How to Organically Promote Your Book

Cindy Bailey is co-author along with her husband, Pierre Giauque, of The Fertile Kitchen® Cookbook: Simple Recipes for Optimizing Your Fertility. Promoting by the seat of her pants has helped propel their book to the top-seller list on Amazon.com and has gotten their story nationally televised. Cindy here and in future columns will be sharing her adventures, as well as hints and tips, for book promotions.

I usually do book promotions by phone and Internet–as much as I can get away with. It’s not that I’m anti-social; I’m just more comfortable operating solo from my little office in my little house. Or maybe I’m just addicted to the Internet. Or just lazy about getting out. I mean, with all the travel to and fro and the need to trade out my Adidas foam sandals for actual shoes, not to mention the makeup, well, it all requires more time!

I do venture out, though, once I’ve got a gig: a speaking engagement, workshop, meeting, launch party.

Yet there is so much power in just being out there. Doing face time.We had the third and final launch party for our book, The Fertile Kitchen® Cookbook: Simple Recipes for Optimizing Your Fertility, in Sacramento and were scheduled to appear on CBS Good Day, Sacramento that morning to do a cooking demo and chat about our book. I refused to let my husband/co-author wear his old, beat up apron on TV. As busy as I was I stopped off at a cute cooking store in my downtown neighborhood of Willow Glen to buy a new apron. I’m chatting with the storeowner and the next thing I know she says, “Oh, we have to have your books in our store! I want to put some in the window. Hey, can you come do a cooking demo for us?”

Yes and YES!

This led to the sale of some books and a nice relationship with the bookstore owner — just by sharing my passion and enthusiasm for our book. But there’s more to the story of doing good face time.

I visited the cooking store about a week before our scheduled event to drop off books and post a flyer. I printed ten extras so I thought, ‘Why not walk through the neighborhood and see if other businesses would want to paste them in their windows?’ Our event was already listed in the calendar section of local papers, but this extra effort might help. (Side note: unless you’re famous, it can be really hard to bring people into an event without working it, working it, working it.)

My usual fear of rejection surfaced, but I told it (my fear, I mean) that I was going to be really nice and not expect anything in return. I started by asking, “I don’t know if this is possible, but was just wondering…” Or I would add, “I figured it didn’t hurt to ask …”

Wouldn’t you know, I didn’t get a single no. Not one! All ten businesses were randomly chosen all agreed to post our flyers in their windows!!!

But even better, from two of the businesses, I got more business! One was a toy store that sponsors lectures for parents. The owner invited me to speak, which is an opportunity for more visibility and to sell books. Yippee! The store owner also knows one of the members on my Advisory Board, which I created to better support readers of our book. (Note: It’s a small, small world in certain niches. The same names and faces keep popping up. Make yours one of them!)

The second business was an acupuncturist who focuses on treating infertility — exactly my market. Not only that but he happened to be the acupuncturist of a friend who got pregnant under his care. Of course he’ll post the flyers, he said! Of course he’ll take my postcards to pass out to patients! Of course he’ll buy a book. Some of his colleagues might be interested, too! And in another twist on “it’s a small world” he had hanging in his office a signed photo of a local, award-winning reporter, who just happened to be the NBC reporter who did a story on us which ended up going national.

Here’s what I learned: just getting out there and doing face time can really help sell you and your book!