Breaking into Book Clubs

By M.J. Moores on December 5, 2013 • ( 0 )

Publicity Tip #10 –

Chase, B_Zedan, Flickr, Creative Commons

A great way to encourage readers to buy your book is by offering both it and yourself to book clubs.

However, getting on the right book club lists or even knowing where to start can be daunting. I recently learned about the Book Club Reading List via LinkedIn and I checked it out.

What this site offers:

– exposure on a high-traffic website

– exposure to 700+ book clubs in a quarterly newsletter*

– social media blast (15,000+ followers)

– additional pay advertising services*

This is a fee-oriented book club site. The standard one-time cost for the above services is $80.00. Currently the site is running a limited time promotion for $70.00. Now, if your marketing budget is only $100 – this is not a viable option for you. However, this is a proven site with a solid following that delivers exactly what it says.

You will have noticed the asterisk on two of the listed items above…

The Newsletter will always carry your book listing according to genre. However, as new authors join their books get added to the top of the ‘new listings’ on page one. Slowly, your general book listing will creep down the first page of the newsletter until it drops off (to the next and the next page). It may take a little longer for your book to drop off page one for your genre listing but it will eventually happen.

Part of the additional services Book Club Reading List offers is a ‘book list renewal’ that you can take advantage of once your book is no longer on the first page of the newsletter. This costs $20. The associates at BCRL suggest this as an option if you are holding an event or doing some extra publicity blasts surrounding your book to help bring it back to the forefront of club members’ minds. They also offer the standard ad packages for varying sums of money.

Before venturing into Book Club territory, do your homework.

Find out how likely it is for your genre to be read in a book club and look into listings of book clubs specifically in your genre. If there aren’t that many, then it will likely benefit you more to do direct target marketing to those clubs (if you can find them… that’s always the challenge). If your book is relatively main-stream or contemporary with suspense or women’s issues, a site like BCRL could work well for you.

Just remember – there are no guarantees for sales in this business.

Happy Hunting.