Self-publishing isn't just about avoiding the fees of a literary agent. There's a lot of work involved in the marketing and branding of your product too. It's easy to forget that as much as we help you as publishers, you're the artist, you're the focal point, the key to it's success and without people feeling connected to you there's less chance of your book 'making it big'. Although we offer a range of marketing and promotional services, a lot of what's needed is down to you, the author.

Having a chat with a colleague a week or so ago, we discussed the success-map of a good self-publishing author, and the key elements that lead to a successful distribution. We'll go over that in full another time, but I can tell you that wo of those factors are undoubtedly, time and effort.

As part of our marketing, we make contact with people across different media sectors to arrange book talks on radio, interviews for magazines, talk to bookshops about our new addiions and create contacts in industries that might benefit from factual publications. It's then down to you, the author to follow these up and make use of every avenue we open up. Just contacting a radio station once starts the ball rolling, but then if you followed it up with a personal call - it makes it all the more interesting to them. They know they've got an opportunity to talk to the person who knows the most about the book, and not a PR person who's read the back.

A great example of how you can help yourself and boost your sales was offered by Ann Richardson, a self-published author from the States living in London, who has managed to sell 22 books to complete strangers in the run-up to Christmas.

As part of a mini-series of posts to give you ideas on how to sell copies of your books in the run-up to Christmas, London-based American author Ann Richardson describes how smart handselling tactics are helping her promote and sell more copies of her latest book, Celebrating Grandmothers, in venues near her home

You can read the full post How to hand-sell self-published books on the Self Publishing Advice website