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You can also reach out to your local library or local bookstore for readings and to donate books. Reaching out to colleagues, family, and friends and giving them a complimentary copy of your book is a great way to let people know about your book and collect those initial reviews. If you have a mailing list or following on social media you can let your readers or followers know you are launching a book. There are lots of ways to get reviews. You can Google books similar to yours and see who has blogged about them and pitch to those reviewers.
Some might only take pitches from specific places and some only read e-books, or just print books. Reach out to Amazon top reviewers: Getting a review from an Amazon top reviewer is a BIG deal. Typically, if you reach out to reviewers you will probably get around reviews. If you reach out to you might get reviews.
If you have the budget you might want to consider professional review services like the ones below to review your book. Promotional Materials Put together a budget for promotional materials. You can get creative with this and have someone on Fiverr design cards and fliers for you. Do you want to give out bookmarks with a QR code on the back that helps readers download a free sample of your book? Do you want to put together gift baskets as giveaways for signing up to your mailing list? Having a marketing plan helps you put everything down on paper and give you dates and a budget to work with.
You can evaluate the success of your marketing plan fairly quickly and go back and make adjustments if you see something working really well. Miral Sattar is the CEO of Learn Self-Publishing Fast and Bibliocrunch , an award-winning marketplace that connects authors with vetted book publishing professionals like editors, designers, and marketers.
For more book marketing tips, sign up for her free course. Want to sell more books? With tools that help with everything from formatting your Amazon description to finding more reviewers, Author Marketing Club can help you share your book with more readers. Thank you so much for this article! A short piece yet a gold mine of help. Again — thank you!
Thanks so much for the article. Actually, Social Media really helps my books advertising. Thanks again for a great article. Glad to hear you found some value in it, Jason. You are right about the importance of personal branding. Luckily, when it comes from an authentic place it is a joy, not a chore.
Good luck with your book! Excellent blog post, Maggie! Especially like the tip about giving something away in order to build an email list. I do have one question. I am a writer but also like many or most writers! My reviews are fair and generally very positive.
I thought it would make a great sample of a mini marketing plan for The book is educational in that it exposes young children between ages. When you're prompted to create a book marketing plan for distribution, how do you start? If you write fiction, however, your blogging options—if you choose to have a Contact bookstores to learn their procedure for setting up signings for.
It obviously appeals to my target market, however, I do worry that it will have some negative effects once I finish my book and put it out there. What do you think? Thanks for the kind words — glad you liked the article. And good for you for getting your blog up and running, and for embracing video!
It is one of the best ways to get your personality across online and build a bond with your fans. Sharing constructive criticism of books similar to yours demonstrates your understanding of your genre and will definitely attract the attention of your target market. Your turn will come when your own book comes out. I found these steps very useful!
I will make sure to incorporate all of them as I have four books to release this year and need to keep on top of my game when it comes to marketing for book launches. Thanks so much for this excellent post! The Internet is flooded with information on this topic but your post is succinct and well-written and takes away my overwhelmed-ness. Book signings are a MUST!! Try local places in your town. Call the local paper to get PR. Tell a story of how to get self-Published.
I took a year off from writing and marketing for personal reasons. I came back with a BANG! I re-launched the books with a fresh mind and a book signing. Brag, talk, inspire and sell. Get excited when you talk about your books! A big part is being your own advocate and sales person. Do art fairs or anything to get your cards leading to your site out there.
But really, friends are sick of me talking about the books. You have to find your readers outside the friends to grow. I also use constant contact 2 times a month. I also ask readers to review a book before it is ready for final proof. Give them a PDF or copy and get feedback. It helps since I post their reviews. Face it, it is a business and lots of work. Great advice, very concise. I especially like the point about social media.
Needless to say, they are now my ex-publisher. Hi As a published author I can relate to this article but not entirely. My facebook page has a following of followers but I have sold only copies of my novel: I have had chats with many digital agency veterans because I myself work as a copywriter in an event and experiential marketing company. Their view is universal: Digital media is only good to create awareness at a very low cost.
Digital reviews are another good way. Offer a flagship piece of content on your website such as a mini ebook as an incentive to join your list, then send out a monthly or even weekly newsletter to stay top-of-mind with your followers. I will make sure to incorporate all of them as I have four books to release this year and need to keep on top of my game when it comes to marketing for book launches. Research and industry pp. Instead, this means figuring out where this imaginary person goes to find their next read and where they go to talk about the things they love. This will aid in promoting the readings held at schools and public libraries. You can meet readers, catch-up with fellow authors, and rub elbows with industry professionals.
But it very rarely benefits sales. Reviews help greatly but they are not entirely in your hands. The big book houses pay newspapers to get their book reviewed and I strongly feel that if an Author can strike a deal it would be good for them. But ethically this is sticky ground and so we did not try this. But any agency you hire for your book, surely will do that and spend a lot of money to get very little results for you. Digital reviews are another good way. Be generous and send copies to anyone who will review your book — good or bad doesnt matter.
By giving you a testimonial, they are effectively lending you some of their platform. Say for example, that you write about energy trading. When new readers arrive at your Amazon page, almost all of them will look at the top reviews. Social validation is an incredibly important part of the purchasing decision, so in the run-up to your launch, it's important to focus on securing as many positive reviews as possible. About a month before launching, send your street team them an ARC Advanced Reading Copy and ask them to leave you a review on launch day.
Also, give them pre-written tweets or Facebook posts that they use at that time as well.
Make sure you follow up with your street team a week before the launch to make sure that they a have read the book, and b are ready to leave their review. Upload a professional-looking author photo and put your author bio to good use! Your author page will look a little empty until you have a few books under your belt, so consider recording an introduction video where you talk about your first book.
Promotion needs to start well before it's actually your launch date. And it's much easier to secure sales by asking people to 'pre-order today' than to hope they'll remember to come back later and buy it. Most review bloggers will have a full plate, so the earlier you can reach them the better.
You can use this directory to search for appropriate review blogs. Goodreads is a massive social network of readers.
Take a cue from the movie studios and make a trailer. Or, at least consider it. To help you remember the most important elements of this list, you can download and print this nifty marketing checklist. In building your mailing list and social media profile, you may have accumulated 5, readers who you can readily access. By teaming up with three authors who write similar books and have roughly the same audience size, you can instantly quadruple your reach.
We mentioned giveaways before. You can get together with your author pals and give away a book bundle on Goodreads. If you lower the price of your book or give it away for free, more people will read it. If your goal is to get more reviews and better visibility on Amazon, then a price promotion is the way to go. Depending on your specific goals, you will need to determine the length of your promotion and how much your discount will be.
There is, however, a well-known loophole that will let you make your book available for free. Check out the link below to learn the secret.
Thankfully, many sites like Bookbub and Bargain Booksy are centered around connecting readers with promos. To find the promotion sites that are best suited for your audience, start with this directory. This only applies if you have a backlist. By promoting an earlier book, you can boost the sales of your newer one without dropping the price at all! That is, with a couple of exceptions And the vehicle for doing that is a press release. Getting media exposure tends to be easier for non-fiction authors see tip 22 as you will have something to talk about that relates to the real world.
Having said that, there are plenty of writing and publishing blogs that may be interested in your story as an author, or the writing tips you can share. Just like the old press tours, except you can do it all from your living room. You will want to get your blog tour planned as far in advance as possible — or perhaps even hire a professional publicist to set it up for you.