Review: Your First 100 Copies: The Step-by-Step Guide to Marketing Your Book, by Tim Grahl

It’s an appealing title, and the book was cited in a rather good article I read recently, so I thought I’d give it a chance. Tim Grahl has some good ideas, and some opinions which I share. For example, he’s convinced that email is a far more effective way of reaching people that social networks like Facebook, and I think he’s right. That’s been my experience as an Internet campaigner. But this short book offers little practical advice — even something as simple as “should I buy ads on Facebook or Twitter” is not mentioned, not even once. And while there are some examples in the book of authors Grahl knows (and has had as clients) their stories are not particularly inspiring. It might have been useful to find examples of authors he didn’t necessarily advise, authors who have made real contributions to marketing their own books. For those of us who write books, learning about marketing them is important. Unfortunately, this book contributes very little to that.