personal growth.
Mystery plays a big part – the mysteries of the self and our place in the world; the quest for the self within relationships and as a result of our challenges – regardless of genre. She writes entertaining cozy mysteries, dark fantasy fiction that explores the shadow side of life, and spiritual/psychological non-fiction about the mystery of self-awareness and development.
Diane is an avid reader, bibliophile, lover of trees and animals, and a lifelong learner. After the sad loss of Chrissy, the inspiration for the Chrissy’s Mysteries series, she and her husband are now pet parents to Lily, a Shih Tzu mix, and Chiquita, a Chihuahua.