Writing a good book is a time consuming task. Fiction or Non-Fiction, the author must go through hours of research and multiple drafts before the book is deemed worthy of publication. But if keeping your head down and writing thousand plus words everyday seem tiring to you as an author, book marketing is the real challenge. Book marketing gets infinitely more difficult if you choose not to go with a publisher and take the self-publishing route.
Self-publishing has many advantages. You not only pay less commissions, but also have complete control over the content you want to publish. You also choose where you want to sell your books and release them in new markets when you want.
But this freedom also comes with the additional work of marketing your book. Hiring a PR agency is perhaps the best route to get the word out. However, investing in a PR company can be a daunting expense early on. Moreover, building a brand takes time. You need to start most of your book marketing activities much before your books hit the shelves, real or virtual.
20 Steps to Achieving Your Book Marketing Goal
Here are some of the basic steps that you can take to begin building your brand as an author from the day you start thinking about your book.
1. Create a Web site and Blog
You can create an author profile on different authoring platforms. But your blog and web site is one place where you have absolute control of what you want to say and the way you want to say it.
The moment you think of writing a book or books, begin work on your author web site and blog. Block a domain name in your name or the pseudonym that you are going to use for your books.
Many people suggest having the book name as the domain name. I will suggest otherwise. With thousands of new domains everyday, building a reputation and online authority online, takes time. You will not want all the effort you put in building your web site go to waste if the first book has no connection to the next.
I suggest you block and build a web site in the author’s name and use sub-domains for books and book series later.
2. Create Social Media Accounts
Social Media is a powerful tool for authors. Create a profile of networks like Twitter and Facebook if you don’t have one already. It is important that you stay active on these networks and start connecting with people to increase your following. Tweet about the subject of your book and the industry, if you are writing a non-fiction book.
If you are a fiction author, you can tweet about your book characters, their emotions, and dilemmas as they develop while you are writing the book. This will help generate interest in the characters. It will also get your potential readers interested in the book before it is complete or available for sale.
Here too, I will emphasize that you create social media accounts in your name instead of the book title. Building a good, genuine following on social media networks takes time. You don’t want to waste all the effort you have put in marketing your first book go to waste.
3. Rebrand Social Media Accounts
Visual marketing is key to both digital and conventional advertising. As soon as your first draft is ready and you have the book cover and art, start updating your profiles on the web with this artwork.
Let your web site, social media accounts and other profiles show the book cover and other artwork in the background image along with your author photo.
4. List Your Book on Goodreads
Goodreads is the largest community of book lovers and beta readers. Create an author profile here and add your book to the account. You can join various groups on Goodreads and discuss your doubts with readers to get a pulse of what readers usually like or do not like about books from a particular genre.
Some Goodreads groups also allow authors to advertise giveaways to get feedback in exchange of a free copy of the book.
5. Advertise and Run Book Giveaways
Advertising book Giveaways is an excellent option to generate some buzz around your new book. You can run Giveaways through your social media networks and ask interested readers to Like your Facebook Page or ask them to Follow your Twitter account in exchange of a chance to win a free copy of the book.
Apart form Goodreads, LibraryThing is another reader and Librarians’ community where you can reach out to bookworms and create awareness of the book. Use these platforms to host Giveaways and attract readers and gain some feedback.
6. Run Paid Promotion Campaigns
No matter how good you are, your writing needs to be discovered. It won’t be this hard once you get on some of the coveted Bestsellers lists, but until then it will be all expenses and hard work.
Supplement all your Giveaways and other free promotional activities with paid promotions across different advertising channels. Most social media platforms now have very sophisticated advertising solutions that allow you to target the exact audience of your book.
Other than these, you can also run paid promotions using content amplification platforms like Outbrain and Taboola to reach readers of some premium web sites like CNN, FOX, and more.
7. Create Author Profiles
Creating author profiles is an important part of your brand building effort. It gives you credibility and can also help you initially toward attracting traffic to your web site.
When you join these different platforms, you also get to network with other authors and get useful information and ideas about how other authors are responding to the latest changes in technology and sales.
8. List Your Book on Online Stores
Don’t restrict yourself to one bookselling platform. There are various services like Ingram Spark and Smashwords that list your book on e-commerce web sites like Amazon as well as conventional booksellers like Barnes and Noble.
