In my previous articles on What Makes A Great Story and Express Yourself, you learned how to develop your story through building a character of quality, which helps to carry and stimulate a story. In addition, how some great marketing efforts outside of radio and TV spots, advertisements and word-of-mouth are through creating a press release. When you develop a press release, it is a tremendous and inexpensive way to get your voice heard about your book to a wide audience.

As previously mentioned, here are some of the quick and easy steps that you can take for character development and marketing:

Make the characters realistic;

Get the reader’s attention;

Explain why the character is important to the story;

Make the characters relatable;

Create an engaging title for your press release with less than 120 characters;

Develop a compelling summary about the book in less than 400 characters;

When choosing a date and time for the release to be distributed chose mid-week and not hourly. For example, Wednesday, October 25 at 11:11;

For the body of the press release, inform the audience about what is crucial about purchasing the book;

Use the last ditch effort of selling by carefully choosing the industry and the book category or distribution channel that your book represents.

Remember, as you begin to develop your story, it is the characters that help to carry and stimulate the story. Your characters will set the stage for your book. In addition, the marketing efforts that you use are what create the exposure necessary to create a buzz about your work.

Let’s proceed to how to use social media to maximize your book’s exposure. First things first, it is important to fully understand each social media platform that is operating within the marketplace. The second order of the day is to understand which social media platforms that your target audience is using to locate the latest trends and the newest books on the market.

I will explain the process that is crucial in helping you to determine which social media platforms would work best for what you are presenting in the marketplace. An example is that your book is within the graphic novel market, so you must determine who is your target audience? Perform some research to determine where your target audiences are.

Once you have established the social media trend, the platform in which to market your graphic novel within the near future will be much easier. In the graphic novel category, your audience consists of a diverse group of people. Graphic novels can fall into the comic, manga, gaming, and video genres. 

In this sector, readers are primarily male within the ages 20-35 that can be somewhat introverted. Graphic novels, like comic books, provide adventure, fantasy, and escape. Locate the markets that attract them.

As you continue working through these steps, you can then begin to truly hone through the layers to locate your target audience. After you have determined the audience, then position your marketing efforts through the various social media channels that would attract their attention. Some of these markets can include Snapchat, Mashable, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, and blogs.

Moreover, you will discover that the traditional word-of-mouth never fails. Good luck!