Alright, so let’s say you’ve done the hard work of writing a novel, from the planning and outlining, through the actual drafting, and then done the editing, written the blurb and gotten a cover designed, and finally published your work. Congratulations! However, the work of selling your novel is just beginning.
Literally millions of books are published every year. How are people supposed to find your book out of all the rest? Sure a good cover and compelling blurb will help, but you need to find a way to bring your book to the potential reader’s attention in the first place. Welcome to the world of marketing, which will end up being as much a part of your life as writing if you want to make a go of the literary life.
Unfortunately, the skills and passion that drove you to start writing and carried you to the completion of your work are far from the skills you need to promote said work. You might find yourself at a loss as to what exactly you need to do to get people to actually read your work. Here are ten things you can do to market your novel. Of course, you don’t need to do them all. Find what you think you can make the time for, what you can find interest in, and jump in.
1. Establish a strong online presence. Create a website, and set up accounts on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Use these to interact with fans, post teasers and snippets, and update readers on new developments in the book.
This is the baseline of pursuing publicity. Ground zero. You need to have an online presence. You will need to actually pay to create a website, as social media platforms flag free sites as spam, and won’t let you cross promote your work. Now, actually getting engagement on social media is a bit of a tricky task. Posting often increases your chances of getting noticed by a broader audience. Regular engagement builds familiarity with your target audience.
Each social media platform is unique, and how you build your crowd on each is going to be different. On Facebook, there are groups you can join and post in to get attention. On Instagram, there is a community known as Bookstagram, where people post pictures of their book collections, reviews of books they’re reading, and then post about their own work. TikTok, well, TikTok is a world all its own and is a serious driver of book sales, probably more than the rest of social media combined.
2. Reach out to influencers and book reviewers to get the word out. Look for bloggers, vloggers, and reviewers who specialize in your genre, and send them copies of the book to review.
So, this is one I haven’t done, as I am uncomfortable with cold outreach, which is one of the reasons I struggle at marketing. There are vibrant and active communities of people who talk about books. You can find people who, if you send them a free copy of your book, will read it and offer a review to their existing audience, sometimes even posting their reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, which are critical validations for small time authors.
3. Develop a targeted online advertising campaign. Create targeted ads that will reach potential readers interested in your genre. Utilize display ads, social media ads, and search ads.
This is another that I haven’t done, yet. I fully plan to start investing in advertising in this coming year. This is a field which is rife with possibilities of increasing your visibility if done well, but unlike some of the other strategies, it can also result in costing you a lot of money too avail if attended poorly. In most instances, you pay a set fee when people click on your ad. What you need to know is that this click just brings people to your page. If your blurb and cover aren’t closing the deal quality, then you will be paying for something that generates no sales. You also need to closely mind how you set up your ads. The industry is full of horror stories of people who set a daily ad limit of $500 instead of $5, racking up thousands of dollars in ad spend before they caught and corrected their error.
4. Participate in book fairs and expos. Attend local conventions and book fairs to promote your book and meet potential readers.
Yay! Lots of fun! A place with actual people who are all interested in books! Of course, if being social exhausts you and repeated, practically identical interactions drain you, this can have quite the emotional toll. Not to mention the fact that you need to purchase physical copies of your own book to take to these events with the chance that no one even buys them, leaving you stuck with a supply of books you need to find another way to distribute.
5. Utilize the power of word of mouth. Encourage readers to leave reviews and share their thoughts on the book. Offer incentives, such as free copies, to those who create buzz.
This is a critical aspect of building the reputation of your work. Reviews, especially on Amazon, are the lifeblood of small time authors. On average, something like one out of ever few hundred readers leave a rating, and maybe a tenth of those leave an actual review. Part of what you can do here is build what is called a street team, a group of readers who commit to reading copies of your book, ideally an Advance Reader Copy, and leaving a review. ARC readers can leave reviews as soon as the book is published, giving your launch significantly more credibility in the marketplace.
6. Develop a targeted email marketing campaign. Create a targeted email list of potential readers, and send out regular emails to update them on the book and any upcoming events.
An email list can be more valuable than the rest of these strategies combined. People who sign up for an email list are committing to being informed of the developments of your work in a way that goes beyond a single book or series. There are several ways to build an email list. You can post on your social media channels with enticements like character details, cover reveals, sneak previews of upcoming works, or even special releases like novellas related to your other work. You can put a link to your email list in the back of your book, so people who liked your work can sign up to stay up to date on future publication developments. There are also several websites where authors do newsletter swaps or funnels to your newsletter.
7. Utilize traditional advertising. Place ads in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.
Ok, this one is of relatively limited value in an increasingly online world, and should only be pursued if you know that your target audience still consumes this style of media. If you are writing Young Adult books for GenZ, putting an ad in a newspaper they are never going to read isn’t going to help you sell any books and will just drain your advertising resources. Now, if you are writing a historical thriller about WWII pilots or something, then newspaper advertisements might well pay dividends. And if you substitute radio advertising for buying an ad on Spotify, then you can still reach a good number of potential readers.
8. Develop a rewards program. Offer rewards and incentives for readers to purchase and spread the word about the book.
Incentives could be things like signed copies of your work, which come with their own logistical challenges. Other incentives could be things like winning a a evening of drinks with the author, which you could do virtually if they are out of state, for example. Likewise, there are authors who do things like stream their video gaming on Twitch and invite readers to come hang out with them. People like getting to know their authors as people, getting to see the person behind the creative work that they love.*
*Provided said author doesn’t turn out to be a raging bigot, in which case letting them get to know you might have a counterproductive effect on sales. Not talking about anyone in particular.
9. Create limited edition merchandise. Develop merchandise related to the book, such as t-shirts, mugs, and posters, and offer them as giveaways and promotional items.
This is the sort of system that platforms like Kickstarter thrive on. It does require a bit of an investment to develop things like artist renderings and printing of your characters or settings or bookmarks. Similarly, T-shirts can cost over $20 to print if you’re doing a small batch. You would probably need a significant following and a substantial backlist of work to promote in order to make this a viable option.
10. Offer exclusive content. Provide exclusive content, such as audio and video, to those who purchase or promote the book. This will help to create a sense of exclusivity and encourage readers to spread the word.
Exclusive content could be directly related to your book, backstory that doesn’t make it into the manuscript, postscripts about the characters after the story ends. You could offer audio or video of you reading the book. You could even write an entire side story, maybe about the villain or one of the peripheral characters. I know one author who wrote four whole novels as exclusive content.
So, there are some ideas for things you could do to increase the visibility and credibility of your book. Again, you don’t need to do them all, and in fact, depending on where you are in your publication journey, I would even say that some of them might be counterproductive. Find something you are comfortable doing and make it part of your regular regimen. Being an author is about more than just writing books, and you need to develop the habits of supporting your literary business that go beyond just getting your words on the page.
Hope this gave you ideas! Best of luck, and happy writing!
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