Publishing your book independently is hard. Marketing your book for independent publishing is even harder. You want to make it right the first time. Still, you don’t know the resources, the proper use of these resources, and the impact each of these resources will create. How will you move forward? How will you ensure that your book promotion campaign reaches a desirable goal?
When it’s your first time publishing a book, you have to face many challenges. People don’t know about you nor do they understand or appreciate your work. You need to carve a name for yourself while also building a lasting impression for your book. Simply put, your first goal is to create awareness before you engage your potential readers, hook them with your ideas and stories, and sell your book to them.
How would you do that? It’s a four-step process. You must be persistent in executing these steps to reap rewards.
Creating Awareness
This is the first step for new writers. It includes presenting your book on the platforms, communities, and information sources where they hang out. In the modern world, these places are most likely social media. Find out where your ideal readers hang out on these channels and talk about your book in their circles.
Online book clubs also offer a great opportunity for meeting your ideal customers. The first step of creating awareness will be about introducing your book to these community members. Spend some time on these platforms and see where the engagement is happening most. You will like to enter into a buzzing hub to earn from your efforts on these sites.
Once you have identified the best ventures, develop your message that speaks the language of your book as well as the community you are talking to. Here, many authors commit a serious mistake. They indulge too much in sharing information about their book and its writing adventure, but pay no attention to what other authors have to offer.
Note that the secret to growing a brand on social media lies in interacting with others. Understand what others are posting and engage with them. Create meaningful connections. You will connect with two different audiences on these platforms. One will be readers who have joined to explore new reading opportunities and second ones are authors.
Connect with both and understand their needs to respond to them. Connections with fellow authors will allow you to reach their readers and followers and connection with readers will foster interest in your book.
At this step, you should also start your author’s website. Share information about yourself, your writing expertise, and past projects. If not much, you can only use this site as a landing page where your readers will come from your social media channels. Throw in a few pieces of information about yourself and your book to get started.
Engaging
The second step of book promotion also rests with social media marketing. Hopefully, at this point, you have gained a reasonable following on your social media handles. Now, you should start aggressively marketing your book.
Share updates about your book regularly. Apart from sharing a few glimpses into your book, you don’t have to share much text you have written for it. Instead, talk about its world, the plot twists, writing tropes, and how your beta readers and other team members are discussing your project.
Keep it natural and passionate. Also, don’t forget to interact with posts from other authors and readers. You can also choose to use ads to reach new followers.
On your website front, be more concise and targeted. You will want your readers to start following your website at this point. Adding a few blog posts will help you with that. Or maybe share a few write-ups related to your book. Adding one or more short stories will help if you are writing fiction. For non-fiction writers, you can do good by sharing your viewpoint.
Your goal is to attract your audience so they can follow you to your website. Once there, you can offer them interesting stories and updates on your book to keep them hooked.
Creating Interest
The third step of your foolproof marketing will stay at your website and more personal communication channels such as emails. It starts with creating a valuable intellectual gift for your readers. They can access this giveaway by paying their email addresses in return. Make sure that you make their choice of giving you their emails worth it by sending only engaging and valuable content.
You also need to collaborate with authors, editors, and beta readers at this point. You can help them improve their projects, do beta reading in return, or spread the word about their project through your social media presence. Note that many creator-to-creator relationships are reciprocal. If you want to earn publicity from them, you must offer some services for it.
Keep in mind that you shouldn’t abandon engaging with your followers and fellows on social media at this point or in any later stages of publishing your book. In the modern world, an author’s social media presence is an unending commitment.
Selling
Did you know that you could kick-start the selling process even before launching your book? You can only do this if you manage to build your following successfully. Selling is the last part of your marketing campaign and without it, you cannot complete the whole process.
Start by announcing your book’s launch date. If you have already announced the date, send a reminder together with updates on cover design and format. Plan an early bird discount for those who choose to buy during the pre-launch sale period. Update them about this discount through social media or email.
Alternatively, you can choose to make this discount and pre-sale opportunity available to only your die-hard fans. This announcement will help you track your progress and predict the number of copies you will want published in the first go.
Pro Tip: Don’t stop marketing your book after its launch. You should continue doing it until you can witness potential readers in the market.
Wrapping Up
Book promotion isn’t the easiest part of publishing as an indie writer. If you aren’t a savvy marketer, you will be bombarded by numerous marketing techniques to make your project successful. The problem is that more than half of these techniques will not apply to your particular marketing needs. The remaining techniques will either require lots of effort or budget.
When you are working solely, you will have to focus on a limited number of marketing techniques and reap the benefits from them fully. Many authors choose social media marketing to gain readers and then outsource many tasks of this endeavor to book promotion teams to ensure continued engagement. You can also increase the magnitude and chances of your success by hiring these expert teams. Otherwise, make sure to learn these platforms in great detail and commit multiple hours every week to this task.
