This post is excerpted from the transcript of WWW’s Shari Stauch who appeared on The Author Hangout at BookMarketingTools.com: Episode 13: Great Marketing Ideas with BMT’s Shawn Manahan and R.J. Adams. Visit the link to view the video, listen to the podcast or download the full transcript!

BMT: You end up working with a lot of authors; what is the hardest thing that authors deal with when it comes to marketing their own eBooks?

SHARI: Well, there’s two big things. One is misinformation. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and because of this whole new explosion of self-publishing there are people that kind of want to take advantage of authors.

When you’re birthing this new baby, your book, you’re willing to do anything to get it out there. So you have to be very careful and do your research on companies that you’re going to work with.

And then the other thing is the understanding that in the traditional sense of things, an author needed to make it – especially in fiction – in the first 90 days with that book, or it was going to be remaindered on the shelves. And now, books that are 10, 15 years old are coming back to the fore and gaining new steam because a book club will pick it up here or a reviewer will catch it there. You have a much longer shelf life. So the first thing we tell authors is it’s a marathon, not a race.

BMT: This is a big question, but what should a book marketing plan look like for authors? Especially new ones, and they’re kind of getting into it and they’re saying, “Okay, what is it supposed to look like?”

SHARI: Well, it has to be an overall strategy and take what we call that multipronged approach. There’s a combination of live – you definitely want to schedule those live book signings, book parties – and the virtual, and the social media. I consider Goodreads to be a strong social media site right now for readers and authors, but it’s kind of both. It’s both book-centric, reader-centric, and social media crossover site there.

Making sure that they have their Amazon author page tricked out, and if they’re doing video, video is attached to that. There is no one cookie cutter approach, because the way that I’m going to approach something with a nonfiction author writing a business help book is going to be much different than the fiction author, or even the fiction author in one genre versus another or marketing a children’s book – very challenging, because you’re not exactly allowed to go out and collect email addresses of children.

The kind of overriding strategy that we work with folks on is – it’s kind of a step-down. You have your social media that’s driving people to your blog/website that enable you to collect their email addresses, because we all know now that if one in a thousand is going to buy something from you off Twitter, it’s more like one in a hundred on email if you can collect that.

But now again, that could change, too, a year from now, as more people are texting and less emailing. So you have to remain very, very fluid. And the overriding factor that we really try and engage authors with is to pick a number. And I don’t care what your number is. If you don’t have lot of time to be marketing or if you’re in the middle of writing a book, maybe your number is only five or seven or ten. Maybe your number is 20 or 50. But say to yourself, when you wake up in the morning, “By the end of today, 20, 50, whatever, more people are going to know who I am and the name of my book.”

However you’re doing it, because some people end up more comfortable with one medium over another.

BMT: Yeah, and you had mentioned that about text messaging, and I’ve never even thought about that. Have you tried that?

SHARI: No. But I know more young people are interacting that way on text versus email. So now what’s the next step? Who’s going to come in and take advantage of that? And there have been some companies, more at a local level, that have tried to do those sorts of things, the instant texting and stuff, and I don’t know about you, but for me it’s very quick; as soon as I get one of those messages, I immediately click off of it. I don’t want strangers texting me. But it’s going to happen, just like email.

BMT: So what is working right now for you and your authors when trying to publish a book?

SHARI: Well, again, it’s a combination of things, and it depends on the author. I have one author – love to tell this story – she has three different books out there. She read an article, “It’s Not Like Authors Can Just Do Tupperware Parties.” And she said to herself, “Why not?”

So she actually got one of her friends to host a book party. She brought all three of her books, including her newest one, and they could just buy the newest one for one price, or she would bundle all three of them for another price.

Everybody that came to the party bought at least one book. A lot of them bought the bundles, and a lot of them bought the books then to gift on to others. And she’s spreading a very great message in the process of that, both in the fiction and the nonfiction, and doing something a little different on the live scale. So we really like those kind of out-of-the-box ideas that say, “Okay, let’s try it this way.”

BMT: Yeah, I think that’s a really cool idea. A lot of people say “Don’t market to your friends,” but I think if you set it up in that way, that’s a really cool way to get your friends involved.

SHARI: Right, and it’s a great way to start with your friends, because again, initially we all know that a lot of this stuff is driven by reviews, and you want to get a lot of positive reviews on Amazon, because that’s what’s going to let you advertise on places like BookBub.

And I think if people aren’t familiar with BookBub, they should know that BookBub is phenomenal return on investment. I haven’t had an author place on BookBub yet to run a deal that hasn’t far exceeded their expectations in terms of book sales. Not only through the course of the promotion, but in the weeks following it. But you need a lot of positive reviews to even get on that list to advertise with BookBub…

Want to read more? CLICK HERE! And thanks to our friends at Book Marketing Tools for the fun interview!