How to Market Your Book If (You Think) You Hate Book Marketing
Book marketing is something many authors dread. It can feel intimidating and time-consuming. For some, it might even conjure up images of slick-haired, pushy salespeople who’ll say anything if it gets their mark to sign on the dotted line.
But why is book marketing something that authors dread? The process of book marketing is the process of getting your book in front of the right audience. And after all, don’t you want people to read and experience your stories?
Too often, marketing gets a bad rap. But, thankfully, there are many different types of marketing, and that means there is a type you will like and that feels natural to you. Trust me: whether creating content for social media, reaching out to bloggers and media outlets or doing readings at local bookstores and libraries, there’s going to be at least one way you’ll have fun while promoting your book.
So, today’s the day we change your perspective on marketing. Here are 5 tips for how to market your book if you think you hate book marketing.
1. Understanding Why Marketing is Important
The first step is to realize that marketing is a friend to you and your book — not the enemy.
If you want to have a successful career as an author, a strong marketing plan for your book is essential. If you’re not willing to take the time to learn about some of the basic principles of marketing and practice them yourself, you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t sell a lot of books or get a lot of traction. That’s just the reality of the publishing industry right now.
Marketing is how your book reaches its ideal readers and how people will read and experience your stories. So, don’t be afraid of it. Instead, embrace the challenge by actively learning about and understanding it.
There are millions and millions of books out there. There might even be millions in the same genre as yours. That’s a lot of competition. How will you reach your ideal readers without strategically getting the word out about it? The simple answer is: you won’t.
Now, let’s take a look at how you can find book marketing strategies that are easy for you to implement. You might even come to love them!
2. Look At How Your Favourite Authors Market Their Books
If you’re struggling to know where to start with marketing, think about your favourite authors in the same genre as you and how you first heard about their books. Was it a captivating Instagram Reel that teased an intriguing passage from their book? Was it a Facebook ad that sent you to their Amazon listing? Were they holding a book signing at a local bookstore?
Browse these authors’ social media platforms and websites to get an idea of how they market themselves and their books. Here are things to keep an eye out for:
Your favourite author’s website
Do they have a blog? If so, what do they post about?
How about a newsletter? Are there any perks to signing up?
Do they have individual web pages for each book?
Do they include exclusive content (like extra chapters or deleted scenes) only available on their website?
Many authors have a blog, individual web pages, and exclusive content on their website to improve its searchability (an important part of SEO — more on that later) on places like Google, which makes it easier for readers to find their website and get more information about their book. What are these authors sharing on their blogs? What kind of exclusive content are they offering? These are good questions to ask yourself when browsing their websites.
Your favourite author’s social media
How many times per week do they post?
How often do they share video content? How often do they post Stories on Instagram?
Do their videos follow trends?
What are the goals of their content? (Examples: to promote their books, to inspire other authors, to entertain readers, etc.)
How many platforms are they on?
If you can, choose authors who have a strong social media following and some who don’t. This will give you a better idea of what does and doesn’t work for authors like you on social media. Make sure to also get specific with each platform because different things work better on different platforms. For example, TikTok is all about quick, funny content whereas Instagram requires more intention behind each post and usually appears more polished.
After taking a deep dive into these authors’ online presences, it’s time to get started on forming your own. Know that it’s okay to borrow or take inspiration from what they do marketing-wise — especially if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. If they created a video promoting their book and you really like the format, don’t feel intimidated to create a similar version of it with your own book.
This is a great starting point when you’re new to marketing, and it’s a fun activity, too!
3. Strategize By Using Your Strengths
Don’t force yourself to do marketing activities you don’t like. If you’re still not sure which marketing tactics appeal to you, focus on where your strengths lie.
Since you’re an author, you love to write, so this is one of your strengths. Therefore, harness it! There are many writing-based marketing strategies, but my go-to recommendation is blogging.
