Welcome to another one of a series of episodes on writing and self-publishing your own book. Now we’ll talk about the marketing – how to promote the book once you’ve written it and published it on Amazon.
Listen to the episode or read the article below:
Get Updates: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More
Show Notes:
- the main elements of your book marketing strategy
- ways to spread the word about your book on different platforms
- how to promote your book on your blog
- how to market your book to your email list
- what happens when you publish more books
- how to use one book to promote others
Mentioned:
- The Passive Income Blog Boss [free course]
- ConvertKit [email marketing tool]
Transcript
There are many retailers in the self-publishing industry and way too many other smaller platforms where you can try and present your book in front of a new audience. But the biggest one is Amazon.
That’s where your book is directly shown to every person who wants to buy eBooks and read online. And you’ve got a pretty good chance of seeing it become a bestseller if you follow the right steps and strategies and promote it well.
Let’s dive into the different ways to promote your book.
The big picture
The book marketing process can be long and boring for some and usually starts weeks before the date of the launch. Some authors prefer to let people know what they’re working on before they’ve even started writing their first book and self-publish it.
You can run a book marketing campaign and collect emails long before you’ve published it. Then on the day of the launch, you let people know so that they can get it. That can lead to many sales on day one. If you’re on Amazon, that will put you on top of the list in your category.
Make sure you start your own blog and write content on the topic so you can have an audience and promote your book to it. You can check out my free course The Passive Income Blog Boss if you want the exact steps on how to do that.
Next, email marketing is a big part of your online business, building an audience and selling products.
To have a newsletter, you’ll need an email marketing platform that will help you create opt-in forms, get readers on your list, send out emails, manage subscribers, and more. One of the best email marketing solutions is ConvertKit, it’s what I use and recommend.
Another thing you can do is leverage Pinterest. It’s one of the best social media platforms and like a search engine on its own. It can bring hundreds of thousands of views to your Pins. Imagine how many of these people can then visit your blog and check out your products.
Ask your audience
One thing I love about online business is that as long as you have an idea, you can ask people whether they would pay money for it, how much and what they want to find inside the book.
So if you already have an audience, simply ask them. That could be through a feedback form, survey, or just asking the question in the weekly newsletter or posting it on your socials.
You can also give them an incentive to answer by offering a gift, such as a short guide with tips on a problem they’re struggling with.
Now, here’s an eBook promotion checklist with plenty of ideas to choose from when it comes to marketing your new book.
eBook Promotion Checklist
Set up a pre-order for your book.
It will be at a lower price. Let readers know it’s a special offer for them and in a few days, you’ll raise the price.
Promo videos.
Make a promo video where you talk about the book and who it’s for. It can be added to your landing page.
You can also create YouTube videos about different aspects of the problem covered in it and get some attention there which can lead to potential readers.
Write posts about your book.
Write a post on your blog before you’ve finished writing the book and talk about the main topic, while letting people know that you’re preparing something special and they should stay tuned.
Have a waitlist.
Give blog readers an incentive to subscribe to your newsletter by telling them that they will be the first to know when your book is out and will also receive a discount coupon.
You can have a waitlist for it with a separate opt-in form but also a small gift for those who sign up, such as a free chapter of the book.
You can also reveal a chapter in the form of a post and encourage your blog readers to review it.
Write 2-3 more articles to create buzz, but also make them informative so that your readers can see you have something important to say on the topic and can crave more.
Promo graphic.
Put a promo graphic of the book in the sidebar of your blog with a simple but irresistible call to action.
Document your book journey.
Write posts like ‘Things I Learned from Publishing My First Book’, ‘How I Self-Published a Book in a Month with No Experience’, ‘Steps to Write a Book in 30 Days or Less’, etc.
This way you document your journey, provide value, and promote your book at the same time.
Share it in Facebook groups.
Post about the book in Facebook groups with a description that contributes to the conversation and a coupon code (or just make it free for the first 1-3 days to catch people’s attention).
Turn it into an audiobook.
This lets you have a whole new product to sell but also something to offer to the audio lovers.
Publish it as a paperback.
Format your manuscript and publish a paperback on Amazon. Now you have the same book in 3 different formats, which targets 3 different markets on Amazon.
Post about the book on every other social media you’re part of.
Create targeted Facebook ads.
Join forums on writing, reading, and self-improvement. Add a link to your new book in your signature, and become a part of the community by posting interesting stuff.
Create a FB group.
