You have a new book out or coming out soon. But your not sure how to market your book. This article can help you to develop a plan for getting the word out about your book. If no one knows about your book how can they buy it? How do you expect to sell a lot of copies and become the best selling author? You can’t. This is why marketing is so important to authors.
Even if you are traditionally published you can’t rely on your publishing company to get the word out. If you are self-published no one but you will get the word out about your books.
In this article, I am going to talk about 17 ways you can use to market your books. There is a lot more than this, but it will get you started.
Before you can start writing your book, you need to identify your audience. This will eventually help you with your marketing strategies. Without knowing who your audience is how can you write for them? How can you market to them?
Without knowing your audience your marketing efforts will be harder to do. You could end up marketing a book to the wrong people and not getting any sales. That would be a massive waste of time and money.
Next, you need to establish your marketing budget. Without knowing your budget, how will you know when you have reached it? Throwing money into it without establishing a budget can make you go broke with little to no results.
If you establish a budget, it can help you keep on track. Try putting a certain amount of money (your budget) into a separate account. Use this account strictly for your marketing. This will help you to keep track of how much you spent and how much you have left. You will also want to keep a spreadsheet on your budget. What you have spent and where you have spent it.
Finely you need to create a marketing plan. Without a marketing plan, you won’t know what to do and when to do it. You will also want to keep track of all your marketing strategies and their results.
What did you do? How much did you spend on it? Was it successful or was it a failure? This will help you with the marketing campaign for your next book. You will want to replicate the successes and forget the failures in your next campaign. Keep all this information in a spreadsheet as you did when keeping track of your budget.
Once you have these three things established you can begin your marketing. So read on to learn about some marketing strategies for your campaign.
- Build your list
This is the first marketing strategy you want to do. It is the most important one you need to do. Your list is used in all your marketing. The best time to start building your list is when you are still writing your first book. If you didn’t do it then don’t worry. It’s not too late. You can still do it now. But building a list is the number one most important thing to do.
I published 3 books before I began to build my list. And I am still struggling to build it. This is the biggest reason none of my books have sold yet and I know this. So now I am starting over. I am building a list then I plan to re-edit my books and market the heck out of them.
- Schedule your social media posts
There are sites like tailwind.com that help you to schedule posts to your social media. For instance social media like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can use them to schedule your marketing posts on autopilot. This will save you valuable time and energy. You are then able to focus that time and energy on other marketing tasks. I recently heard of tailwind.com but haven’t learned how to use it yet. But that task is on my too do list. You can also use this site for marketing your blog posts.
- Promote your ebook for free
When you’re just starting out and don’t have a marketing budget to start with you can still get quite a bit done. There are lots of means to market your book or books for free. I am in this category myself. But I have been learning more about these free ways to book marketing.
- Create a free giveaway
Whether it is the first book in a series or it’s a short novella offer readers something free when they buy your book. It can even be a character bio for the main character in your book. This is a way to say thank you for buying your book. It’s also an incentive to get people to buy.
- List your books at the beginning and end of your books
Include a list of your books published either in the beginning or at the end of all your books. This lets people know about other books you have written that your readers don’t know about. You can also include how they can buy your books. This is a form of free advertising for you.
- Create your press release kit
Create a press release kit. You give these to journalists and bloggers who you want to advertise your book. For instance, if you are setting up a blog tour you will need to give your press kit to each blogger on the list.
What do you need to include in a press kit? Some examples of what to include can be:
- A cover photo
- Advance reviews
- Advance readers’ copy of your book
- A description of what the book is about
- Get early book reviews
If you have a list begin asking your list for reviews. Offer those willing to review your book a free advance readers copy. The way to do this is to email your list asking for volunteers to be your bata readers. When any agree you send them an ARC. Or if your books already out, send them a free copy of it.
If you don’t have an email list to ask go to your writer’s Facebook groups and ask your fellow members. You need to send those who message you and agree to be a beta reader a copy of your email signup form. This is to capture their email address. Then be sure to send them their ARC.
You never offer payment in the form of cash or gift cards for a review. Especially a favorable review. This is frowned upon by everyone including Amazon. You also don’t demand a review from anyone. It is also frowned upon.
- Insert sample chapters of your next book
Insert a sample chapter of your next book in the back matter of your current book. This gets the word out about your next book to your readers. This can hook them and get them anticipating the next one to come out. Then they will be looking for it when it does come out.
You can even add a note at the end of that chapter. You can say something like:
“for information on when this book comes available, subscribe here!”
Don’t forget to add the form to sign up for your mailing list. This too is free advertising.
- Set up an online book tour
There are 2 ways to do this. First, you research blogs in your genre. Then ask them if they can take part in a book tour you are setting up to promote your new book. This can take weeks or months to set up.
Or the second way to do this is to go to a blog touring service site and pay to have one set up for you. These sites will set up a blog tour for you to take part in during a set week or two. All the planning and setting it up is done by the service company. All you need to do is pay them for setting it up for you and show up where and when you need to. The more elaborate the tour, the more money it will cost you.
- Add a contact the author section at the end of your books
You want to add this in case your readers want to know more about you. Give them the following:
- Your website address
- Your email address
- Your social media links
- Your email sign up form.
Encourage them to keep in touch with you to learn about upcoming books and events.
- Encourage your fans, friends, and family to share your book.
Ask your friends and family to sign up for Amazon’s associate’s program and advertise your book too. They can earn a commission when people follow their link to your book an buys it. They will even earn a commission on everything else that people buy through their links.
- Sell themed merchandise on your website with your book info on it.
Have themed merchandise made up of your book. Some of these can include:
- Quotes from your book on tee shirts
- Book cover pictures from your book on tee shirts
- Bookmarks
- Cups
These can make great advertisements. Sell them on your website to help promote your book.
- Have a Google+ or Facebook live online launch party.
Use Google+ hangout or Facebook live to set up an online launch party for your book. Or you can get together with other authors for the launch of several books by those authors in a related genre. This will help all your authors and you to promote at the same time. Not with only your social media followers. But you will also have all the writer’s followers added to the party too. You reach a lot more people this way.
- Buy marketing ads
This one will cost money but can work really well if you know what you’re doing. Use paid ads on Amazon, Google, Facebook and other places to advertise your book. Be careful not to go over your planned marketing budget.
- Create a book trailer on YouTube
Do you know how movies have a trailer to advertise them? Try making one for your book too. You can advertise these videos on your website, YouTube, and social media accounts. People live to watch these to learn more about different books. Try to encourage people to share your video too.
- Create an email signature
Put links to your website, and book sales page in your email signature. Be sure to add this signature to every email that you send out. This is also great free advertising.
- Sign up for Amazons affiliate program
You refer someone to buy your book and other products through your affiliate link on Amazon. Then you can earn a commission for it. This is another income stream for you and helps to get paid while marketing your book.
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