How to Market Your Self-Published Book: Tried and Tested Strategies to Increase Sales Part 2

Marketing your self-published book is no easy task, and for most people, it’s a case of trial and error to find out what works for you and what doesn’t, especially in the beginning.

This can be a thankless task that sees you spending time and money and not always getting results. Of course there are many ways to promote your book without spending money, which we discussed in part one but choosing the wrong avenues can still cost you time.

Over the last eighteen months, I have released six books. I have tried various marketing strategies and spent a lot of time and money on getting my books seen. Some of these things worked, and some didn’t.

Instead of viewing the ones that didn’t help my book sales as a total waste of resources, I try to think of the fact I gained something else important: knowledge.

Knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

When you invest time and money in something and get no return, it can leave you wanting to give up. There where times when I felt like it was all hopeless and considered not writing more books.

That was never really an option, so instead of giving up, I decided to get smart about marketing and keep a proper log of what worked for me and what didn’t.

I am sharing some avenues that worked for me in the hope that it can help any first time authors not feel like they are wasting their efforts.

Here are some marketing avenues that work and can, in most cases, be tweaked to suit your budget:

Paid for Adverts

Here are a couple of places where paying for advertising can really work for you:

Facebook Advertising

Yes it’s annoying that Facebook only show our posts to a handful of people unless we pay to boost it. No, it’s not fair. Yes, by paying for advertising, we are validating them by letting them think this practice is ok.

BUT – the truth is, paid Facebook advertising works if you do it well.

When your are selecting who you want your ad to target, it can be tempting to set the demographics really wide so you can reach more people. Don’t do this.

I did it with my first Facebook campaign, and yes, I reached a lot of people – my post reach for that post was over five hundred times more than my usual reach. But the people it was reaching, for the most part, had no interest in my book.

I made the mistake of making the parameters far too broad – I selected ages 18-65, in the UK and US, and both male and female (I cringe admitting this now).

Not only did this mean that most of the people who saw my post didn’t care about the book itself, it also meant that the wording of the ad wouldn’t appeal to them so there wasn’t even much chance of them sharing it.

How many 19-year-old men do you know who would be attracted to the same concept as say a 55-year-old woman?

Choose demographics that cover your target market, and only your target market. You won’t reach as many people, but the people you do reach will be the ones who will be interested in what you’re offering – and one person with an interest in your content is worth a thousand that don’t care about it.

If you genuinely feel your book will appeal to the masses, start with an ad that is targeted to one demographic. You can run multiple campaigns if you want to, so you can have one campaign for one demographic, with an image and wording that will appeal to them, then a totally different one for another demographic.

The less generic you can be, the better.

The advantages of this kind of marketing are:

• There’s a real chance of organic growth as people share the advertised post
• You get good insights into who interacted with the post so you can assess how well it performed
• You set the pricing – you can spend as much or as little as you like

When you are ready to start your campaign, try to persuade some of your friends and family (or your wider circle if you think you can persuade them) to interact with your post first by liking it, sharing it or commenting on it. People crave social acceptance, and are much more likely to take note of a post that has a good number of interactions than a post with none.

Amazon Ad Words

I have mixed feelings about this one – whether or not it will work for you depends largely on two things:

• How niche your book is
• How good you are at choosing relevant keywords

Amazon ad words is the way to get your book added to the “people who like this also viewed” section on listings and to pop up as a recommendation on Kindle and via email.

The key to using this to drive sales is a pretty similar to the strategy for Facebook advertising – keep it niche.

You don’t want your futuristic fantasy novel to display on listings for westerns. You want it to display on books similar in theme to your own, because that’s where your target market is.

For example, let’s say your book is about baby led weaning. It can be tempting to use the category “parenting” or even “non-fiction” to display your book. It has the potential to reach lots more people that way.

But consider the non-fiction market. Your ad will be displayed to someone with no children and therefore no interest in your book who is looking at books in the finance sector. Even in the parenting category, you will reach people with teens, tweens and pre-schoolers.

Keep your niche as tight as you can. Choose the tightest category you can – not only will there be much less competition, but you will reach people who are actively looking for what you’re offering.

