Marketing Your Ebook Like a Pro
Marketing Your Ebook Like a Pro
If you’re ever going to get noticed as a self-published author, you’ll need to be both seen and heard, and it’s up to you and only you to make this happen. Self-marketing and promoting your writing may seem like a lot of hard work at first, but there are some easy steps to take that will help you along your way — even if you have no marketing experience whatsoever. Your book may look great and be appropriately priced but, without consistent promotion, you won’t reach the crowds you’re after.
One of the best pieces of advice when it comes to self-promotion is to start thinking about it before you have even completed your first title. This will work better as opposed to a hindsight post-launch effort. We can call it pre-launch marketing, where your main aim is to garner enough interest in your work in the days, weeks, and even months leading up to its release. There are several ways that you can pull this off with perfection:
- Blog your little heart out: you may already have one for your writing business — a blog, that is, not a heart — in which case you may already know that it’s the perfect way to organically build an audience as well as a great spot to showcase your writing. Here, you can introduce and preview your upcoming release and provide links to distribution channels, competitions, and email subscription lists.
- Start a weekly or bi-weekly email newsletter with updates, exciting news, and links to new blog posts as well as to reader-related competitions. Readers love to feel like they are helping in some way, so invitations to provide feedback on covers or excerpts are always a good draw.
By the time you are ready to publish your novel, you will hopefully already have an engaged readership, ready to devour your work and talk about it online and among friends. Still, there is no short order of work that you’ll need to put into your marketing once you have released your work to the outside world!
- Make sure you have an up-to-date landing page on your website/blog for your book. You can post anything related to your work on this page, including but not limited to: plot overview, links to distribution areas, book promos, reviews, and even videos. If you can nab a domain name that relates to your book title — all the better!
- Pitch your work to different publications, including local and national papers, book review blogs, and other writers and influencers. The more reviews you can garner, the better, especially if they are in places with a high readership.
- Use social media to your advantage! Keep people posted on the release of your book, and continue to provide updates and exciting news as often as you can. Encourage shares and other forms of interaction with your readers. Use all of the platforms that you can think of (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc), though you should only take on as much as you can actively handle. Facebook Ads are a cost-friendly way to boost views and encourage people to explore your work, as well.
- Encourage reviews via all of your platforms, even by providing copies of your book for free to some readers in exchange for a detailed review. Provide links from your blog and landing pages directly to your Amazon and Goodreads pages, and don’t forget to swap reviews with other self-published authors.
- Set up book promotions, where readers can buy your book at a discounted price for a limited time, or even as a bundle along with other books in a series. Be sure to talk up the promotion both before it happens as well as while it’s happening!
Marketing your work should be a daily activity (Click here to download a portion of the Odyl Author Platform Blueprint: #2 Essential Daily, Monthly, Weekly Checklists), where you give your readers something to think about, look forward to, and talk about. Don’t be shy to start marketing your next book, even while you are still launching your first one. Once you have gained some popularity, you’ll want to maintain the momentum for the next release!
If you have marketing questions, please ask in our new Authorpreneur Launch Forum. This is where the magic happens! I’ll get back to you within 48 hours with an answer.
Happy Writing!
Marquina
Originally published at Authorpreneur Launch.
