Marketing Ideas for Your Book

By Liz Lazarus

Although I have an engineering background, I’ve always had a penchant for marketing. One of the perks of being an author is that the sky’s the limit which it comes to dreaming up clever ways to market your book.

My latest idea was created to gain reader engagement and facilitate preorders. I ran a competition on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to allow anyone who preordered the book a chance to name one of the characters. Here’s the promotion with the corresponding Canva graphic:

PREORDER PERKS
Your chance to choose the name of Jackie's brother in my upcoming thriller, PLEA FOR JUSTICE.
1) Preorder the book (on Amazon or B&N)
2) Email me at liz@lizlazarus.com confirming that you've preordered & tell me the name you'd like to use for the brother (& why if you like)
3) Post about your entry on social media using the hashtag #pleaforjustice (Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter)

Contest runs from 2/18 to 2/28 at midnight.

Winner will be chosen at random from email submissions using a random number generator.
If you have already preordered, you are eligible to enter.

*I reserve the right to exclude any overly unusual or inappropriate names - it's my protagonist's brother, after all.*

So far, I’ve received some great names:  Jace - which means healing, Flavel – a fan’s middle name, Blake – strong and sexy, according to the submitter and the suggestions continue.

At first, I was going to use raffle software like Rafflecopter. They charge ~$40/month and I found the set-up to be fairly user-friendly (I did a trial run). But at the end of the day, I wanted this contest to be interactive. I liked the idea of receiving emails directly from readers and if my Inbox gets flooded, that’s a good thing.

A final thought:  If you happen to pick up a copy of PLEA FOR JUSTICE, check out the name of Jackie’s brother and know it was created from reader engagement. Happy selling & feel free to reach out to me on FB: AuthorLizLazarus. Would love to hear your cool Marketing ideas!

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Liz Lazarus grew up in Valdosta, Georgia, known for its high school football and being the last watering hole on highway I-75 before entering Florida. She was editor of her high school newspaper and salutatorian of her class. Lazarus graduated from The Georgia Institute of Technology with an engineering degree and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management with an MBA. She went on to a successful career as an executive at General Electric’s Healthcare division. Later, she joined a leading consulting firm as a Managing Director. Interestingly, Lazarus initially ignored the calling to become a novelist—instead, she tackled other ambitions on her bucket list: living in Paris and learning to speak French, getting her pilot’s license and producing a music CD. But, as she explains, her first book “wouldn’t leave me alone—it kept nudging me to write to the point that I could no longer ignore it.” Though her first novel, Free of Malice, released in the spring of 2016, is fiction, the attack on the main character is real, drawn from Lazarus’ own experience. It portrays the emotional realities of healing from a vicious, physical assault and tells the story of one woman’s obsession to force the legal system to acknowledge her right to selfdefense. Reader response to Lazarus’ first novel was so encouraging that she embarked on a writing career, releasing her second novel in the spring of 2018. Plea for Justice is a thriller that depicts the journey of a paralegal investigating the case of her estranged friend’s incarceration. As she seeks the truth, loyalties are strained and relationships are tested leaving her to wonder if she is helping an innocent man or being played for a fool. Lazarus lives in Atlanta and is engaged to fiancé, Richard. When not working, she enjoys reading, traveling and spoiling their cat, Buckwheat.Liz’s social media links are: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLizLazarus/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/AuthorLizLazarus/Twitter: https://twitter.com/liz_lazarus Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26808374-free-of-malice Pinterest:  https://www.pinterest.com/freeofmalice Book Trailer:  http://www.freeofmalice.com/video.htm