Your Online Book Promotion Campaign: Is It Working for You?

[Patrice-Anne Rutledge]

This is a question that I’m asked quite often. As a busy author, you want to focus your promotional efforts where they count most. But it’s often difficult to determine what’s working and what’s not unless a very specific, isolated promotion generates a huge volume of sales. I love analyzing things and have a very detailed system for tracking my sales success. Here are some basic tips:

• Keep a detailed log of all your book promotion efforts -- articles published online, posts on your blog and other blogs, press releases, ezine promotions, etc.
• Track your sales statistics -- Amazon and B&N sales ranks, royalty statements from publishers, and your own sales data if you’re self-published.
• Track your web statistics -- using the web analytics tool your web host provides or a third-party tool such as the free Google Analytics, see where your traffic is coming from and when.

Using these three pieces of information, you should be able to get a clear idea of which promotional efforts are paying off in terms of sales, web traffic, or both.