I ran a four week giveaway tied to my humorous fantasy book, giving entrants a free novella and sharing candid behind the scenes stories from my writing. It produced 4,200 targeted email signups, pushed the launch to the top of an Amazon category, and kept sales coming in organically.
One unconventional PR tactic I used was a free plus shipping offer for my book. Giving it away built a large email list of ideal customers, which became a strong lead source. The list pre-qualified readers, built trust, and helped sell my training programs.
I will be straightforward about this. I have never promoted a traditional book, so I am not interested in creating a fictitious launch story. Instead, I can tell you what I have seen that works, and have counseled others about, and that is the idea of an "unconventional" PR strategy that may be more advantageous than many of the conventional promotional models for books. For example, one author that I worked with began pitching not the book itself, but rather one page of that book. They pitched that very focused concept. They found opportunities to pitch that concept via direct responses to journalists and by LinkedIn and newsletter posts, with no "buy my book" intent. The outcomes were very practical, in that the limited media coverage generated through those ideas created some new podcast opportunities for the author, resulting in book sales. In fact, I tracked web traffics spikes every time that authors quote from the book had run on websites that link to the author. This proves to me that the value of a specific idea is significantly more compelling to drive results than the traditional form of press release promotion. Therefore, the key to effective promotion is in providing potential customers with actual usable content from the book, versus simply promoting the book itself. This is typically where promotional success begins.