Author Name: Jay Thomas Willis
Book Title(s): Implications For Effective Psychotherapy With African-Americans; As Soon as the Weather Breaks; The Cotton is High; Born to be Destroyed; Paranoid but not Stupid; Why Black Americans Behave as They Do; Hard Luck; When the Village Idiot Get Started; Educated Misunderstanding; The Devil in Angelica.
Marketing Subject: Marketing Through Newspapers
You can market your book in local or national newspapers. Whether or not your article is accepted depends on its newsworthiness. An article must always be current and relevant to be acceptable to newspapers, along with being written in the appropriate format. Of course ads only depend on your ability to pay. There are numerous ways to advertise in newspapers, but it all amounts to writing a free article or taking out a paid ad.
There are several ways to market your book in newspapers, among them are: you can do a press release, book review, write an article, have a syndicated column, do something noteworthy for you or your book to make the news, or you can buy an ad in the paper. By writing a syndicated column you may be able to get paid for doing the column as well as advertise your book at the same time. Doing something noteworthy to get your book noticed is almost self explanatory: but in general you can announce that you are speaking at a certain place, doing a book signing, or tell of the release of your new book. I have previously mentioned all the others except buying an ad.
It is important to mention that the most inexpensive way to market your book in newspapers is to write an article or a syndicated column. To do so you need to contact the editor of the paper about an idea for an article, or propose an idea to an editor for a column. Hopefully your idea for an article or column will correspond with the subject of your book. Mention your book when you write the article. A syndicate column is even better than a regular article, because you can mention your book each time you write your column. Continuous free exposure can be good as a marketing tool.
There is no way around the fact that buying an ad in a newspaper for your book is going to cost you, and probably a pretty penny. But there is nothing that says you can’t negotiate with the person who is responsible for putting the ad together. Newspaper sales have dwindled recently. You can take advantage of this situation by asking for a better deal. Likely the person in charge of advertising will be eager to get your business. A bad economy has the tendency to reduce the amount of ads taken out. It is likely a buyer’s market.
Newspapers are a good source to do free advertising, especially when writing articles, but ads almost always cost, and are sometimes quite expensive. A syndicated column is the best of both worlds. The best way to market your book is to rely on multiple sources rather than any one source such as newspapers. The broader your sources the more people you can potentially reach.
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