Book Marketing Strategies | iWriterly

regardless of your publishing path whether that's traditional publishing or self-publishing all authors need to participate in the marketing of their book even authors of the big five publishing houses or another major publisher are expected to participate in the marketing so how can you market your book in this video I'm gonna run through 34 different strategies that you can use specifically these strategies might be additionally helpful for you if you are publishing your debut novel stay tuned hey book nerds i'm mickeleh tor I'm the author of the cyborg tinkerer which comes out November 17th 2020 if you preorder a copy and fill out the pre-ordered giveaway form you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinkerer TCG merch bookmarks character art books by authors you know and love first page and query critiques from literary agents and more stay tuned to the end of this video to hear if you've won this week's prize I also formerly worked at a literary agency on this episode of I read early we are going to talk all about book marketing strategies before we get into today's content hit that subscribe button and ring the bell if you haven't already here on my right early we create videos about how to be a successful modern day author including traditional publishing and self-publishing today's video will be broken down into the following sections the first is determining your audience and goals the second is three things to do before creating a marketing plan and the third section is these 34 marketing strategies and stay tuned to the end of this video because I'm going to be sharing how you can get a downloadable checklist of these marketing strategies before any author begins there are a few things that you need to consider first and the first thing is who is your target audience for this I'm thinking of age category so things like middle grade young adult adults and so forth who is your target age of your readership the other one is genre so for that I think fantasy science fiction thriller romance and so forth you could also think about the gender of your target audience of women's fiction specifically are going to be primarily female readers ideally you should know your target audience who is your ideal reader who is most likely to enjoy the story that you write you can't effectively market to readers if you don't know who your readers are you can't effectively market to readers if you don't know who your readers are the second thing to consider is what are your author goals I think it's really important to decide what is most important for you as an author and what's most important for you to accomplish with this particular book I think for every book that we write as career authors we are probably going to have different goals for different books now so that you aren't disappointed by the publication journey of a given book it's really important to identify how you define success and what your goals are the last thing you should consider is how will you measure success for yourself for example one person might define success as hitting a bestseller list while another person might define success as earning out their advance another person might be getting great reader reviews and other people and might be selling a certain number of copies of your book or enough books to live off of your writing now for the writers who are going to slide into my DMS or my comments and say that one to market I'm an author or but after 20 years ago didn't have to market their book so why should I make I only want to write book so that I will say times are different and more is expected of authors now I don't make the rules this is just how things operate now so if you want to excel and do well as a modern-day author marketing something you're going to have to do only household names are probably not going to have to do tons of marketing for their books because their household names if you want your book to perform well you have to participate in the marketing period you worked hard in writing this book therefore in my opinion you should work equally hard in marketing this book it might seem scary and feel unnatural because a lot of times as writers were creatives we're not necessarily marketers so I get it it might feel awkward but if you're publishing a book whether it's self or traditional you are a business treat your books as a product and consider how you can market them effectively and with your target audience in mind for example as a debut you might want to focus more on discoverability getting your book into as many hands as possible here are three things to do before you begin marketing or putting a marketing plan together the first is decide on a budget depending on your budget you may want to pursue more or fewer paid opportunities and remember that if this is your debut novel it's probably going to cost more than subsequent novels so plan that into your budget accordingly for self-published authors you will need to lay down the foundation for your publishing career meaning you might have to buy things like vellum which is a formatting software and I love and highly recommend an affiliate link is in the description below you might have to get tools like publisher racket also have an affiliate link for them in the description below publisher rocket helps you research Amazon categories so you can be discovered in Amazon if you look up a keyword or a key phrase you can see how many people are searching for it and what the competition is so it's all about finding that sweet spot where people are looking for it but you don't have crazy high competition so you can be discovered I highly recommend this tool you will also probably have to bulk purchase ISBNs and more and then for you personally think about what you have more of time or money many daily authors have more time than money because this is their first book they're not earning income from their books yet and then also think about your personal life if you have more disposable income maybe you can outsource some more of these things just consider whatever is a priority for you time or money for right now in this book the second thing is to decide on a publishing timeline when do you want to publish your book and when