5 Pointers as You Start to Market Your First Self-Published Book

Writing your first novel brings so many challenges that you never expected (at least for most self-published authors). There is quite a bit to know about from little grammar things like not using the word “very” to the proper balance of dialogue and narrative. As fiction authors we are immersed in the world we are creating and also excited to see where the story leads us. Whether you are writing fiction or not, there are still tasks to deal with before your book even goes through the first round of editing. All of this leads up to the high point of sending your manuscript to the editor for the final time (at least what you hope is the last time). Then, it happens ... You get it back and it is ready to go. Now what? Suddenly, you realize that this piece of literature you slaved over has to somehow get in front of readers. Where can we go to begin this process? Should you just release it and hope for the best? No, please don’t do it. It’s time to plan.

1. Plan ahead. If you are reading this after you have gotten through editing then you are probably realizing you are already a bit late to the game of trying to market your book. But don’t worry. You can still have an impact, you just have to force yourself to resist the temptation to launch your book early. In this case, early means before you have developed a viable marketing plan. This plan is going to involve some of the next items but most importantly have a plan. You cannot expect that just publishing your book on Amazon is good enough. There are simply too many titles out there for your book to get noticed without a marketing plan. Please do not just launch and hope for the best, whatever you do, don’t do that!
2. ARC’s work. If you have been holding onto your book and barely could even hand it off to your editor because you didn’t want them to steal your idea, then get ready for an even harder pill to swallow. One of the best ways to get a marketing plan started is to give your book away for free to some readers so that you can collect feedback from them. There are many tools that will help you provide advance reader/review copies (ARC’s). One that we think is quite good is BookFunnel. Give this process time to work for you because you still have time to make adjustments to the book before a full release and there are other marketing tasks for you to work on while you go through the ARC process. At a minimum, make sure you have friends and family read your book but make sure to choose the ones that are brutally honest with you. The goal is to make sure your book is actually ready before you publish it and that requires solid feedback from readers. This is important as the feedback you get here can help you avoid getting undesirable reviews on Amazon that could stunt or completely destroy your ability to market your book. There will be another article on reviews soon because that is a whole separate eye-opening reality for authors.
3. Launch list. It’s also a great idea to make a launch email list or plan of who you are going to let know about your new book. Shockingly even your friends and family won’t know that you wrote a book unless you tell them about it. Collect as many emails or social media handles as you can of people that most likely will help you spread the word about your book. This is your best marketing army by far and most likely the source of the first several sales of your book. Often, even if they won’t tell others about your book, this list of friends and family will support you by buying your book.
4. Author platform. It’s a good idea to have your website setup as well. Whether it is a site you put up using a tool like Squarespace or Wordpress, it’s important to have some place to collect email addresses and to tease the announcement of your first book. Lots of book marketing sites will also give you the opportunity to provide a link to your official author website (including Amazon), so having one in place early makes a lot of sense. If you don’t know how to do this or you just don’t want to hassle with it, then hire someone to do it for you on Fiverr or Upwork. It won’t cost you much and it will pay for itself several times over when you go to market your next book (assuming your first book does so well that you write more).
5. Advertising sites. Get ads for your book ready to go as well as a list of sites that you are going to test the ads on. This list most likely will include BookBub, FaceBook, Amazon, and many, many newsletter sites. We have other articles on this site that cover inexpensive book marketing sites, but the important thing to have is a list that you are going to try for your book along with ad images and copy that will attract readers to your book. BookBub is a great place to start because they can actually help you create the ads and zero in on authors like you (which is a great source of marketing ideas). Subscribe to their emails so you can see what readers see and look at how other authors in your genre are using BookBub ads. We cannot stress that enough. Use these advertising sites as a reader first and see what books stand out to you, then keep that in mind as you create advertisements for your book. Be ready to start ad campaigns as soon as your book launches.

These are just some basic concepts to get you started. If you are like most authors though, you haven’t put nearly as much thought into marketing as you have the writing of your book. Don’t worry and don’t beat yourself up, that is totally normal. That said, it is so important to just slow down and really plan your release well. It’s hard to resist the urge to just publish and hope for the best, but 99 times out of 100 that is not going to work. The best advice that you will get from most authors is to hold on to your book until you have a workable marketing plan in place. Watch for more articles from eBookFairs as we explore the good and the ugly about the world of book marketing. It’s a grind, but if you work really hard and sometimes get a little lucky, you can get the word out about your novel. Because that’s what we all want. We want people to read and enjoy our writing, but to do that they have to know our book exists. So we must study book marketing to have a chance to compete in this overcrowded book market.