YOU ARE YOUR BEST PUBLICIST- Part Two

By Vicki H. Moss, Contributing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

What about Book laundering firms that hire people all over the country to buy books one at a time through many different retailers using different credit cards with different shipping and billing addresses? What about paying a fee for our publisher to have our book placed on the front tables at Barnes and Nobles? Doesn’t WSJ or NYT bestseller = more money?

With those questions and more rambling through my thoughts, the big day arrived for Nailed It! The Nail Salon Chronicles’ book launch. The word was out, now the wait. I kept checking Amazon rankings every 30 minutes and noticed the rankings were updated every hour. I wondered if all this searching the book title on Amazon helped Nailed It! The Nail Salon Chronicles leave page five to rise to page one on the search, staying in either the number one or number two spot – depending on if there was a sponsored book or toy being promoted by Amazon. The rise to the first page certainly had nothing to do with book reviews because there were none. Then the results magically appeared. 

Natalie and I were truly stunned when Nailed It! The Nail Salon Chronicles rose to #159 in the rankings, up from around millions of books in the inspirational category. And at one a.m., I went to bed, not knowing if the rankings had risen even higher, since Natalie lived in California which is in the Pacific Time Zone and her friends and family were still making purchases. To my knowledge, Amazon doesn’t notify authors how high in rankings a book may have climbed, so I had no way of knowing final results.

Lessons learned from all of this? Forget about making the NYT and WSJ bestseller lists. Like the stock market—the system is more than likely rigged since there’s no tried and true check list for rising to the top. Bias will forever be a main player. Have your NYT and WSJ bestseller strategy, but concentrate on marketing through social media platforms, word of mouth, TV and radio, speaking engagements, and while standing in line waiting for a table in a restaurant—yes, I’ve made a sale that way. (Once, I sold one of my other books while chatting with someone before mall doors opened and the inquisitive couple visiting from another city asked, “What do you do?”)

Then, if there’s any money available for hiring a publicist, find one who has had proven results in your book genre. The main thing to remember—authors are their best publicists. When someone asks about your line of work—have a printed card ready to share with your book’s information and where it can be purchased. No brainer: Always keep extra book copies in your automobile, briefcase, or purse.

Final tip: Begin working on the next book, for after all, who wouldn’t want the challenges of another marketing campaign?   

YOU ARE YOUR BEST PUBLICIST –Part One

By Vicki H. Moss, Contributing Editor for Southern Writers Magazine

You have your baby published—now comes marketing. But how do you go about getting your book out there to potential buyers?

I must admit that one of the biggest challenges of book publishing is this: Marketing 101. And once you publish a book, how do you market to make the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Lists? What about the Amazon Bestseller list? I’d once read that if you work for the New York Times and have a book out, your book is more likely to stay on the list longer and have a higher ranking than non employee books and that if you write a conservative political leaning book, you’re more likely to rank lower and drop off the list faster than those books with a more liberal political slant. But whether a conservative writer or a liberal one, how do you even make the list—does buying ad space through NYT and WSJ help? And unless you have a huge platform like fiction writer John Grisham and a fat bank account for marketing to pay $36,000 or more for a publicist if you don’t have a huge platform, how do you get your book out there?

After recently publishing Nailed It! The Nail Salon Chronicles with my co-writer Natalie Banda, I tried to come up with a marketing plan that would initially consist of advertising in three consecutive issues of Southern Writers Magazine. And of course, Natalie and I chatted up the book to friends and family before the book was published, drumming up curiosity and interest. Once the book was published by

Grace Publishing in July of this year, mine and Natalie’s major push would then be to have people we knew who planned on buying our book to buy on the same day, after hearing this was a ploy to make the Amazon ratings rise. But would this work or was this rumor/hearsay?

After sending out email blasts and posting on all of our social media sites which consisted of over 10,000 contacts, Natalie and I waited for the big day—the day we’d told everyone who planned on purchasing a copy, to buy. Should Natalie and I also buy in bulk that day? Some reports say bulk buying is a way of trying to game the system. What’s to stop a rich author from buying 30,000 copies or more to launch themselves onto a bestseller list?


Part Two of “YOU ARE YOUR BEST PUBLICIST” will appear on October 19, 2018.