{"id":8737,"date":"2013-05-24T03:00:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=8737"},"modified":"2013-05-23T22:59:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T05:59:41","slug":"mini-marketing-campaigns-by-katya-cengel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/mini-marketing-campaigns-by-katya-cengel\/","title":{"rendered":"Mini-Marketing Campaigns by Katya Cengel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bluegrass<\/a><\/p>\n

Today we welcome back our guest columnist, Katya Cengel. Katya shares tips about how to set up mini-marketing campaigns for your books, and tells about how she set a campaign for her book, Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Baseball is back. The Giants, the A\u2019s the Bowling Green Hot Rods, Lexington Legends. You probably haven\u2019t heard of the last two teams. That\u2019s because they are in the minors, in Kentucky. But if you are a baseball fan it is my job to sell you on their story, the universal story of life in the minors as told in my book Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life<\/a><\/em>. And this being the beginning of baseball season that is exactly what I am doing.<\/p>\n

As a writer, marketing wasn\u2019t something I thought too hard about before my first book was released in September 2012.<\/strong> I wrote a few paragraphs about marketing in my book proposal, but somehow it didn\u2019t really register that I actually would be involved in the marketing of my book. A few months before the release, I got the hint. My publisher, University of Nebraska Press, sent me flyers to distribute. They did a great job securing interviews for me and sending my book to reviewers. But having worked at a newspaper and having received my share of advance copies, I knew it would take more than a free book to get an editor interested. So I set to work launching my own mini-marketing campaign.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I set up book signings in California, where I live, and in Kentucky, where the book is set. Although Bluegrass Baseball came out at the end of the 2012 baseball season, I was able to arrange signings at all of the games of the four teams I profiled in the book.<\/p>\n

Before each appearance I contacted members of the local media. I did radio, newspaper and even television interviews. I felt like a broken record saying the same thing over and over again and wondered if it was worth it. Then I overheard people commenting: \u201cThat\u2019s the book I heard about on the radio,\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s the writer who was in the paper.\u201d One woman came to a signing holding a crumpled copy of the newspaper article that had mentioned my appearance. It was clear the interviews and appearances were making a difference, but how much of a difference wasn\u2019t clear until I checked my sales on Amazon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Amazon has a tool that allows authors to see where their books have sold and when. On a map of the United States there were little marks all over where people had bought my book, and huge clusters in California and Kentucky where hundreds of people had bought Bluegrass Baseball. The numbers dipped as soon as the signings and appearances ended. Now that baseball season is back, I am at it again.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of the things I learned last time around.<\/p>\n