Book Review ~ The BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge by Rachel Thompson (Updated for 2018)

Available on Amazon UK and Amazon US

I’ve been following Rachel Thompson since I first started publishing five years ago – and have been grateful for her advice, which has helped my last three novels become Amazon best sellers. As well as being an author, Rachel has 184,000 followers on Twitter and 12,000 likes on Facebook.

You might think I don’t need her advice now - but things are changing all the time so it’s easy to miss something important. There is no shortage of well-intentioned advice and guidance out there but this is one book I’d recommend to all authors -  as it can save you valuable time when you could be writing.

Updated for 2018, Rachel’s BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge offers one good idea for each of the thirty days. Week one focusses on how to get the best from Twitter and I found I was picking up new tips despite being an active user.

I still find authors who think it’s a waste of time or have a picture of their cat and no links in their bio. I’ve met many interesting writers and connected with readers through Twitter, although like most things, what you get from it depends on what you put in.

Week two looks at Facebook – and I’ll admit to being a late and somewhat reluctant adopter. I found this section particularly useful as Facebook keep changing the rules. I’m always amazed at the ‘reach’ the right post can have on Facebook and it offers a very different level of engagement with readers. As Rachel points out, some readers are only on Facebook, so it’s worth creating an author page and following her advice.

Week three considers broader promotion, such as Amazon author pages, beta readers and the sometimes bewildering world of paid for promotion.  It took me a while to understand the benefits of giving books away for free but Rachel makes a good case for it. (I watched one weekend as readers downloaded hundreds of free promotion copies of one of my books – then only three left a review.)

In the final section Rachel discusses author websites, rankings, SEO and blogging. The section on understanding the demographics of your readers is very useful, as well as the states on the differing audiences for social media. I had a blog post go ‘viral’ once but never understood why, so it helps if you can use analytics to learn what’s going on.

I’ll leave the last word to Rachel Thompson: “Accept that nobody owes you anything.  It’s a privilege when anyone reads our work, let alone shares it or reviews it.”

Tony Riches 

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About the Author

Rachel Thompson is the author of the multi award-winning and best-selling Broken Pieces, as well as two additional humor books, A Walk In The Snark and Mancode: Exposed. Favorite. Rachel founded BadRedhead Media in 2011, creating effective social media and book marketing campaigns for authors. Her articles appear regularly in The Huffington Post, IndieReader, FeminineCollective, BookMachine, BlueInk Review, and TransformationIsReal. She  lives in California (with her two kids and two cats). Find out more at Rachel's website http://RachelintheOC.com and follow her on Facebook and Twitter @RachelintheOC