As first-time author, you have lots of questions. One of the biggest ones is always “How do I actually sell the book I’m writing?”
If you’re like most people today, you turn to Google for help. On an initial search on Google, you pull up over 5 million answers to a very simple question, “How do I market my book?”
To complicate things further, there are a lot of entries that talk about book promoting.
The million dollar question is how is book marketing different from book promotion, or is it the same thing?
What’s the difference between book marketing and book promotion?
Let’s take a trip to Merriam-Webster Dictionary to find out.
Marketing is defined as the activities that are involved in making people aware of a company’s products, making sure that the products are available to be bought, etc.
Promotion is defined as something (such as advertising) that is done to make people aware of something and increase its sales or popularity.
Based on the definitions alone, promotion is an activity or tool utilized during the book marketing
How to market your self-published book
There are three phases to successfully marketing your book:
The Pre-release Phase
Before you actually start the book you should consider the how, what, why, and when of your book.
During the construction of your manuscript, you should have a marketing strategy that supports the following questions:
- How are you going to market it?
- What will make your book attractive to your target market?
- Why would anyone want to buy your book?
- When is the best time to promote your book after you have developed relationships with your targeted readers?
The Pre-release Phase
When the book is finished and ready to launch, you need to decide the following:
- How you are going to promote the book online and offline.
- Develop and implement a marketing timeline.
- How you’re going to be consistent with your brand, logo, color scheme, and media message when promoting your
book. - Be constant in your delivery. For example, your targeted reader should be able to
depend on your email newsletters on Tuesday if that’s when you will be sending them.
The Post Release Phase
After the initial release, it is hard work keeping your targeted audience engaged after purchasing your books.
To do so, you may need to:
- Blog, blog, and blog some more about your topic.
- Get some speaking gigs, radio interviews or be a guest blogger.
- Set up book signings, apply for awards, and give away books as promotional items at events.
- Attend writers’ conferences or join a writers group.
- Get established reviewers to review your book.
- Make sure your readers can find you. For example on Social media, your website, in your local press outlets, etc.
As you can see marketing a book encompasses a lot more than promoting your book. There are tons of things that need to be done behind the scenes so that you can effectively make your manuscript a book magnet.
