How to promote your book. It’s probably one of the most important things to know how to do for any author, traditionally or independently published.
It was once told to me that you should spend the same amount of time, if not more, marketing and promoting your book than you did writing it.
First, off you have to write a good book that appeals to your ideal reader. Assuming you can do that, here’s my simplified approach:
- Use your book to sell more books. How? Bookend your manuscript (ebook) with front and back matter that creates a call to action to buy your other books (if you have some), write a review, and join your mailing list. There’s more to your story than your story.
- Leverage Amazon to have your book rank higher. Research keywords and browse categories related to your book that sell well. (A bestseller’s ranking below 39,500 is in the top 1 percent of books sold on Amazon—not bad!) Add keyword phrases to your title (if appropriate), subtitle, description, keyword section, and your Amazon Author Central page. Place your book in browse categories with the least competition.
- Use social media to fuel your author sales funnel. Create a following. At a minimum, use Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Bend over backward to build your fanbase by having followers opt-in to your mailing list.
That’s the high-level. Of course, there are a lot of details. I recently conducted a workshop called Marketing 101 for Fiction Writers: Creating a Platform and Selling More Books, and walked authors through theses steps in excruciating detail.
A good source that I’ve found is Penny C. Sansevieri’s book How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon. Others are Write. Publish. Repeat and The Naked Truth About Self-Publishing.
If you’re interested in seeing my presentation on author marketing basics and how to promote your book, I’ll send it to you. It’s 45 pages. All I ask is that you join my mailing list and shoot me an email to let me know.
Rick Bettencourt 