Book marketing and selling books in many ways is like marketing any other product. You need to identify what need your book fulfills and find people who crave the particular type of stories. Pitching your book to an audience that is interested in your specific book genre will yield much better results than going all out on all social networks and shout at the top of your voice.
Only, identifying the audience and places where the audience hangs out is not that easy. Moreover, the places where your audience hangs out, will be crowded with your competitors. To make space for yourself and put your book at the front you need to have a decent marketing budget. Although it is impossible to put down a number, $500 to $1000 seems to be the right amount to give your book that early sales boost.
The problem is, indie authors don’t always have the resources of big or even mid-level publishers. Hiring a marketing or a PR firm can be expensive. Then, DIY marketing is the only option left for first-time authors. Although spending money on marketing may seem like a luxury, the first book is the time when you will need this budget the most.
DIY book marketing is tough. You need to start looking at options as soon as you start writing your book, or at least when you are halfway in you project. There will be a lot of material to read and adapt to your specific requirements. There will also be expenses. Creating a good book cover, ensuring that you book is built or formatted for different formats, and most importantly, that it is at least proof read by someone to ensure minimum errors.
Here are some ways and things that you can adopt to sell books on a budget. There are many who will tell you otherwise. But the best use of your money is to put it in right marketing buckets.
Create Your eBook Cover
Your eBook cover is your identity for the next few months, until your book is published and live. Get to this as soon as you have a fairly clear concept of what the book is about. If you are not really the creative type and can’t imagine of the image that convey the crux of your book, look at some in your genre. Don’t copy. Check these out for inspiration.
Once you have a fair idea of what your cover should be, start looking for free or economical options. If you like creating memes and other images for social media, creating an eBook cover won’t be that difficult. Canva helps its readers create eBook covers, specifically for Kindle, and other images using templates. You can use the free images or buy something you like starting $1.
If creating eBook cover still seems like a tedious task, checkout ready-to-use eBook cover providers that offer covers in $40 -$100 range. These providers let you browse their collection and select the cover that they have already created. Although pre-made, the covers are exclusive and are not sold as is again to another author. Choose the one you like and get your book title and your name and the cover is ready.
Another option is to try a service like Fiverr. Although it is a bit difficult to find a good designer, this is another cheap option if you want to have a custom cover at low cost. Make sure you read through the gig and the cost of extras to understand the total cost of the cover.
Be Your Own Editor
This is the toughest part. Reading your own writing critically is difficult, as we gloss over what we have written, quite easily. The best option here is to rope-in a friend with good language skills and ask her to go through the book. It will not only help you weed out proofing errors, but also give you some early feedback.
If not, give yourself a short couple of days’ break and then go back to proofing the content.
Have a Long-term Marketing Budget
You will need a big push at the time of your book launch. But you will also need to drip-feed your marketing efforts through the first few months. Once you have decided what your budget is going to be, start working on your book marketing plan.
Allocate a budget for your book launch and then set aside a monthly marketing budget. Explore different channels each month. As you do this, keep a record of returns on your advertising efforts. This could be engagement on social media, clicks to your ebook page, or new subscribers to your list. With this exercise, you will get a good idea of what works best for your genre and help you repeat it again for the next book.
Get Speaking Engagements
If you are a non-fiction book author and an authority on your subject, speaking at different locations is the best marketing tool you can use. With speaking engagements, you can finance your book marketing budget, and even if you are not able to get someone to pay for your time, it will be some targeted marketing.
Get Your Books in the Library
Most big publishers have the knowledge and the means to get the books into the library stands. Getting your book in the library is the best way to reach your audience and generate awareness about your books.
Get in touch with your local librarians and ask them what you need to do to get them to read your book and add it to the catalog. If you have an eB00k, re-format the book for a print version and put it on CreateSpace. Donate as many copies as you can to your local libraries and any other you can. Donating a few books and getting shelf space in the library will gain you a lot of exposure to readers who are interested in the specific category at negligible cost.
Follow Niche Marketing
Ultimately, it is about reaching the right audience. The people who are interested in reading what you write. For non-fiction authors, this can be reaching out to trade and business forums and talk to the webmasters about how they can place the book on the forum. For business and office related books, bloggers who write for small-business owners and entrepreneurs are the people you would want to engage.
Find these people who address the audience that your book targets and reach out to them. The more targeted your marketing efforts the better would be the results – more exposure on a tight budget.