Marketing your book!
One of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is waiting until the last minute (ie when they are done and ready to launch!) to start marketing their books.
That strategy is fine if you already have millions of fans. But in most cases, authors have not already built up a tremendous following. Book launch day is NOT the day to realize you failed in your marketing!
You want to start creating buzz from the time you start writing. (But don’t worry, if you didn’t, you can still catch up!)
First of all, don’t be frightened of marketing. It’s funny how we writers get terrified of “pushing” our books on people. When you read a great book by someone else, do you have any problems suggesting it to your friends and family? Probably not. But maybe your friends and family are not at all the right demographic. Understanding who IS will be of considerable importance to you.
One of my favorite resources for book marketing is Rachel Thompson of Bad Redhead Media. She runs a weekly twitter chat: #bookmarketingchat that is always FULL of great info and conversation.
How do I find the right demographic?
You can start by checking out some great articles written by people and organizations who are successful at book marketing. Here are some great articles:
- 5 Tips on How to Identify Your Target Audience by Joanna Penn
- Finding Your Demographic – IBPA
- Marketing Books Using Demographics, Psychographics, and Consumer Behavior – Digital Book World
- Pew Center, the Census Bureau (literally); marketing organizations, and more are great places to look at demographic info
What if I’ve Already Published?
It’s never too late to start marketing! There are so, so many different ways to market a book, it’s really just about picking a goal and learning as much as you can about how to achieve that goal through the different marketing tools available to you. You might consider Amazon Marketing Ads, Facebook Ads, a strategy of appearing as a guest on blogs and podcasts. The good thing is that it’s never too late. But you really need to develop a strategy and go with it… don’t try to do 1000 different things. Pick a few and dig deep. We provide the tools and a sample marketing strategy in our inexpensive course through the Write|Publish|Sell Academy – Market your Book.
How do I know HOW to market if I don’t have a background in marketing?
There are a million ways to share your book and you’re probably doing many of those things already without even realizing it. Talking about it with your friends, blogging about it, sharing on social media, and so forth.
But to do a great job, you’ll want to start with a good marketing plan to help you organize your strategy. AllIndieWriters.com offers a free blank template. Download this template and start filling it out! A marketing plan does not cost anything but your time, and will pay off in the long run to ensure you’re covering all of your bases.
Remember, publishing a book is a business, and should be treated as such. So naturally, marketing is a key element.
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed about the process of marketing your book, we’d love to help you out!
Check out our very inexpensive training course: Market Your Book. Not only will we help you develop a marketing strategy, we’ve included interviews with some of the best marketers in the industry.
