First-time published authors must learn how to market a book. Writing it just isn’t enough. No matter how good of a book you’ve written, readers will not find it without marketing. New authors must ensure that all of their hard work pays off.
There is an endless stream of content that you can find online that will teach you different marketing methods. The problem is that it’s so much information that it’s overwhelming to those new to publishing. So I decided to break it down into 3 easy steps. Start out by following through with these and you will be in a great position.
How to Market a Book: Step 1 – Build a Website
I highly recommend that you build an author website as opposed to a website specific for the book you’re publishing. An author website can be used for all subsequent books that you release.
Either way, your website is the gateway to your entire career as a writer. It will be used to establish all of your success.
Why is a website more important than social media?
- You don’t sell books through social media. An email list is ultimately what’s going to sell books.
- A website is a gateway that opens the door to dozens of other opportunities, including building an email list.
- You own your website.
How to Market a Book: Step 2 – Start Building an Email List
Email lists convert much higher than social media so I always recommend that you start building this list as soon as possible. Go onto Mailchimp and read through all of their FAQs. Learn to use their platform. This is going to take some time but I promise you that it’s knowledge that will carry you through the rest of your career as a writer.
You’ll need an incentive in order to get people to join your email list. So consider offering a free eBook or a short story. Give them a reason to join.
Once you have people on your list, be consistent in sending out emails. Make sure that 90% of your emails are informative. Only 10% should actually try to sell to leads. The goal here is to drip small amounts of free information onto your list so that when you do pitch your book, they are more likely to buy it.
How to Market a Book: Step 3 – Publish Content
At this stage, there are three important areas that you need to create content for. The biggest surprise that most newly published authors run into is the sheer amount of work that it takes to put together content for marketing. In fact, it takes approximately the same amount of time to market as it does to write a book. However, the advantage is that once this content is created, a lot of it will essentially carry future books.
With that said, here are three types of content you must create right now.
- Website Content: Blogging is going to be the one that takes the most time. You need to be consistent in posting to your blog from this point forward. Create a schedule and stick to it.
- Emails: Schedule a daily email to send out to your list. You’ll want most of this to be useful information. Remember that 90% of your messages should be free information and not sales pitches. You simply write up a brief email, point them to something useful, and then schedule these messages. Also note that monthly newsletters are a great idea to keep your list engaged.
- Guest Post on Other Blogs: Search for places that are looking for guest bloggers and write up a few posts to share with them. Most places will allow you to place your blog link at the end of the post.
Putting it All Together
Learning how to market a book is always going to start with these 3 important steps. They serve as the foundation for everything else you do and should always be your priority. For instance, you might branch out and start posting on Twitter. That’s perfect but just be sure that you’re using these steps as the foundation for everything you do on Twitter.