Most of these services also allow you to list your book for pre-release months in advance. Sign up with these services and get the book listed in stores across the world as soon as you have a finished draft and are entering the editing phase.
9. Contact Local and National Newspapers
Digital media is essential for reaching out to people. But nothing gives you more credibility and exposure than conventional media houses. The way people consume news may have changed, but they still trust things published by major publications more than blogs.
Get in touch with local correspondents who cover your domain and discuss how you can help them with an article. Services like HARO and ProfNet for Experts can help you monitor relevant requests and pitch your story to the reporters.
10. Contact Online Media
Other than the mainstream publications, there are other local and national online-0nly media outlets. These secondary sources of information have many readers and people often visit these types of web sites for entertaining content.
Check these web sites and see if they cover news about books, or in case of non-fiction book authors, if they cover topics related to your expertise. Get in touch with their authors and find out if they would be interested in relevant content. You can also provide the writers with a quote for an article related to your domain and get a few mentions.
11. Send out Review Copies to Bloggers and Reviewers
Reviews are pivotal to your sales success. No one wants to enter an empty store in a bustling marketplace. Send out review copies to get good feedback and also create some buzz about your book.
Search for bloggers who review books in your genre. Check out what their typical reviews are like and what are the things they talk about while reviewing the book.
Get in touch with these bloggers and introduce your book and the plot to the reviewer. Make clear in your communication that you expect a review in return of the free copy. If you want the reviewer to post the review on a specific platform, weave that in your initial request.
12. Connect with Social Influencers
Although it is difficult to spot real social influencers, these are the new stars of Word-of-Mouth publicity campaigns. Engage people on social media networks who are readers and are also active participants in discussing books on their social media networks. Set a minimum number of followers you want these influencers to have. There are various analytical tools that allow you to evaluate Twitter accounts and give a complete breakdown of their activity online.
Engage these people on social media and discuss if they would be interested in reading your book.
13. Book Clubs and Blog Tours
While physical tours around the country may not be possible, you can join various virtual tours. Online Book Clubs, and Facebook groups are a good source to get your book in front of these readers.
There are various bloggers and blog networks that conduct blog tours for a sum. You can buy their services to get the information about your book out with blog posts about your book, reviews of your book, cover reveals and so on.
14. Give Interviews
Interviews are a powerful tool in the hands of an author and essential part of a book marketing campaign. People love to read and know more about the person behind the work of fiction.
Get in touch with bloggers who publish author interviews and let them know that you would be happy to answer any questions they might have. Still better, send the bloggers who have reviewed your books with an interview transcript and see if they would be willing to publish the interview.
15. Post Interview on YouTube
If you are not camera shy, YouTube is an amazing resource to get the word out. Talk to a friend who is willing to ask you questions about your book and and record the interview. You can then easily upload the interview to YouTube and other video distribution networks to reach a wider audience.
16. Create a Book Trailer
Book trailers are an excellent medium to generate some excitement about your book. Although these can be somewhat expensive, they have the potential to get your book noticed, especially if you are writing for a young, teen audience.
Most of this demographic prefers visual media over text when surfing online. An engaging video that captures their attention will help your book get noticed.
17. Talk Shows and Podcasts
Like book bloggers, there is a healthy number of pod casters who regularly upload new content to their online channels. A lot of these also talk about books and indie authors on their podcasts.
Get in touch with these podcasters and discuss how you can get featured on their channel.
18. Arrange Book Readings
Look for local book clubs and arrange book readings. You can also get in touch with your local library and participate in their existing programs or volunteer to start a new book reading program.
If you are children’s book author, joining your local library for summer reading sessions is an opportunity that you should not miss.
19. Host Meetups
There are various web sites that advertise local events. Collaborate with new local restaurants and cafes and host meetups for your readers.
Advertise these meetups on various Events web sites and host a book reading. This will not only help you create awareness about your book, but also increase traffic to your web site.
20. Get Active on Wattpad
Wattpad is thriving community of writers and readers. In the age of flash fiction and short short story, it is getting difficult to reach new readers.
Wattpad with its billions of readers gives you an opportunity to read these reluctant readers and hook them into your fiction. Feed the readers with short background stories of your characters and entice them to your book.
There is a lot of work that needs to go in before your book can get noticed. But as a career author, you know that you are in this for a long time. Start early and keep reaching out to new bloggers and readers. I will keep working on getting you more useful information. What has been the most challenging aspect of marketing for you as an author?