The 4 Most Effective Book Marketing Strategies That Work
Updated 2/10/2020
Must I Market?
I’m asked this a lot and I’m constantly amazed by the sheer number of writers who are about to release their first book, or have already released their first book, and have zero marketing in place. Nothing, nada, oftentimes less than zero. They remind me of the college kid who walks into a final with a hangover and a broken pencil, hoping to pull the answers out of their you know where.
Unless you are a genius and your work is the best book ever in the history of the entire world (and if you think it is, you need a lesson in humility), you need to market your work. Trouble is, most writers have absolutely no idea where to start. Here’s just a quick smattering of the questions I receive in a given week:
- Isn’t marketing just a ‘buzzword’ that doesn’t really apply to me?
- Do I really need a blog? I’m too busy writing real books.
- Social media is stupid. It doesn’t sell books. Why bother?
- When should I start my marketing? I don’t even have a book yet!
I could write a book on these few topics alone, but I’ll address these issues here now and give you some tips about where to start.
Let’s deconstruct.
Who Needs to Market Anyway?
You do. I do. Everyone needs to and in all likelihood, you already are and don’t even realize it. Do you talk about your book? That creates anticipation and expectation, aka marketing tactics. Share quotes or teasers? Also marketing tactics.
Gotcha.
Marketing has been around since people started selling things and it’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. What IS marketing anyway? By definition, marketing consists of the strategies and tactics used to identify, create and maintain satisfying relationships with customers that result in value for both the customer and the marketer (Source: KnowThis.com).
Where to start? Marketing seems like a huge world we’ve never visited before, an expansive desert full of landmines and tripwires, right? There’s no map, either. Where the heck does a newbie writer start?
Depends on who you ask. Nobody gives you a straight answer. It’s damn frustrating. It was for me, too, and I had over a decade and a half of Big Pharma sales and marketing experience behind me. So here’s what you do: research. (Writers, we’re good at that.)
Read books about book marketing. See what the authors you enjoy are doing. Read their blogs, social media, pay attention to their promotions and how they word things. Read my blog here (I share everything I’ve done — the good and the bad), come to my weekly #BookMarketingChat* (on Twitter, every Wednesday 6pm pst/9pm est) to learn from me (and people far smarter than me) who know a lot about book marketing and the publishing industry, and then start interacting and asking questions.
*If you can’t make it, we summarize every chat and post it on our public Facebook Page. All previous chats are posted in the Book Marketing Chat Notes Section for easy access. So your excuse that you aren’t on Twitter or you have class on Wednesday night is poof — blown. Go.
You don’t need a marketing or business degree, but you do need to spend time learning. If you don’t have the time, hire me or someone else who has been there (and is still here), walking through the fire. Know this, though: start early, even before your book is out. Six months before, at the very least (more below).
Is Blogging Worth It?
Absolutely, yes.
I shared a post this week from Seth Godin, ‘Seth’s Advice for Authors’ which he wrote in 2006. I shared it because, while the tech and numbers have changed dramatically, the concepts are still sound. A few highlights:
- “The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.
- Blurbs are overrated, IMHO.
- Blog mentions, on the other hand, matter a lot.”
He has a ton of great nuggets in this one article (go, go now and read it), but the point is this: even without a book, you still have plenty of ways to connect with readers, book bloggers, and reviewers. You don’t need a product because YOU are the product and this is what most writers don’t get or completely reject flat out.
It doesn’t matter what your existential objections are: in publishing, we brand the author, not (only) the book.
Blogging helps to do this. Even if your book is YA Fantasy Sci-Fi Erotica, you can still blog about your cookie recipes or your divorce. Authenticity rocks, baby. Be you. People will connect with the you that you are, and when your book is available for purchase, they will purchase it to support the you they’ve come to know. Remember, you are creating value for your reader.
Plus, you know, the whole SEO visibility bringing traffic to your site with fresh content blah blah which I’ve discussed ad nauseam thing. So, there’s that.
(Yes. Blogging is important!)
“Social Media Doesn’t Sell Books”
You are right. It doesn’t. Where did you get the idea that it would? However, social media helps you build relationships that will help you sell books.
Social media is social. It’s not one way BUY MY BOOK link blasts. If that’s all you’re doing, stop it now. If that’s all you are seeing, then you are following too many authors, and not enough readers, book bloggers, and reviewers — the influencers you need to be connecting with, right?
It’s not social media’s fault you are following the wrong people, and those people are using social media incorrectly. That’s on you.
You have work to do.
