Best Books on Marketing for Indie Authors

Ann Venkataraman
Self Publish Magic
Published in
4 min readOct 1, 2020

Boost Sales even with Self Publishing!

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Indie authors know that marketing self-published books take almost as much time as writing them! So any strategy that can boost sales is a God-send. Well, these books do exactly that…

Obviously the success of the techniques used with self-publishing change every time Amazon tweaks its algorithms, with passing book fads and sudden news items. However, these books do show some evergreen ideas. Consider them the baseline ideas and modify them accordingly.

And if you did have a “traditional” publisher, but sales never took off then consider reviving life into your book sales with the methods in these books.

Quick Book List

  1. How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn.
  2. Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. Author = Mark Coker.
  3. How I Sold 80,000 Books: Book Marketing for Authors. Author = Alinka Rutkowska.
  4. Write and Grow Rich. Alinka Rutkowska.
  5. Write to Market: Deliver a Book that Sells. Author = Chris Fox.

#1 How to Market a Book

Screenshot from writer’s Kindle — Joanna Penn & Mark Coker

I love Joanna Penn because she had found success and bestseller status with both fiction and non-fiction books. So her strategies obviously work across genres! So this book “How to Market a Book” should be a must-have for every indie author.

Bonus, every couple of years she also updates her book to reflect the changing marketplace for indie authors. She also runs an excellent blog and podcast where guests talk about current techniques for improving book sales — Amazon ads, KDP rocket software, selling internationally, etc. So feel free to follow to stay abreast of the latest tricks and techniques.

#2 Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

This is partially a pitch to sell your book via the Smashwords platform and partially a guide on book marketing. I have not used Smashwords (yet) but I like the idea of having a central place where I can sell to libraries, international…

Ann Venkataraman
Self Publish Magic

Techie, Manager, Blogger & Mom. I write about Leadership, books, productivity, and how to use them to fast-track your career.