can you realistically put out a quality product for the cyborg tinkerer what was realistic for me was a year after I had finished beta reading and that was before I begin working with freelance editors so I did developmental editing which was packaged with line editing as well as copy editing and proofreading given my life and circumstances I don't know if you guys know this but I am mom and a wife I have a mortgage I don't write and work full-time I do this on the side in addition to taking care of my son so a year was realistic for me another thing to consider when you're deciding on a publishing timeline is do you want to time the release of your book with a particular event this is a little bit more applicable when they're what the world wasn't closed down due to a certain virus I won't say what it is you guys know what I'm talking about when they were more in person event so maybe in the future this will be different and you might want to time the release of your book with a certain event number three is to create a marketing plan and listings in order of priority this is helpful so that if you are in the middle of marketing or editing and you are just in the thick of things you don't have to be spinning your wheels working on something that you don't necessarily care about and because you've already prioritized the list of however many things that you want to do for marketing what marketing tactics do you plan to implement first and when can you implement them for example if your cover hasn't been revealed yet there's a lot of marketing things that you simply cannot do and then what are your goals and how are you going to measure them now let's move on to the 34 strategies for marketing your book number one build an author platform before publishing your book I think it's important to point out that if you are going the traditional publishing route and you were writing genre fiction you do not have to have an author platform in order to get traditionally published it is a really helpful tool in your tool kit if you are a fiction author if you are a nonfiction author author platform is essential if you want to be traditionally published that is if you want to be self-published author platform is literally the only way that people can find out about you and your books because you are the only person marketing your books unless you hire a PR company which we will get to later in my opinion having an author platform no matter what you write and no matter what your publishing path is is something that's really helpful for you essentially you want to market yourself and provide value to the community you don't just want to post a bunch of stuff about your book when people don't really know who you are I don't really care about you necessarily and I know it sounds really harsh to say that you need to provide them value first in order for them to want to connect with you on a personal level and to hear about your books I will also point out that your author platform should be around either you as the author so your author name or under a brand personally I went with the brand route we went with I write early my husband and I kind of discussed it and we thought that this was the best route for us other authors go under the label of their name I do not recommend putting your author platform under individual book titles because if you're a career author you're gonna write many books and you don't want to keep making a new author platform for every single book make one author platform under your name or whatever you choose to do and then market all of your books under that one platform one of the pros of making an author platform under a brand name like I write early versus an author name is that if you choose to have multiple pen names you can theoretically market all those pen names under that one brand now going back to the whole providing value for the community how can you do that think about what you specifically are good at and how you can help other authors or readers depending on who your target audience is if this is your first ever book you could share what you were learning about the writing process as you are learning it you could also compile knowledge from experts the industry in whatever field you are in so then that way it's easier for your audience to learn about certain subjects because you've already compiled all of that knowledge for them you could share what you're reading so that's what I'm thinking like booktube or books so Graham versus something like author tube which is what we do here at I write early number 2 is to launch an author website this is your professional home base on the internet people should be able to come to your website and learn about you and your books maybe other things you offer as well as to contact you and they recommend a contact form and not leaving your email on the website here are a few other things that you could do with your website's self signed copies of your book sell merch list an FAQ section which is a frequently asked questions shout-out to books you are currently writing offer press kits for your books that are coming out or out have a press or media page with your bio author headshots and other relevant information and make it really easy for people who are considering having you on for an interview opportunity and a lot of times these interview opportunities are really important when you're starting out to get the word out there about you and your books you also want to have links to all the things newsletter social media links to where people can purchase your books on the various retailer websites and more other relevant links for me are things like cofee merchandise courses that I'm teaching patreon and so forth whatever you do make it really easy for people coming to your website to be able to find whatever it is that they are looking for so your website should be clean and organized social media does not replace an author website it's something that you do in addition to it as I mentioned before your website should be your name or brand and not the name of your individual books if you are a career author you're gonna probably be writing many many books and so if you brand that individual book title or series as a website it's going to be really tough