You need to be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (businesspeople buy books, right?) and at least one more visual channel: Pinterest (the third largest search engine after Google and YouTube. Yes, really.) or Instagram (or even Snapchat, though with the ephemeral nature of it, I’m not sold on it yet as a book marketing tool). Think about where your audience is: if you write YA, you need to be on Insta and/or Snapchat, where your book-buying demographic hangs out.
Take a look at the latest Pew Research reports for the breakdown of demographics — ‘as of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites.’
Godin states that 58% of U.S. adults will never read another book after high school (wow, that’s depressing). That means you have 42% of the population that does read as your potential demographic…kinda. Now you have to break that down into the chunks that read your particular genre. Now you have to find them — and if 74% of them are online on social media sites…why on earth wouldn’t you be online with them?
Because you’ve decided, in your wisdom based on…what, exactly? — that it’s stupid. If you are following the right people and using social media correctly (to build relationships and interact with readers) — it’s anything but stupid.
Here’s a quick breakdown (Source: Pew Research) of adults (18+) as of January 2014 (numbers do not add up to 100):
- 71% of online adults use Facebook
- 17% use Instagram
- 21% use Pinterest
- 22% use LinkedIn
- 19% use Twitter
“When Should I Start To Market My Book?”
Long before it’s out. As Godin says, three years before you release it. That doesn’t seem realistic to most, so I find six months usually is best. Most authors start marketing three months after it’s out, when they’re in that ‘freak out, oh my god, what have I just done?’ phase. Don’t be that author.
The trick to pre-marketing is understanding what you want people to know about you, your book, and your brand. (The suggestions below apply, whether or not your book is out.) The difference is that you have time to really build authentic relationships with readers, instead of freaking out in desperation for someone, anyone dear gawd please to notice you in the sea of thousands of other books out now.
What if you are in that mix right now? Is there any hope? Yes. Here is what you can do:
- Book a blog tour. Book tours give you visibility but don’t usually sell a ton of books. They can help your SEO and can result in more reviews. Debatable as to whether they’re worth the money, so up to you to decide. Again, think visibility, not sales.
- Target your social media. Are you following readers, book clubs, book bloggers, and reviewers? Are you retweeting and sharing their blog posts? If not, you should be. The best way to gain followers is by following others.
- Go to BookBloggerList.com. Over 1700+ book bloggers are listed on this free resource (recently shouted out by Publisher’s Weekly!) and all you need to do is find the ones who fit your genre and connect with them. Read this post by founder Barb Drozdowich for all the specifics.
- Promo sites: BookBub, BuckBooks, KindleNationDaily, Author Marketing Club (free option) or other promotional sites: Book a promotional day with one of these sites — there a number of options to fit your budget. I also like FreeBooksy, BargainBooksy, DigitalBookToday, and BookGoodies. Again, this is not a paid endorsement and your mileage may vary. If you use them and have a bad experience, that’s between y’all.
- Consistent blog posts: This helps your SEO and search engine ranking. Keep blogging, ask authors you like to guest blog for you, ask to guest blog for others you have built relationships with, be generous with your shares of others, participate in #MondayBlogs, and don’t talk about yourself and your book all the time. Be consistent with your promotion, but not one-way, ME ME ME constantly.
- Share great content: share articles, quotes, pictures, and other interesting content that is about your topic but that isn’t constantly about you and your book. Don’t be a broken record.
- Advertising: some people have zero budget. I get that. But let’s say that instead of spending money at Starbucks, you take that $25 to $35/week and put it toward Facebook ads (also great if targeted correctly) Twitter ads, Amazon ads, or even Goodreads ads. Your ad will be seen by more people than a single tweet with a ‘Buy my book!’ link, and it’s a more ‘passive’ sale, if you will.
- Giveaways: Rafflecopters and Amazon giveaways are high traffic ways to gain followers, visibility, and exposure at little cost to you.
- Email subscriber list and newsletters! I cannot stress this enough — so important. Do not email people on blast — against all kinds of federal laws. Get Mailchimp or other well-known company email companies and read their tips on fancy, fun newsletters here. Check out ProlificWorks (formerly Instafreebie), a service where you provide a few chapters or a snippet of your work and in order for readers to download, they have to subscribe to your email list. Super concept and I’m quite happy with the results so far!
You’ve spent months, if not years, writing your book. Now you need to spend time learning how to market it. Book marketing isn’t an option – there’s no magic bullet, so stop looking for one and get to work. Remember, you likely won’t write only one book. It gets easier each time. So start.
You can do it. Yes, you. You can market.
The BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge is NOW available on Amazon! Want to jump-start your book sales and learn how to market your book in a month? Go buy this book right now.
The BadRedhead Media 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge — buy it now!
[blurbit]
Hi Rachel,
Thank you for this post. It is just what I needed at this time and space I’m in. I have a question about headshots. Is best to stick with one photo across all social media, book covers, speaking engagements? And, I need to get people to sign up for email list, not just follow my blog, but actually submit their email address. What is the best way to do this on my blog?
Happy New Year,
Cristy
Hi Cristy and thanks for reading and commenting. To answer your questions: yes, consistency is important so I do recommend sharing the same headshot if possible. Make it professional and hi-resolution as well.
That said, it shouldn’t look dated, either. If it’s from 10 years ago, pick something more recent. I often get tired of the same shot, so I’ll trade out a shot on Twitter, but then I’ll update it as well on FB, Pinterest, and Instagram etc. Sometimes it’s best just to stick with one and leave it until you release another book. Whichever you prefer. As long as it’s consistent.
As for email signups, I have a plug-in that goes across the top of my site that makes it easy for people to sign up right when they get to my site and or blog. I also encourage sign-ups at the end of each post and on the sidebar. I even have a sign-up option on Facebook (on a tab). FB is rolling out a new ‘sign-up’ button (see if you have it yet) on Pages also. If you have it, people can click on it and you can direct them to your newsletter. Molly Greene http://MollyGreene.com has many great suggestions on this on her site as well. Take a look!
hope that helps!
Great marketing advice. What worked best for me is collecting emails and gathering reviews. I use aweber for email marketing and usbookreviews for gathering reviews.
Tough Love for Whiny Writers, is such a great title. I can’t wait till it’s available. I’ve been posting on #MondayBlogs for a few weeks now and I am reading your marketing posts. I’m one of those people who spent years writing a book but barely thought about how to market it until it was printed. I do research everyday and try to add something new to my arsenal of marketing tools daily and your tips have been extremely helpful. Thank you for creating #MondayBlogs and for sharing your marketing knowledge. I look forward to your future posts.
Kate Woods
Hi Kate! Thanks for reading, your kind comments, and participating in #MondayBlogs. It’s become such a great traffic generator for so many, particularly if you can connect with other bloggers (i.e., RT them, visit their blogs and comment, follow them, etc).
Thanks on the title for the new book LOL. It kind of started as a joke from a Huffington Post article I wrote, but I think it resonates with so many of us (including me). Marketing and promotion can be exhausting and confusing, and it’s hard WORK. Those who keep looking for the easy button won’t find it. That’s the message. 🙂 thanks again for responding!
Great advice as usual, Rachel. We writers hope our readers will appear as if by magic, yet they never do. Book marketing is so often neglected when one prepares to publish that novel within.
Your entry is both entertaining and educational. Thanks!
It’s not magic, is it? It certainly would be nice, but it’s not realistic. I’m not sure why people think that will happen. Even journeyman authors have been at it for years and years. Overnight successes have been writing for a long time — we just rarely hear about that back story because it’s not as interesting.
It’s hard and it’s work and it’s part of the job of being an author. Period. thank you for your comments!
Great article, Rachel! I couldn’t agree more about building your platform on social media long before one’s book comes out. I began in May 2013 with 90 followers on Twitter, and I now have 15,000+. My crime thriller “Bloodletting” has just been released from Booktrope, and I’m truly grateful that followers on Twitter are helping to promote the novel.
As you stated, however, there is much more to do, and that marketing work has become my “part-time job.”
Be well and continued success!
Hi William and thank you for your kind comments. It’s wonderful how connecting with readers make such a difference. Katherine Sears shared an article on the Booktrope site about finding and connecting with our ‘raving fans’ and it’s so true — people really want to see their favorite writers succeed and word of mouth is still such a huge part of book marketing (whether it’s online or in real life). That’s really the benefit of social media and blogging and all the rest of it — building relationships.
I wish you continued success!
[…] For the authors among you: a pretty darn good blog on book marketing and why one has to be smart about it. Some stuff I knew and do, other stuff is completely new to me. Darn. More crap to try if I ever get the time. Click here for Bad Redhead Media Post on Effective Book Marketing Strategies […]
The 4 Most Effective Book Marketing Strategies That Work
Unless you are a genius and your work is the best book ever in the history of the entire world (and if you think it is, you need a lesson in humility), you need to market your work. Trouble is, most w…
[…] The 4 Most Effective Book Marketing Strategies That Work Unless you are a genius and your work is the best book ever in the history of the entire world (and if you think it is, you need a lesson in humility), you need to market your work. Trouble is, most writers have absolutely no idea where to start. Here’s just a quick smattering of the questions I receive in a given week: […]
[…] The 4 Most Effective Book Marketing Strategies That Work Unless you are a genius and your work is the best book ever in the history of the entire world (and if you think it is, you need a lesson in humility), you need to market your work. Trouble is, most writers have absolutely no idea where to start. Here’s just a quick smattering of the questions I receive in a given week: […]
Great advice. I have to read this more than once.
