While hanging out on various social media sites, I’ve seen some advertisements for companies that are charging for “Author Promotion”. To this end, some will offer to schedule book releases, blog hops, tweet blasts and other social media blasts. Having been in this business for over ten years, I thought I’d offer my opinion on some of these services, some of which my own company, Select-O-Grafix, LLC provides.

Do they work? That is the question I am often asked when someone wants to pay for my services. My response? Anything you do is better than doing nothing. Will it guarantee sales? No, I don’t believe it will. What it will do is continually keep your name in front of readers. Having said that, I believe you can use some of these services and provide overkill. No one wants to constantly read “buy my book” and that be the only interaction you have with them.

Does it pay to hire someone to do this promotion for you? It depends. The main thing you need to look at is what service you are receiving for the money. My company charges $50 for a 6 month Premium Author Club Membership. With this membership we will do weekly tweets, and posts to all our social networks (Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, and a few others) about the book of your choice and you as an author. We post on different days of the week and try to change up the material so we aren’t posting the same thing all the time. If you can find this type of service for a relatively small amount of money, then it is probably worth it to pay someone to take on the hassle of scheduling those posts every week.

I also think paying someone to schedule blog hops and cover reveals is worth the money, as long as it’s reasonable. Consider the time it would take you to perform the same task and what you’d pay by the hour to do the same work. If that’s reasonable to you, then hire someone. I would recommend getting a referral from someone you know before you pay for the service. Or ask the provider for references. If they aren’t willing to give them, then run far, far away. If they do give a reference then contact them. See if they’ve been satisfied with the service. Just don’t ask the question, “Did it improve your sales?” That’s a question no one can really answer. There’s no real way to track sales back to any promotion campaign. A better measurement would be did the person do what they committed to do?

As authors, one of the things many of us didn’t bank on was all the promo work that comes with getting a book published. Even if you’re with one of the “Big 5” you still have to do a great deal of promoting on your own. Weigh your options carefully and then choose what makes sense to you. Best of luck along your journey. Remember…any promotion is good promotion.

If you’d like to see what Select-O-Grafix has to offer, drop on by our website: www.selectografix.com.

If you have a service that you’d like to recommend, please share in the comments.

Books by Kelly Abell     Cover Designs by Select-O-Grafix

Copyright 2014 by Kelly Abell