having to rebrand it later or to create a second author platform for you to advertise your next set of books under inch or two you want your brand to encompass all of the books that you write number three is to build your email list social media is working on rented land you do not own that land the algorithms can change at any time and then the content that you are posting will no longer be discovered even if people are subscribed to you in order to be able to connect with your audience directly and sort of own that list you need to create a newsletter two of the bigger options are mailer Lite and MailChimp personally I use MailChimp as of right now June 2020 it's free I believe up to the first two thousand subscribers and then after that it gets wicked expensive so I am considering moving platforms because I'm not super pleased with the price tag but it is one of the more popular options at least that I've heard of in my communities even if you don't have any books out yet and you're not sure what to talk about you really should have a newsletter you can talk about your writing process the books you're reading products you love silly personal stories shout outs to articles you've written or videos you've posted and so on I also recommend in your newsletter to giveaway exclusive insiders that no one else can get elsewhere as an incentive to sign up for your story you can offer exclusive downloads for people signing up for your newsletter the more veteran authors a lot of times they offer a free novella a free short story a free epilogue that is somehow related to other books at their readers that are sign up for their newsletter probably have already checked out so it's like an extra thing to be in that world for me right now I have a querying checklist a word document that is pre formatted if you are going to write a manuscript and then eventually query it or send it to freelance editors I am also going to have something else the end of this video so stay tuned number four is get a professional author headshots this will be for your website social media profile pictures and for inside your books once you publish them because you have that author photo on the bio page usually I'm demon wine this doesn't have to be expensive it could be anything from taking a picture on your phone to getting something done I think where I got my plain author headshots done was at JC Penney photos it was a hundred dollars and I know that disposable income can be a lot of money for some people and I'm not saying that you have to do that but you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on a professional photographer to get images John you can do it on your smartphone it could be free whatever you do I recommend having a more plain background so that the focus is on your face and not on the busyness in the background also don't have a picture where it's like you and several other people and this crapped out so it's like just awkwardly your face and you can tell that the other people were cropped out number five is to create a Skip's when I say press kit it is essentially a document where you provide a bunch of information about your book so people who are either deciding if they want to buy it or if they want to read it can learn more usually these press kits are for people of influence but essentially these press kits in the traditional publishing landscape are usually given to influencers so when I think of influencers I think of maybe head of associations there's like library soci associations to decide if they want to purchase that book for a year for their respective libraries you could send it to booksellers you could send it to bookish influencers it's really just to give as much information as possible so those things like ISBNs are to help places like booksellers and librarians be able to identify and locate your book in their system just to recap here are some essential information to have in your press kit book title series title blurb hook genre age category trigger warnings reader reviews book formats this is ebook paperback hardcover audiobook and so forth price ISBNs page count publication dates where the book can be purchased territories links to purchase the book author bio author headshots author links so your website social media etc topics for interviews I will put a quick example of the TCT press kit here on this screen so you can see a little bit of what it looks like as you can see I have the book cover on the first page it's clearly identified as a press kit I have my name the book title and author websites easily viewable the second page is the pot summary I have the comp titles details which is the each category genre and so forth as well as trigger warnings the next page is what readers are saying as is the following page after that I think it's fun if you want to to include images that kind of provide the fun aesthetics to your book this was all created on canva by the way so you can create this for free you do not have to pay someone to create this for you then I have a details page and this is really for like the librarians and retailers to get more information the title series title number in series author genre age category price page count ISBN publication date and so forth page after that is links how to purchase the books topics for interviews and then the final page is about the author contact information bio and all that number 6 is to write a release I recommend doing this before your book is published but essentially it makes it really easy for any news publications to pull information about your book and add it to whatever it is that they're writing this is coming from my journalism days and when I was the editor of a magazine I read a ton of press releases and that would be the basis of when I would start my research or maybe if I was doing like a roundup I could grab various information from press releases I might not interview people directly but it's really good to have that information handy so maybe like your local newspaper a local magazine whoever can easily grab that information make sure it's clear what you're announcing why the reader of the press release should care about this why is it applicable to them and where they can get more information if they are interested you