Plants are immobile and have, over the course of millions of years, figured out strategies to propagate their respective species. This propagation or reproduction is a particularly important function. Some plants produce wind-borne pollen grains to carry out the activity of reproduction. This is a scatter gun approach where the plant needs to produce a relatively large number of pollen grains and then depend on the wind to carry out the act of pollen grain dispersal. On the other hand, there are other plants that, from a ‘marketing’ perspective have a much more elegant approach. These plants produce visually stunning specimens of flowers. Often the flowers carry an attractive scent that draw bees and other winged insects. And they provide just the right quantity of nectar which encourages these insects to move from one flower to another flower of the same species thus carrying out the crucial activity of pollination (or plant reproduction.) If an individual flower produces too much of the nectar, then the honeybee will have no need to travel from flower to flower of the same species.
Now what can an author looking to market a book learn from these plants?
For starters, you can either decide to be a plant that produces wind-borne pollen or insect born pollen. In other words, you can decide to either market your book using a scatter gun approach with lots of tries in lots of directions and hope that favorable winds carry your book to the right audience. This is not a bad strategy if you have plenty of resources. On the other hand, if you are an author with limited resources, you may want to think of a book marketing strategy that is designed from the ground up for intelligent, focused and targeted dispersal of your information. You need to think of yourself as a honey producing author.
So who are your honeybees?
Your honeybees are book lovers who are looking for an interesting new read. If they find something they like, they will devour it and tell their friends about it.
And what is your honey which draws these book-lovers to your book?
The most effective method which takes very little of your time and money is to have your book featured on Freado.com – the world’s biggest book winning site. The site offers guaranteed eyeballs for your book cover and works like this:
There are over 300 free books (including best-sellers) being given away as prizes on Freado.com. The site also also gives away grand prizes like an iPad or Kindle regularly. This draws book lovers to the site. These book lovers play a memory matching game (called CoverMatcher) on the site to earn points. While playing this simple game, they are exposed to your book cover. In fact they land up memorizing your book-cover and are much more likely to recognize your book when they see it in some other situation (such as on Amazon or at a bookstore.) Book lovers use the points earned from the game to bid for the book prizes available on the site. If your book is listed as a prize on the site, they may bid for your book (or put it on their wishlist.) If they win, you ship the book to them (either via email if it is an ebook or via physical post if it is a physical book.) They read your book and may leave a review of your book on Amazon or another website.
And how do you get your book featured on Freado.com?
Go to Bookbuzzr – the world’s #1 provider of book marketing technologies for authors and sign up for a BookBuzzr Author Pro account which costs a little less than $8 per month. The first month is free. And you can cancel at any time. Once you sign-up and add in your details, your book automatically begins to show up on the Freado.com game. If you decide to include your book under the Prizes section on the site, you can do so with just a few clicks.
Try BookBuzzr Author Pro today. And see if the strategy of being a honeybee attracting author works for you.
About the Author: Vikram Narayan is the founder of BookBuzzr Book Marketing Technologies which owns and operates Freado.com – the world’s biggest book-winning site.