Blogging is not a tool of the past like you might think. I have actively done it since 2015 and, while there’s a lot more competition these days, you can’t beat the power of search engine optimization (otherwise known as SEO). It’s still a great way to drive organic traffic to your website (where your books are) and encourage sales.
Here are some blog topics you can write about to market your book.
Discuss where the inspiration for your book came from;
Explain what your writing process looks like’
Share tips you learned while writing your first book;
Share tips for self-publishing your first book
Always include a call-to-action featuring your book and where people can buy it at the end of the blog post. And, if it makes sense, sprinkle a few links throughout the blog post too. This is a subtle way to get your book in front of ideal readers without feeling like you’ve become the overbearing salesperson I mentioned earlier.
The most effective blog posts are around 1,200 words and have one to two keywords or key phrases. These keywords and keyphrases are connected to the topic of your book and are always in your blog’s title and strategically sprinkled throughout your blog post without being overused.
For example, the keyphrase for a blog post titled 10 Tips for Writing Your First Book from a Published Author would be “writing tips.” This would be a very competitive keyword to use but it’s also a popularly Googled topic. How a keyword or keyphrase works in a blog post is that whenever someone Googles that keyword or keyphrase, over time, as your blog posts get “crawled” by Google, it will pop up under the search results. This makes it easier for people to find your website and books, too.
Another writing-based marketing strategy is writing for magazines, literary journals, other people’s blogs, etc., that are read by your ideal audience. If you’ve written a romance book, research blogs that cover romance books and ask to do a guest post or an interview post. If you’ve written a fantasy book rooted in Greek mythology, reach out to experts who write about Greek mythology and offer your book for review or a guest post.
You can get really creative with reaching out to these media outlets, and it can provide you with great coverage. And the best part is that it utilizes one of your strengths and passions, which is writing. It’ll barely even feel like marketing!
4. Take Advantage of Passive Marketing Strategies
The great thing about marketing is that there are many passive marketing strategies you can take advantage of. A passive marketing strategy is a one-and-done strategy. You don’t have to continuously do it; instead, you do it, and then you let it work.
Some examples of passive marketing strategies are:
An author website
A blog
Getting your book into libraries
YouTube channel
Newsletter sign-up form
To make it easier, time-wise, for creating a blog or YouTube channel, “batch create” content whenever you can. Batching is when you write multiple posts or film multiple videos back-to-back(-to-back) so you have content to post for the times you don’t have time to create it. Once those blog posts and videos are out, over time, their SEO improves and they are able to reach more people.
For example, take the book and writing blog I started almost eight years ago. For the first five years, I shared posts weekly. Now, although it’s been a good two years since I actively posted, I still get traffic to my old blog every single day. I link my current author marketing website there and advertise my editing services through it too, so it’s marketing my services but it’s completely passive now.
Maintaining a mixture of passive and active marketing strategies is of great benefit, but leveraging passive marketing opportunities can help get your book out there if you have little time or energy to spare.
5. Shift Your Focus
If, after all this time, you still think you hate book marketing, my final tip is for you to shift your focus. Instead of approaching marketing as something you have to do for your book, think of it as a way for you to connect with readers and share your love of stories.
Your ideal readers are likely to have similar reading tastes as you, since many authors write books they wanted to read but that didn’t exist yet. That means you and your ideal readers have a lot in common and, therefore, a lot to discuss. You should be excited about meeting and engaging with them.
That’s really what book marketing is all about: connecting with people who could benefit from hearing about your book. It’s not something you have to do but rather something you get to do because you have a great story or message you want to share with others.
It’s important to realize that marketing is essential for every business to succeed, and it’s no different for authors. As an author, you are in the business of writing and selling books. It’s time to celebrate that fact — and there’s no better way to start than by making book marketing your friend, not the enemy.
Zoe Mathers is a social media manager and copywriter from beautiful British Columbia. She strives to help authors grow brand awareness and find their ideal readers on social media. In her free time, she can be found writing her own stories or browsing the shelves of her local bookstores.
Explore her services or scroll through her blog at zoemathers.com.