could post this press release to your website but I recommend also posting it to free press release distribution websites I will leave a link in the description below to where you can do that number seven is to create a social media strategy when creating a social media strategy consider what platform you are most active on you enjoy and where you have the biggest following for me I'm most active on YouTube and my biggest following is on YouTube I also am active on Twitter and Instagram so I would say the bulk of what I'm going to do for marketing is going to be on YouTube but I'm also going to do stuff on Twitter and Instagram I think it's important that you don't pressure yourself to be in all the places and to be everything for all people pick a primary platform focus on that and then if you have time to you know do some teasers and different things on other platforms you can definitely do that but focus on one platform first and then branch out if you have time I'm gonna go through a few ideas of marketing things you could do on YouTube Twitter and Instagram because those the platforms I'm most active on for YouTube you could do weekly videos book themed videos how to market how to publish more about that specific genre and then obviously you can do videos about your book itself I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get into this later but for youtube you could do weekly videos leading up to the month of your book coming out and then maybe do two videos a week during the month that your book comes out and then maybe a video every single day the week that your book comes out it's gonna be a lot of work I don't necessarily recommend it but that is an example of something that you could do on Instagram you could rotate between like book promo selfies pictures that you're taking but I would incorporate a couple promos and tea and things from your book as well for those teasers you could do like book quotes and other things but I think we're gonna get more into that later on Twitter just tweet regularly use the hashtags send out links to your book share updates but don't spam people and say buy my book buy my book it should be one tweet to maybe every 10 tweets so that one tweet is about your book and then you have 10 normal other tweets I recommend using social media scheduling tools so that way you don't have to manually post these things all the time you can schedule it in bulk get it done let it go out on time I use a later for Twitter and Instagram and then you can schedule videos directly on YouTube and the community tab if you have I think it's more than a thousand followers you can use a community tab but I schedule posts on the community tab directly on there versus before I don't think you were able to schedule posts number eight is research marketing copy writing marketing copy is a completely different skill than writing a book so I do think it's important to pause and research and learn as much as you can about how to market effectively marketing copy includes one-line hooks a full blurb comp titles quotes from the book here are a few examples from the cyborg tinkerer comp titles Treasure Planet meets John Scalzi's the collapsing Empire in this lgbtq+ steampunk fairy tale mashup here is the short pitch Belle falls in love with both the Beast and Sleeping Beauty and who's to say she has to pick only one here is the longer pitch a deadly circus competition a tinkerer tasked with removing the losing cyborgs implants who is she to protect when she falls for both the handsome ringleader and a beautiful acrobat number 9 is hire a cover designer your book cover is quite literally the biggest marketing tool for your book everyone judges a book by its cover it's also the readers first impression when seeing your book if they don't look at your book cover and want to learn more you haven't done your job I will say for this particular tip this is for Indies people who are going the traditional publishing route or publishing with an indie press the publisher will be creating this cover for you on your behalf you might have some say but you might not for Indies we should be hiring our own cover designers and if you want to learn more about hiring a cover designer and what - do I have a whole video about that I will leave it in the description below so if you're an indie author so it means a self-published author you need to hire a professional cover designer don't just hire a friend don't try and make one yourself hire a professional who creates covers and ideally in your age category in genre number 10 is create promo images I use canva for this you can use Photoshop in different places but personally I use canva and you can either use the free version or the more expensive version I think the pro version is like 1295 a month give or take but that's as of right now but essentially this is to create things like social media banners so at the top of something like Twitter you have that big social media banner next to your profile image you can show your book in there and have a teaser quote as we discussed before from the marketing copy you can do images for social media posts so maybe an image and your Twitter feed and your Instagram feed here are a few types of images that you could create for your various social media platforms a hook plus the cover images cover image and publication dates countdown to the publication quotes from the book reader reviews endorsements from other authors or industry professionals character art if you have permission to share them general aesthetics remember that creating these images isn't just for you but it's for your street team as well but more to come on that later I recommend posting these users throughout your publication process and remember the teaser images with your book cover be careful not to share them too soon if you're working with your publisher make sure that the cover is revealed you don't want to reveal your cover before you're allowed to do so if you're an indie author don't you have the cover image before you've done your cover reveal also think about what stage of the publication process that you are in if you're in the early stages maybe just post like one update a month like one teaser image a month if you're in the later parts of the process