You’ve got a great idea for a book that solves a problem, creates an opportunity, or appeals to an audience you know will want it. You’ve hired a book designer and a book editor. You’re ready to publish your book—but how do you market it on your own?
Just like with any other marketing, there are several ways to market your book. However, you might think that the concepts of book marketing are too complicated for you.
That is far from reality. There is still a lot that you can do to market your book by yourself. And the main advantage is that you can spend less money overall compared to hiring professionals, while still achieving the same results.
Here is a step-by-step guide to take you through the process of DIY book marketing.
5-Step Process to DIY Book Marketing
Step 1: Identify Where Your Target Readers Hang Out Online
The great thing about selling books online is the huge increase in the number of people you can reach. The downside is getting people to notice your book. There are two crucial steps to deal with this problem:
- Identifying your target readers
- Figuring out where they hang out online.
The first step is to identify your target readers. The obvious place to start is with the book itself.
What kind of people would be interested in it?
If you’re writing about something that’s happened to you, or a place you’ve been to, or a job you’ve had, or a hobby you have, then the people who would be interested in reading your book are probably people who have been through similar experiences. You can also think about the people who would make good subjects for the kind of book you’re planning to write. For example, if your book will be aimed at a technical audience, then the people who would make good subjects for it are likely to be technical experts.
A really helpful thing to do here is to look at other books on the same topic and find out the platforms where those hang out.
Step 2: Network and Engage with the Readers
Once you know where your target readers are, the next step is to get their attention.
Take a few minutes each day to visit these platforms — it can be social media platforms, dedicated author-reader platforms like AllAuthor – and interact with the readers there. Be sure to comment on what you like about the post and if you feel it’s appropriate, ask a question about the topic.
The more interactions you have with them, the more they will trust you and want to read your next books.
This is a great way to network with readers because people are more likely to share their opinions and engage in conversation on social media. You can also collect information from their readers about what they like and dislike, their opinions on your book, their favourite books in your genre and a lot more details.
Make sure to engage with every reader who interacts with you first and always come across as a polite, helpful and engaging person.
Step 3: Talk About Your Books
When you want to boost book sales, one of the best free methods is to talk about your books on social media and encourage your readers to read them. As an author, when you have a book coming out, there are two things you need to do: market it and build a fan base.
All authors should have a website for this purpose. It gives them a place where they can share their books with readers and list how they can be found. You can use your AllAuthor’s Author page as a consolidated place where your readers can find all the information about you and your books. Make sure to add all the information about your book and you’ll get an individual book page and an author page with every single detail a reader would want to know in one single platform.
There are a lot of things you can do to promote your books to your online audience.
- Post pictures of the covers of your books, especially on sites like Facebook and Pinterest where people can see them easily.
- Post updates on how the progress on the book is going.
- Tell people about your book, even if it’s just little updates, practical challenges or writing tips.
- Tell readers how they can get their hands on copies of your new book. Give them links so they don’t have to search for it.
- Tell readers what they can expect in your future books.
- Invite other authors on social media to talk about their books with you, then encourage your fans to buy both of those authors’ books as well as yours.
Once you start exploring the possibilities of promoting your books online, there’s no stop to it.
As you post about your books and your author journey, make sure to always be realistic and connect with the readers. Reply to every single comment you get and respond to your fans.
If you want to keep your posts coming in regularly, you can use our Tweet Scheduler Tool for Twitter to schedule your tweets in advance.
Step 4: Get Your Audience to Sign Up for Your Emails
The most important step in DIY book marketing is to collect the email addresses of people who are likely to buy your book.
The reason is simple. First-time authors often make the mistake of thinking that they can sell their books simply by publishing them and then hoping that readers will stumble upon them on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, etc. But it doesn’t work that way.
Readers have an overwhelming number of titles to choose from, and they don’t need yours. To get them to notice your book, you need to reach out to them directly and tell them why your book is worth reading. The best way to do it is by giving those readers a reason to add you to their email list or follow you on social media. That way you’ll be able to reach out to them again in the future with news about future books and other updates.
So you need to promote your email list often on the platforms where you’re engaging with your readers. Ask them to sign up to your email list to get updates about your new books.
You can also ask your readers to follow you on AllAuthor. It’s simple and it just takes a click of a button. This way, when you’re launching a new book, all your followers on AllAuthor will be notified about your book through the platform. Additionally, the new book releases of Pro-Authors will be emailed directly to the followers!
Step 5: Get Book Reviews and Market More
Once you’re getting a good response for your new book, it’s important to ride that wave!
Leverage those good responses and encourage your readers to leave good reviews. And then you can use those reviews to create stunning GIFs using our Review GIF Maker tool and share them with your online audience. This way, you can build that initial momentum rolling to get more eyes on your new book.
Make sure to spend the initial days before and after your release online promoting your book as much as you can. Talk about as often as possible, share your experience and what the readers can expect. If possible, introduce book offers and discounts.
If you’re introducing any ebook deals, you can add those to our AllAuthor eBook Deals page. This is the page where lots of readers check out to find books at less cost and we also feature these deals on our AllAuthor Reader app for smartphones.
