In today's lesson, I am going to show you how you can effectively create your own book-signing event, effortlessly. This process will take you less than an hour, and the result may attract hundreds, and maybe thousands of visitors to your book-signing events.

Localized book-signing event is critical to every independent authors because of the impacts it can create for author's professionalism and book sales. I don't know if you are aware of this, but your friends and family members are usually your first fans, followed by your community, the city, state, and then eventually the nation or internationally. It's like a simple arithmetic equation, the one with the infinite possibilities called, 'words of mouth.' 

Words are the first evolution of mankind, and any whisper can be heard worldwide nowadays.

Your friends and family member are most likely to be the first to talk about and your book to others, and the others (usually within your community) may spread the word after that. Then before you know it, your book is known outside of your community, into the next city, state, and the whole nation.

This is the kind of impact that book-signing can do for you. It can make an unknown author famously known, starting from the city. While you may hire a publicist to perform these publicity tasks for you, the fact is that, 'you can do these tasks yourself, and save you a lot money and time.'

The very first step to creating a successful book-signing event is to acquire a good position (book shop) for the gathering. You may obtain a list of 850 book-store owners in the United States from this link, http://j.mp/1ywevzd. Manta.com is also a good resource for finding the local book-shops around your area. Simply type in the keywords, 'book shop' & 'your city', in the search box, and the result will display the list of the local book businesses around your way, including the Barnes&Nobles, and Borders. After acquiring a list, make contact with them, and try to get the book-store owner's permission (given that you don't a book-rep that will do this for you) to include their location in an article that you are submitting to the local newspaper concerning a book-signing event. Give he or she your professional credential, and a brief summary of what your book is about.  Any free broadcast  of a local business is always good to a local business owner, so the chance that the book-store owner will say no to your newspaper-exposure-proposal is slim. Promise the book-store owner that you will attract at least 100 book buyers of your own to the event, and that you will provide the paperback books that you will be signing & selling that day. Instead of paying cash to the book-store owner for using their location, pay he or she with your books, perhaps 50 to 100 autographed copies that they could sell for their own profit them after your book-signing. Chances are, if you can attract more than 100 people to that initial book-signing, the remaining autographed books will sell.

After you've acquired a deal with a book-store owner, the next step is to contact your local news outlets. The Tribune newspaper is nationwide, and very user friendly.

You will have to write the local newspaper editor, and this is where your professionalism, as far as writing goes, will be tested. Because your writing will not bypass a newspaper editor's approval unless it is appealing. Instead of submitting a fully written proposal to them, you may also call their office and schedule a one-to-one appointment with them. Newspaper editors are known for accepting every literary-based appointments. The rest, as far as convincing the editor to print the book event in the newspaper is up to you. Chances are, if your proposal is accepted, you will not be charge for the advertisement, and the event will be categorized to the 'Local Events' section of the newspaper's print. You work may be tedious, but very worthy. If you are successful with this, many other book shops would be scheduling you for appearances.

There are other ways of promoting your book-signing event offline, for free, with Craigslist, Uniiverse, Groupon, Goodreads, BlogTalkRadio, I.W.S, Facebook & Twitter.

Groupon.com is a deal-of-the-day website and subscription system that features and distributes redeemable discounted gift certificates that are usable at the user's desired venues. Groupon is a great crowd sourcing program, and can attract thousand of local visitors / buyers to your venue. To use Groupon, you will first have to create a user account, and then you will want to create a Merchant Account so that you be a seller and not the buyer. You may apply for the merchant account after creating your groupon profile at, https://merchants.groupon.com. From here, you may create an event for the book-store location that you have secured, set the amount for how much you want to sell your autographed books, and then press launch. The Groupon localize system will take care of the rest and email every Groupon members within the state about your book-signing event. Even more, it allows the email recipients to buy a ticket for the event (the autographed book) directly from the email, or the landing page that Groupon will create specifically for the event. With Groupon, I can guarantee that you will gain some audience as long as the price is right.

Another very effective online tool that you can use for your book-signing promotion is Uniiverse.com. Much like the Groupon system, you can create an event, sell admission tickets, and then announce/message the physical location and a 40 words description 'TO ALL OF YOUR FACEBOOK FRIENDS, EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS, AND TWITTER FOLLOWERS' with one push of a button. I don't think I need to reiterate this point (that are capitalized) again. So if you have 30,000 twitter followers, this program will deliver your book-event message into all of their inbox, for the ones in your local area to attend. Same goes for Facebook; if you have 2,000 friends, they will all receive the message at the same time. Uniiverse is a must-use system for every author looking to bring their circles to their book events!!

Much like Groupon and Uniiverse, Craigslist.org is another crowd pleasing website for attracting the locals to your event. To use craigslist for your book-event promotion, click on the proper link for your city & state listed on the website, and then go to the 'Community' section to compose a general message concerning your book signing appearance.  You may also direct the viewers to pick up their admission ticket for the event from the Groupon (or Uniiverse) landing page that was created

Another effective way of marketing your event's ticket, the one you created on Groupon or Uniiverse for your autographed book, is to advertise them on Facebook groups and Fanpages. The Facebook Graph system is a great tool that allows any Facebook member to find results for any keyword from their homepage. For example, if you schedule book event in San Bernardino, California, all you'll have to do use the Facebook search box for the keywords, San Bernardino, California. A lot of results will pop up that you can choose from. The Facebook results with the likes results are fan-pages, and the one with the members counts are the Facebook groups for that keyword. Join and like the ones that you think will more effective for your event, and then post the link and info about your book-event on the walls, asking for the people in the community to come join you. Chance are, the event will likely spread.

Goodreads.com is also a good tool for creating a successful book event. Goodreads Events can be used to promote events like book launches, book tours, and author appearances. It can also be used to give away free copies of eBooks. And much like the Facebook graph system, the book event you create with Goodreads can automatically generate new viewers and visitors to your listing with its search tool. To get started with setting up your event on Goodreads go to, https://www.goodreads.com/event.

Blogtalkradio.com is another great avenue to announce your book event. BlogTalkRadio.com is a web-based platform that allows podcasters and talk show hosts to create live and on-demand talk format content for distribution on the web and podcast distribution channels. What this means is that you can book an online interview with one of the host and announce your book to their audiences usually for free. BlogTalkRadio hosts are mostly happy to have published authors on their station, and will accommodate your book interview. To find the best podcaster for your announcement, simply browse through the graet contents of the website. 

Indie Writers Support is also a great place to promote your book event. Hundreds of readers visit indiewritersupport.com everyday, and the book-signing event you created would be expose to each and every one of them.

There is no shame in letting people know about a book event, so don't let anyone guilt you out about you doing your own promotion.

The best time to set up your book-signing event is usually about 45 days ahead of time, so that you and the bookstore owners may attract as much visitors that you can.

There are things you can do to make your book-signing event more eventful.

• You may sponsor a book giveaway
• Do a book reading of the most exciting chapter in the book
• You may partaken in designing a theme-based-atmospheric attraction for the event, one that would wow the visitors when they arrive. 
• You may want to invite other known authors within the community to join and collaborate with you at the event.

BookWebinars.com is a new website that our website-developer, Judd Miller, is currently working on. This website will address all of the book-marketing issues addressed in this topic. The website would also be a paid-member-access only, and is expected to launch within the next three months.

At Indie Writers Support, we aim at helping writers become more successful.