where you're getting close to the publication date and your book is available for pre-order you're going to be posting much more frequently number eleven is to create a pre-order incentive and swag as you can see from the introduction in this video and if you've watched our other videos you probably will have seen it as well but I'm doing a pre-order giveaway for the cyborg tinkerer if you preorder this I wear tank where you get entered to win a bunch of prizes I talked about it and promoting it you can do the same thing because people who are pre-ordering so you don't have the immediate gratification of getting the book as soon as they order it so you want to give them an a reason to preorder it and then have to wait which is kind of a stinky part so if you do a pre-order incentive you're basically giving people something that they can get right now and be more excited about the book and sometimes if it's like an insider of some kind it's even more fun for the readers you can do giveaway items in multiple tiers so maybe you have top two your item middle two your item and then a bunch of like lower two your items I also like the idea of a consolation prize which is an idea that I got from my friend Jenna Moretti and this I recommend having a be a digital prize so that everyone who pre-orders it and enters your pre-order giveaway form you can send this to them at vs. it might be really really expensive if you have to mail something but an example of a consolation prize and I wish there was a better term for that but we're going with that for now is maybe the first five chapters of your book so everyone who pre-orders the book is probably really excited to read about your book and you can't read I think you usually get the first chapter two maybe three of a book when you do that look inside feature maybe on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or somewhere else and so if you give the first five chapters that's more that you then you would get elsewhere and it's a fun thing that you know your readers are excited about anyways because they pre-order the book and they're getting that exclusive first look here are a few examples of things that you could offer as giveaway items signed copies of your books I would be careful doing this internationally if you're based in the States it can get really expensive book themed merchandise bookmarks postcards book plates copies of other authors books or digital products character art now for this you have to be careful unless you have the commercial rights to something like character art you cannot sell them however if they are a giveaway item that is not for sale you could do that number twelve is to do a big cover reveal hype is gold whether you're doing self-publishing or traditional publishing get people excited about the book if you are traditional publishing your publisher is gonna pick one the reveal of the cover happens but you can do a big cover view on your author platform once this happened elsewhere wherever the publisher decides is best if your are a self-published author you can plan when this happens personally I'm a big believer that when you reveal the cover have it near the same time that the pre-order is available so then that way people see the cover that is the biggest moment when people are gonna be most excited about your book they're gonna like she's so cool I want to lay my and if you have the pre-order available people are probably more likely to pre-order it right then and there because they're so excited about your book at that time so you want to give the people what they want you could do a cover reveal via a book trailer however I think it's really easy to do a book trailer poorly consider your video editing skills and what you can do that would shine the best light on your book and then make readers want to pick it up of course you can outsource this but then again think about your marketing budget is this something you want to outsource to someone else to do can you do it yourself or you can do like what I did for the cover reveal I had an educational video about hiring a cover designer for self-published authors and at the very end I revealed what my cover was number 10 create a street team this is something that is that in both traditional publishing and self-publishing but you put a call out and say hey who wants to be on my street team and these are people that are excited about your book maybe they love you as an author maybe they followed your author platform they're a big fan of whatever content you produce and they're going to help spread the word about your book leading up to the release I recommend doing a Google application form so that way you can vet the people who you think would be a really good fit then you want to decide where the street team will be hosted Facebook group email discord etc as we mentioned before about creating the banner images for like social media and stuff this is also for your street team so they can share on their own social media without the pressure of making something themselves you want to make this as easy as possible to share your book with your street team members because if they have to work to share your stuff they're probably not going to want to do that so make it as easy as possible for them to give a shout out to your book on their social media platforms or newsletters or websites or wherever they're going to share it about your book create challenges for your street team and then create prizes number four is to research influencers for this I'm talking primarily about like booktube books to Gram book boxes book review websites book bloggers whoever has a platform about reviewing books this is totally different than something like author tube I don't review books on my channel so someone who says I'm a community-made that can talk about I'm gonna be like no I don't review books you want to reach out to influencers who review books that's not to say I don't accept books from industry folks that and I'll read it and maybe like a shut up my Instagram but I don't actively review books and I think the best group of people to reach out to our influencers who read and review books in your age category and genre so don't be sending them a romance novel if they only do nonfiction don't be sending