Fiction is a little trickier – it can be hard to put your book in one tight genre. And the competition will be a lot more fierce. Again, it’s down to knowing your target market well and knowing where to find them.

I find this route works best with non-fiction or fiction that is outside of the mainstream genres.

Blog Tours

Blog tours are where several bloggers (depending on which service you choose and your budget, this number varies from five to around thirty) talk about your book on the days immediately before, during and after your release date, or down the line if you want to boost an older title.

If you have friends in the blogging community, it’s entirely possible to arrange this yourself for very little money (usually just the cost of the free copies of your book) which we talked about in part one.

The advantages of a paid blog tour over one you arrange yourself are as follows:

• The company organising the tour will get your book on blogs whose readers are in your target market
• You don’t have to be involved in the process of emailing back and forth to arrange the schedule which frees up your time to concentrate on other things
• The bloggers who take part in the tours are paid to advertise your book which means you are much less likely to encounter people saying they will post on a certain date and then not doing it (in fairness, the blogging community as a whole is filled with reliable people who won’t let you down even if you approach them yourself and aren’t paying them)

Paid for Social Media Promotions

This involves paying someone (usually a company but sometimes an individual) to tweet about your book. My first reaction to this idea was “I can tweet my book myself”.

You can and should be tweeting your book yourself, but these promotion services have a lot of followers and those followers are people interested in books.

Choose your services wisely – look for services that promote other books in your niche. Check through their follower list and make certain that the accounts following them are real. You could even reach out to some of the authors who use the service and ask them how many extra copies they are selling since using the service.

I find these services work best for fiction and they tend to work the best when your book is on offer.

A great way to boost your book’s ranking and get it more visible on Amazon is to run a free promotion and use one of these services to spread the word.

Hire a Publicist

A book publicist will generate a full on marketing campaign for you. They will arrange interviews and appearances in various places. The really well connected ones will get your book featured in popular newspapers and magazines.

They know their stuff and they will create a buzz around your book. This doesn’t guarantee sales, but it gets your book out there, and that’s half of the battle.

Good publicist don’t come cheap. They can charge thousands of pounds a month and many have a minimum service term too, so be sure to do your research before you hire one.

If a publicist is too much of an expense, consider hiring a VA instead. A VA (virtual assistant) will run your social media accounts for you. Make sure your VA specialises in book selling – they will then know the best places for you to be seen.

This can be invaluable in saving you time and getting your book in places you might not have considered. Again, do your research. A good VA will be able to tell you how they have helped past clients and they will be able to talk to you in facts and figures.

Further Suggestions

Buy this book. Seriously, buy it now. And no, I didn’t write it so it’s not a shameless plug 😉

I have read a lot of books about how to market books, and this is the only one I’ve ever read that left me feeling excited about marketing. You can read my review of it here to find out more about why I loved it.

Paid Marketing Avenues – The Do’s and Don’ts

Deciding on a marketing strategy can be a little overwhelming when there’s so many options out there. Here are some do’s and don’t to get you started:

Do:

• Set aside some time to properly brain storm and research your options
• Make a budget and stick to it
• Start small – see what works for you before you put a lot of money into it
• Mix and match your options – different platforms reach different people
• Talk to other writers and find out what works for them
• Walk away if something doesn’t feel right – trust your gut instinct

Don’t

• Allow yourself to be bullied into something that doesn’t feel right for you and your book – even the most well meaning advice can be bad advice – there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to marketing your book
• Agree to spend any money before you’ve had chance to fully consider what you’re getting for your money
• Automatically hire the cheapest person – it’s better value to get someone reliable for extra money than it is to have to put right the damage that can be done by choosing the wrong person for the job
• Automatically select the cheapest package – assess what you’re getting for your money. Dearer packages are usually better value for money
• Spend more than you can afford to lose – there’s no guarantees with marketing

Invest your money wisely, and you will see the benefits.

Good luck with your book.

Do you have any tried and tested marketing strategies? Any other ideas for low cost, high return marketing? Why not share them in the comments – we’re all in this together 🙂

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And don’t forget to check out my author page on Amazon!