Five Easy Book Marketing Tips For All Self-Published Authors

Help your book sales with these 5 easy author book marketing tips.

Easy book marketing tips for authors might sound a little trite. But the most fundamental and important book marketing issues can often be overlooked. Particularly in the mad rush for book sales after you release your book.

There are many ways to market a book for an Indie author. However, very few will work well unless you get the basics right first.

For many new authors, after they write a book, it is then straight into publishing – but without a marketing plan.

You need a book marketing plan

Without a marketing plan, you can waste money on Facebook Ads. You miss the opportunity to send press releases and forget to investigate services that specialize in book launches.

Having a plan before you publish is always good advice. But what if you have already published your book? Try these 5 steps to help remedy the situation.

Here are my 5 easy book marketing methods that I consider essential in giving a book the best chance of selling.

1. Meticulous listing of your book

The most vital step in marketing for authors is to take is to make sure that your book is listed correctly.

You need to research and select your categories and keywords. You need to do this for KDP Select or Amazon KDP and all your other book retailers.

One mistake many authors make is not using Amazon Author Central. You can add even more book details and editorial reviews. I touched on this in my recent post about using Author Central. Yes, you can add your own book reviews.

Always make sure you have a subtitle, select narrow categories, find searchable keywords, and write a keyword-rich book description.

Even if you have done this, go back from time to time and see if you can improve your book details. Use your book’s keywords in Amazon search. If your book is not appearing, try to find a couple of more effective keywords.

Search keywords for books are very powerful, so keep looking for better keywords to replace your weaker ones. Rinse and repeat.

2. Blog more often

Write more blog posts about your book.

Almost every self-published author has a book page on their website or blog. There is usually a book description, a book cover image, and buy links. Then you share it on social media.

However, the effectiveness of such a page is minimal. It is because it is often only a repetition of what is on your book retailers’ sites. So it’s boring and will gain little attention.

There is a better way to gain interest and attention on social media, increase your Search engine indexing, and book discoverability. Write a number of blog posts about your book.

These can be about the setting for your book or how the idea came to you. You could talk about who helped you or where you wrote the book. Write about working with your cover designer. Write short stories.

Come up with ten ideas for ten blog posts. Then you have a variety of posts that you can share on social media. They are also ten more of your pages that will be indexed on Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

3. Share better and further

Share, share, share. Sure, every author shares their book posts on Facebook and Twitter. But promotion on these platforms tends to last for only a few hours or even a few minutes.

In some cases, depending on the time of day or day of the week, it may gain zero attention.

Then posting again sometimes becomes the obvious solution. But this runs the risk of annoying your friends and followers.

A far better way to share is to use platforms that have longer-lasting effectiveness.

Some of the best are Pinterest, Scoopit, and Flipboard. These platforms can deliver a lot of traffic. Use them to share and distribute every blog post or new webpage you write.

Another way to increase your social media effectiveness is to add share buttons to your blog.

When a visitor to your blog shares your post, it will extend your reach considerably. You could also add a Click to Tweet button if you can.

4. Comment everywhere and often

Comment, then comment even more. When you comment on a blog or news article, you have the chance to get a link back to your blog. It is an easy way to gain new potential visitors.

Make extra sure you check that your profile details are complete and up to date for each commenting platform. Check Disqus, WordPress, Blogger, or any other site you use regularly.

Whenever possible, add your profile pic, your website or blog address, and a brief bio. A comment I posted on a recent Smashwords blog post ended up gaining over fifty new visitors in only three days.

Don’t restrict your comments to only book, publishing, and writing-related sites.

I gain a lot of new visitors from comments I make on newspapers and even sports sites.

Commenting outside of the publishing field can be very helpful. It is exactly where book readers are likely to be – reading an online newspaper.

5. Stop trying to sell your books

Yes, stop thinking about selling books.

Books are always bought by readers after they discover a new book.

Discovery may come from word of mouth, an Internet search, or a book club. It could come from a free ebook, a book review, your Facebook page, or a comment on a Facebook group.

It might come via your author’s website or by readers browsing the Amazon Kindle Store.

You can also aid discovery by using book promotion.

Potential readers are everywhere.

Discovery can come from someone reading a comment you made on a fashion website or newspaper. Or perhaps from tripping over your book on Flipboard.

It may come from someone taking a look at your Linkedin profile.

Yes, if you are an author, you should have your books listed on your Linkedin profile.

Try to think of where your target audience might visit. Then give them the chance to discover your book. This is by far the most effective marketing tactic.

Conclusion

Always think about book discovery and forget all about bookselling.

There are very limited ways to sell a book. But there are absolutely unlimited opportunities to make your book more discoverable.

Keep looking for these new opportunities in your marketing efforts, and not at your sales dashboard.

Concentrate on using these 5 easy book marketing ideas to increase your book’s discoverability. You can save yourself a lot of wasted time and energy.

Related reading: How To Self-Publish Very Short Books In Print And Ebook