Now you’re an author and need to take care of your personal brand.
Collaborate.
Research book bloggers who might want to review your book. Email them with a copy of the book (for free, of course).
Create an infographic with practical tips from the book and share it. Add it to Pinterest too, it can do well there.
Contact influencers and work with them to promote the book.
And now, here are a few ways to do book promotion if your blog is your main platform.
How to Promote Your Book on Your Blog
1. Create a great sales page for it.
If your book is sold on another platform, chances are it already has a sales page. But you’ll also need a separate one on your blog that you can refer readers to.
On it, list all the benefits, how it can help people change their life, why they can trust you, what they can expect to learn in the book, why you wrote it, etc.
It can be added to the menu and you can link to it from other pages and blog posts.
Make sure you write great copy, design it well and use quality images. Anyone who lands on it must know what it’s about, how it can help them, what problem it solves, who you are and who you wrote it for.
2. Have a special lead magnet that pitches the book.
As you know, every blogger should have an email list and offer lead magnets to get subscribers to sign up.
One of your next lead magnets can be something related to the topic of your book and which will attract the right audience to your list. At the end of it, you can directly promote your book and even offer a special discount.
3. Promote it in your automated email series.
Create an automated email series for anyone who joins your list.
In these welcome emails, share your story, link to your best content, and pitch the book. Use the language of the reader to really connect to them.
That’s a great way to establish a relationship with your subscribers, introduce your book and also make sales directly from your emails.
4. Optimize your cornerstone content and promote the book in it.
The next one of the best ways to promote your book as a blogger is to not just have cornerstone content (this is the best content on your blog in the form of guides, long-form articles, and amazing tutorials) but also optimize it using the right SEO techniques.
That will boost its rankings in Google and you’ll get more traffic to the articles. Inside, you can naturally promote your book.
5. Display reviews from readers.
A great way to get your first reviews is to give the book for free to a few readers (also called beta readers) and get their honest feedback.
You can share the best reviews in the form of testimonials on the sales page or anywhere else on your blog, in your newsletter or on social media.
You can also talk about the book naturally anywhere else, such as on your About page, in articles, or link to it from your Contact page, the menu or the footer (the link can be either to the sales page on your blog, or directly to the Amazon page).
The next tips are related to your overall brand as an author.
Why write more than 1 book?
Selling more than 1 book means more options for your readers and more opportunities to make sales and double your profits.
Once you have more products, you can bundle them, offer discounts, promote different books to different types of readers based on the topic they are interested in, have more landing pages on your site, and so much more. Then you can use all the strategies we mentioned so far for every book.
Offering more than one book on Amazon and also publishing books consistently, even if it means once a year, can work really well for a few reasons.
For a start, you can have repeat customers. Readers connect to the author and often buy another book from the same one.
You also have a bigger chance of making more sales as you can have books in different categories and each has a good chance to rank well and be seen by more people.
With every next book, you can promote the others.
That’s usually done at the end of the book where you can talk about what else you offer.
I’ve purchased books from the same author because of that section in their book where they added a description about every other book they’ve written. I got so excited that I immediately checked them on Amazon and ordered the next one.
Also, like anything else online, building your reputation as an author takes time. One book might not be enough to get the attention you deserve or make enough or even any sales.
But with every next one, you just get better at the whole thing, you get your name out there more and more, you get found, you learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry and can improve with every next book.
Over time, as you land interviews on other blogs or podcast channels, you can talk about all your books and share your experience as a writer.
Having more books also builds trust with readers, shows you have more to say than most people online, gives you the chance to discuss more niche topics in detail with every book instead of covering it all in one.
There are so many reasons to keep publishing, especially in the self-help industry. That’s because you keep improving and can talk about the new things you learned, the new mindset shifts you made, mistakes you’ve made, experiences that changed you as a person, and so much more.
Repurpose content.
Also, let’s not forget your content doesn’t need to be completely new, you can repurpose it.
If you, like me, have written for 10 years on your blog and have courses, you can use a lot of that content and turn it into books.
By doing this you’re still doing what you’re supposed to – creating content, serving your audience and offering them different ways to learn from you. I think that’s a really beautiful way to continue being on the right path but also grow your brand and business.
Final words
That’s not all.
There are probably 100 other actions you can take right now to make your book popular, even if it’s not published yet. Marketing is a never-ending process and you should be doing it before, during and after the launch of your book.
But these ideas should be enough to get you started. Best of luck with promoting your book.