Awesome article! I am 3/4 of the way done with my first novel and have been trying to learn everything I can about building an online presence, connecting on social media, and how to market myself, so thank you for this! I will definitely be combing through your website to read everything you have!
[…] showcase your loves, dreams, and hobbies. Ever channel, used correctly, will build another layer of the brand that is you, […]
[…] you know what your keywords and branding […]
This is an amazing article on book promotion. Great work.
thank you, Laura 🙂 I appreciate you reading and commenting so much!
[…] The 4 Most Effective Book Marketing Strategies That … – Unsure how to market your book, or when to start marketing your book? @BadRedheadMedia’s Rachel Thompson breaks it down for you! […]
Awesome article! Thanks for sharing. Sure wish I would have had the foresight to have read this first but…I’m on it now! Thank you again.
Hi Steve — well, it’s never too late to move in the right direction. Thank you for the kind words and good luck!
[…] Do you know what your keywords and branding […]
[…] Do you know what your keywords and branding […]
[…] Do you know what your keywords and branding are? […]
This is so Awesome. You are awesome. Thanks for writing this!
Great article, Rachel!
And equally great suggestions! I have been a marketer for nearly 20 years and can’t stress enough how important it is for author’s to market their books. Don’t assume your publisher will pick up this task — so many of them are looking to their author’s to provide the bulk of the leg work!
That being said, the single most important thing an author can do is to start a blog — and then consistently add new content. Second to that, they need to connect with other sites to gain valuable back links.
Thanks for summarizing this into a well-written, actionable post!
Karlene
[…] Twitter account but rarely use […]
Hi, Rachel! Thanks for the tips!
I have a question on email marketing subscribers list. I am a Mailchimp user (free plan) and in few subscribers will have to go to the paid plan. But I’m not ready to pay that much. Do you have some alternatives you could point me to? I have heard about Mailerlite (https://www.mailerlite.com/authors ) and Convertkit that are available for authors, but as I don’t have any experience with them, I’m searching for some more experienced people opinion. I’d sure love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!
Hi Ilzy — good question. To be honest, all of the email companies have that same kind of cut-off. Once you hit a certain number of subscribers, you move to paid. The good news is, that gives you many more marketing options.
I personally use the paid Mailchimp option and find it great. I’m not familiar with other companies, so I suggest doing a Google search and see if you can find ratings on them. Sorry I don’t have the answer for you today.
[…] Build your email subscriber list. You don’t have to do anything with it yet; just start collecting names via free Mailchimp or some other service. Time: 15 minutes to set up on your website and/or Facebook page. […]
Great work! Thank you
I’m a newbie starting out and looking for anything and everything I can find to market my first novel. The information you gave here is such a big help. Thanks
Hi,
Great advice Rachel, Thanks for sharing! It’s very useful for the authors.
I am a science school-textbook author (more than 40 books). I wanted to make a name for me in the online-mode. This article is really great on giving a clear path to follow! Keep educating us (people like me) more!
If you are self-publishing on Amazon, I would also recommend running Amazon ads (AMS) to get some more traffic to the book buying pages. The cost per click is quite reasonable compared to other ad networks.
Brilliant write-up Rachel, I am definitely bookmarking this!
Hey there! I knew some of these books and they are really helpful in my business. I would also recommend one of the best books that I’ve read so far that helped me measure my ROI, it’s “The Pizza Guide to Digital Marketing” by Christian Farioli. He might help you more strategically on the books.
I found this article very helpful. I am looking to release my first book this next month as I had just received DOD approval for the release of a military memoir. It’s both exciting and frustrating, so thank you for providing some direction!
Thank you for all the insights. It really got me started with my campaign. Will update later on how it’s going.
Great stratefy. The best approach to compose a spine chiller is to pose an inquiry toward the start and answer it toward the end. Thanks for sharing buddy!
This is great, I was trying hard on social media alone, thought social media is the only way I can promote my book. Thanx for sharing.
excellent write up. Very HELPFUL
Thanks for sharing these Book Marketing Strategies. This is really helpful for me.