Publicity before publishing your book

So you've written your book, you're looking for an Agent and / or Publisher, but whilst doing that you've decided to self publish.

You're working hard on building your author platform and networking like crazy to get your name "out there".

What comes next?

The book launch?

Not quite yet. A few weeks before you launch, there are some things you can do to give yourself a better chance of making a "splash" with your new book.

We'll touch on four items now and then over the next week or so, I'll go into more detail for each of them:

Get reviews - contact a few select bloggers and send them a copy requesting a review. You can then link back to their reviews on your blog to build your book's credibility.

Setting up a blog tour - best to organise this in advance and start the tour a day after the launch. Identify blogs you would like to feature yourself and your book on and then contact the bloggers. Try to have the material pre-written so it's just a matter of posting it.

Cross promotion - join a group of authors (on Twitter) who are cross promoting their respective books preferably in the same genre to yours.

Invitations to podcasts / radio interviews - if you can get something like this, you can link back on your website.

A week before the book launch, now is the time to really start turning up the heat and pushing your book. Organise a launch party on GoodReads (more on this later) and offer giveaways to the first X number of people who download your book in exchange for a review on Amazon. Make sure you've updated your website with the reviews you hopefully secured a few weeks earlier and any interviews you've managed to pull out of the hat. Put them on your blog as well and use your blog as your main marketing platform because if set up to do so, your blog can cover all bases - Facebook, Twitter etc etc. Less work for you - and let's face it, you're going to be pretty busy!