Have a marketing plan
If you have spent a lot of time and effort writing your book and getting it published, the next step is to devise your marketing plan, set some time scales for implementation and decide how you are going to measure the success of your plan.
Here are some guidelines:
What are your main objectives? Do you want to make money from your books? Do you wish to become a celebrated author? Are you happy just to cover your costs? Whatever your objectives, write them down.
Who is your target market?
What is your plan? It can include setting up an author website, setting up a subscriber mailing list, and planning your social media strategy.
Define how much money you wish to spend to achieve your objective. Is your budget realistic?
How much time can you devote to your book marketing plan?
Do you have the technical skills required to implement your plan? For example, can you build your own website, or will you need to pay someone to do it for you? Do you have the technical skills needed to set up a mailing list and send out newsletters? Do you understand how to use social media? If not, are you willing to learn?
Research your competitors – i.e. other authors who write in your genre. How do they market themselves? What do their websites look like? What social media platforms do they use?
How are you going to measure the success of your plan? Number of hits to your website? Number of followers on social media? Number of sales of your book?
Once you have devised your plan and checked that it is realistic, your next step is to create your marketing toolbox which should include creating your author website, building a mailing list and planning your social media strategy.
Create an Author Website
The internet is a vast network of connections covering the world. Large retailing and social media platforms tend to dominate and for books that means Amazon and social media sites such as Facebook, X and Instagram.
When you are setting out as an author, retailing platforms such as Amazon are a good way to get started. You can create your author page and add details about yourself and your books. However, you must work within the templates provided and these are often restricting and will not allow you to present the information you want to say about yourself and your work. The same applies to social media platforms. More concerningly, you are giving the platform your content and permission to do what they like with it.
An author website is a private area on the web that belongs to you and is a place where you can say what you like about yourself and your work in a way that reflects your brand and marketing objectives.
Visitors who come across your site, perhaps from links in a social media post, an article, a video or podcast (or more rarely a Google search), will be able to read the information you want to give them and, perhaps more importantly, allow you to make a direct connection with your visitors by encouraging them to sign up for your email newsletters.
Using Mailing lists and Newsletters
The first issue you need to address is how to encourage people to sign up for your mailing list subscription. The answer is to be generous. Offer them something in return for signing up such as a free chapter or book. Offering a ‘freebie’ is one of the most powerful lead generation methods you can employ and involves very little effort from you.
Once you have a mailing list, you must keep your subscribers hooked by offering new content. The content can be offering new ‘freebies, updates on how your next book is coming along and perhaps a preview chapter, special offers on your existing books or anything else you think your target audience would be interested in.
The main thing to remember is to include lots of links back to the relevant pages on your website (where you will have prominent ‘buy’ links).
Using Social Media
Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are the main social media platforms for authors although there are many other smaller platforms you can consider such as Threads and Reddit.
Social media is another ‘must have’ for your book marketing toolbox. Many people dislike social media and do not want to get involved for various reasons. But to ignore social media as a marketing tool for your book is like a shopkeeper refusing to have a shop window to show off their goods and keeping the door permanently locked to discourage any interaction with customers.
Let’s be clear that setting up and managing social media pages is hard, tedious and ongoing work. There is no point in setting up pages and then not being active. It will bring you no rewards and there is little point in setting up the pages in the first place.
Social media is really about relationship building. The aim is to gather a following who will be interested in you and your books and be enthusiastic in anything you post. Building an audience on social media is just as important as building your mailing list. In fact the two go hand in hand. You can post links to your ‘freebie’ sign-up page on your website and in this way, you can build your mailing list subscribers.
Initially, the best approach is to choose a couple of social media platforms and concentrate on building an audience on those sites. It will be overwhelming to try to create a presence on all platforms and you will be setting yourself up for failure.
Videos and Podcasting
Video and podcasts are becoming ever more popular ways to market your books. Both media are extremely popular right now presenting a new potential audience for you to engage. Podcasts are particularly popular for true crime, mysteries and thrillers.
Good productions require time, investment in equipment and often the development of new skills. So before you start, make sure you have a plan, set your objectives and set aside a budget – both time and money that you wish to invest.
Reasons for Failure
The reason most book marketing plans fail (assuming that your book is great in the first place) is that they are not realistic. For example, one of our clients wrote great books but was (by his own admittance) technically challenged. He found social media befuddling and managing his mailing list impossible. All he wanted to do was write books. He assumed that as he had a website (probably the easiest part of any book marketing plan), the hits would come automatically and success was in the bag. Sadly, he was disappointed. His book sales did not take off.
If you are not technically able and do not have the time or inclination to follow a marketing plan, your only option is to pay for someone to do it for you. There are internet marketing companies who will help you with social media and subscriber mailing lists. But they usually charge a lot and often require a monthly retainer for their services. Alternatively, you may be able to find an agent – easier said than done. If you do not have a large budget for a marketing consultant and cannot find an agent, perhaps a good starting point is one of the many online courses available to bring you up to speed with marketing technologies.