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Effective Author Marketing
Now that you have published your book, it’s time for you to take the next step: marketing. It is important to have a well-planned marketing strategy to help boost the sales of your book. Part of the thrill of being a self-published author is getting to make most of the decisions and do the work yourself — this includes marketing. Even if you were published by a traditional publisher, you would start off doing the marketing work until you became more than a beginner author.
When you effectively market your book, you are sharing your hard work with a large network of people. While marketing your book can be daunting, it does not need to be difficult. You just published your book, and marketing is just letting everyone know about it.
Here are five things to remember to effectively market your book:
- Know Your Target Audience. Before you can begin planning your marketing strategy, you need to figure out who your intended audience is. While ideally everyone would be interested in your book, as an author you need to be realistic and focus on reaching out to specific audiences.
- Build an Author Platform. Your author platform is a great way to build buzz around your book. If possible, you should start building this before your book has been published so that you can create even more hype about your book. An author platform provides you with an online presence, allowing you to connect with readers and expand your book’s audience. Part of building your author platform is using the media that is best suited for your book and your book’s audience. This means knowing which social media sites to use, and which ones to leave to the side.
- Use Social Media Responsibly. Social media is great because it’s a free way for you to promote your book and connect with your fans. While it is important to promote your book through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, you don’t want to be over zealous. If you are sending out the same tweets every day, or posting your book’s title and purchasing information every hour, people will stay away from your pages because you are coming off as a spammer. Instead, focus on creating posts about upcoming events (i.e. a launch party, book signing, book reading), media coverage, brief summaries of your book that intrigue new fans, interesting commentary that’s relevant to your book’s topic, or just conversing about writing with fellow authors.
- Give Away Free Copies. With all of the Abbott Press Publishing Packages you get free copies of your book. Use some of these to help generate reviews of your book. If you sign up as a Goodreads Author, you are able to host a book giveaway. When someone signs up for a book giveaway, they agree to write a review about your book once they have read it. Reviews are great marketing tools because they are endorsements for your book instead of ads.
- Be Professional. You are a published author now and it is time to reflect that. Make sure that you edit your book before publishing — nobody wants to read a book with spelling or grammatical errors. When posting on your various social media accounts, make sure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors there either. You also want to treat all users with respect, and acknowledge any questions that you might receive. If you are hosting a book signing or a launch, be sure to dress for success, and not for a night out with friends. Not only are you marketing your book, but you are marketing yourself as an author. If people perceive you as being professional, they are going to take you as a serious author, which helps promote your book.
Takeaway Tweets
When you effectively market your book, you are sharing your hard work with a large network of people. Tweet This
Before you can begin planning your marketing strategy, you need to figure out who your intended audience is. Tweet This
Reviews are great marketing tools because they are endorsements for your book instead of ads. Tweet This
We’d love to hear from you! What marketing advice do you have for aspiring authors?
No I have not published my book yet I only printed it on demand for my family and friends to get feedback, I had used Blurb for photo books previously and knew they did a good job. I will however be signing a contract on 18/7 to have it published professionally by a self publishing company who do offer some of the services you offer. But because I am a pensioner I had to go with the cheapest this time. Thanks for your help. Sylvia
I believe your online platform should be a website/blog. It can serve as a hub, your home online, from which everything can revolve. I was fortunate to assist one of your Abbott Press customers, Steve Hess, with a creation of a website and am happy to help anyone else.
If you are a self/independent publisher, you have to do much of the marketing yourself. A website is a great place to start. There is so much that you make available and you can continue the conversation with an interactive, blog-based website that is easy to share with social media.
I am a new, first time author! Do you think it is a good idea to mail copies of my book to target audiences? Jodi Lobdell Bulson
Yes! We think that’s a great idea. Ask readers to leave reviews on your book detail page, too. It’s a quick, effective marketing strategy that could encourage future sales.
I have now had it published by Xlibris. Move Forward by Sylvia Harvie http://www.xlibris.com.au Ireceived my author copy today and although only a small book it is lovely. They used my own painting that I did of one of the scenes in my book. In answer to your question about becomming involved in the marketing, nobody wishes you to succeed more that you. So yes ‘go for it’ I contacted my local bookstore and I was amazed by how thoughtful she was, and yes they are going to stock my book.