them a picture book if they only read young adult fantasy also think about do they accept books from indie authors some reviewers do not read books that are self-published they will only get the books directly from publishers and then do they accept unsolicited books or do they only read books that they have requested do they specify when to reach out and in what format email each influencer individually and personalize it do not do a mass email with everyone on it in addition you should be sending them a free copy of your book in exchange for an honest review do not expect influencers to read your book and pay for it by them reviewing it on their platform of loyal readers people who read in that age category and genre that's a something that you could pay a lot for and so it's really an exchange of goods and services so don't expect them to pay to read your book I would follow up maybe once but don't pastor them that is if you don't hear back from them I recommend doing emails first and a social media DM as a last resort some men may press kit because we've already talked about that hopefully you've made one and then give them an overview of your book and why you think they might enjoy it number 15 is to hire a PR company this is specifically for authors who have more money than time you can hire someone for example to reach out to influencers on your behalf and there's tons of other PR tasks that they can do as well but this is an option that you could pursue again if you have more money than time number 16 is to research Amazon categories I know this feels like a weird thing to say as a marketing task but this is for my self-published authors traditional published authors sorry guys just kind of skip over this one but this is so that you can be discovered on Amazon and Amazon is one of the biggest retailers that people buy books on right now at least in the United States if you use a tool like publisher rocket and again I have a link in the description below it's an affiliate link if you want to check that out but you want to research Amazon categories and see how many people are searching for those categories key words key phrases and what your competition is so it's just colleague YouTube if you guys have ever watched my how-to on YouTube but you want to find a sweet spot where people are searching for that thing but the competition isn't too high so you can get discovered because of no one searching for it you're not gonna get discovered and if tons of people are searching for it but then also there's a lot of competition you're still not going to get discovered so you do want to find that kind of middle-ground sweet spot number 17 is to send our arcs our advanced reader copies or advanced review copies but essentially you sent a copy of your book as an e-book or physical book to influencers usually and they read it talk about it to review it on their respective platforms prior to the book coming out to really increase the hype and get people to hear about the book essentially so you could send this to book reviewers your street team members influencers for distributing arcs I recommend using this tool called book funnel that is what I am personally using to distribute e arc copies of the cyborg tinkerer number eighteen is leave a call to action at the end of your book here are a few examples of a call to action purchase the next book in the series and then you could have maybe the first chapter of your following book sign up for your newsletter pre-order the next book follow on social media get a free download get an exclusive short story or chapter about the characters in the book or maybe if taking place in the same setting as that book usually you have to sign up for your newsletter to get those or something like support on patreon number 19 is to price your book competitively sorry again traditional published authors if you are watching this this is again for Indies because traditionally published authors you don't really have a say in how your book is priced but as Indies that's one of the things that we do have a say in and in my opinion your book will not sell no matter how good it is if it's not priced competitively meaning if you're writing an adult science fiction for example a new price your book at $50 but most of your peers price the book at like twenty two to twenty five dollars your book is not going to sell because it's wildly overpriced look at other authors in your genre and age category so young adult fantasy is going to be different than something like adult fantasy see how they price it in the various formats hardcover is going to be more expensive than paperback and paperback is going to be more expensive than Kindle theoretically I have seen some authors that price their Kindle books really high and I don't understand it in my opinion ebooks should be priced way lower traditionally published authors their books should be priced way lower but that's something that the publisher does and again authors you I know you have no control over it but if ebook is priced at $12 and then the paperback book is priced at 15 I have zero incentive in my opinion to purchase that ebook because it's just so expensive I would say the sweet spot for most indie authors is usually between $2.99 and $4.99 or $5.99 but again research what other authors in your age category and genre are doing specifically other indie authors number 20 is to pitch yourself for interviews a few places you could pit yourself for interviews include YouTube podcasts newspapers magazines consider the audience of whoever you're pitching to and what they cover and what would be applicable to them then pitch topics that you are qualified to talk about down and make it super easy for them show the value and the things that you're providing how their audience is going to enjoy it which means you do have to do the research to see who their audience is and if they wouldn't enjoy your book if they read in that age category and genre and so forth number 21 is to reach out to local media for this I'm thinking more of traditional media so newspaper magazines radio stations maybe TV stations and so forth picks them your story and again show them how or why it's relevant to their audience maybe your angles that you're a local author you could