How to Help Booksellers Help You

One of the most effective ways to promote your book—perhaps the most effective way to promote your book, is through booksellers handselling.  Handselling happens when a bookseller recommends your book to a customer and then hands them the book.  As you can surmise, this technique is especially effective for unknown authors.

So how do we ask booksellers to handsell our books?  (Note that the key word here is ask.  It’s not your store and they bookseller is under no obligation to handsell your book.)

There are several ways to get noticed by booksellers:

1)Send them Advanced Reading Copies(ARCs).  (See article making your own ARCs)  While expensive, this is the most bang for your book.  It will garner you advanced orders, which will make your publisher very happy with you.
2)Ask to sign your stock. (See article on signing your books.)  No advanced orders here, but by autographing your books, you can help your books to sell. 
3)Send them teasers—small samplings of your writings.
4)Have a special section on your website just for booksellers.
5) Buy ads in periodicals sent to booksellers for the purpose of advertising books.

Of all these action items, 1) will give you the best return for your time and money while3), 4) and 5) are better for followup efforts and will reinforce other advertising methods.  These should be done four to eight months ahead of your book’s release.  Action item 2 is, of course, only effective when your books hit the shelves.