also offer to write blogs or articles if it's like a website or a newspaper or something like that be like hey I'd be happy to write a guest article for you guys instead of just offering to have them interview you number 22 is to join forces with local merchants or shops team up with store owners and other businesses to provide prizes our merchants coupons as part of some bigger book promotion then you could advertise these perks on social media or your author website or newsletter or other places but it could be something like an additional pre-order giveaway item or maybe if you order this thing during a certain time frame you get a discount to this merchants whatever it is an example of what I have seen done and specifically what I'm thinking of is maybe like a book themed candle maybe it's a local merchant that makes candles and they can make one that's themed around your novel I recommend thinking out of the box thinking what you can do doing some research and I think this could be a really fun one to do if you have local merchants and shops that you really enjoy and you think might be open to this number 23 is to create Universal book links essentially a universal book link is where you click on a link to either order pre-order a book and you're offered all of the retailers that it is currently available on this way you don't have to list 20,000 links and people have to find oh where's the Amazon 1 where's the Barnes & Noble 1 Oh where's Kobo where's Google Play it's literally all in one spot it makes it super easy for the consumer you want to make it as easy as you can for someone interested in your book to go from interested I want to buy to buying it if there's 4 5 6 7 steps in between you might lose people so you want those prospective readers to be able to find their reading platform of choice easily and purchase your book and that's where the universal book link is really handy this is through draft2digital books to recom you don't have to be using draft2digital they are an ebook aggregator meaning you can distribute your ebooks through them but you don't have to be distributing your ebooks through them in order to use their Universal book links you could just go directly to books to read comm and again this one's for indie authors specifically if you are talking about distributing but if you want to check out drafted digital I do have an affiliate link in the description below I do believe that traditionally published authors could theoretically sign up for books to read as well and make it super easy for people to find your books on whatever platform they prefer number 24 is to host an in-person or online party on release day this is different in our current times given the virus that has a soul at home but depending on when you watch this it could be years in the future and everyone's safe and well then you can potentially host it in person maybe in-person party at like a library a bookstore or you could do a virtual party on something like YouTube Facebook Instagram live is another one I recommend offering giveaways and other incentives for people to join you on that day you could also invite co-hosts to come on with you and then you guys can all chitchat and play games and then have people join in the live chat number 25 is to update your email signature my strategy for basically everything I do for I write early is I try to make it as simple as possible for people to find the thing that they're looking for so if you're theoretically emailing a bunch of people back and forth you should have an email signature with all the relevant information for me that means my title my company name email website Pio box I also have links to relevant social media and then books so update your signature with read and then your book title and then hyperlink that don't underestimate the power of email signatures or just signatures in general sort of related to this but I really recommend creating a link tree when you create an account really on any place online it doesn't have to be just social media but I'm thinking of social media specifically you have one slot to put a link and usually that's your author website but if you create something like a link tree and they have one on my social media go check it out you can put links to all the things you could have a link to your website to purchase your books to your newsletter to your social media following to merchandise to whatever make it easy as possible for people to find whatever it is they're looking for so you could have one of your Universal book links in a link tree which you could link in your email signature on social media and so forth number 26 is to sign up for Amazon affiliates and other affiliate programs this is not exactly a marketing tip but it's a really smart person tip mmm that's not I don't know how to phrase that it's a really smart thing to do basically if you don't know what an affiliate link is it's usually you sign up for an account with a various company and if you share that link and then people purchase stuff through that link you get a small cut it does not come from the customer that small cut comes from the company themselves so when I say hey guys I have an affiliate link for draft2digital or velum or whatever in the description below its not coming from your pocket it's coming from their pocket because I'm referring people to them and usually you only signup for affiliate accounts with companies who has products or services that you believe in so if you're selling your books on Amazon I don't know if you believe in them or not I mean that's up to you but you can send it for an affiliate account with a place like Amazon or Book Depository or someplace else that is selling books and then when you share links to for people to purchase your books you're making an affiliate Commission on top of whatever you're making from your royalties on those books again this isn't necessarily a marketing tactic this is more of like a yeah income strategy but I do recommend both traditionally published authors and self-published authors take advantage of this because anyone can create an affiliate link Amazon is a little bit trickier because you have to prove that you can sell a certain amount within a certain time frame or else they kick you out and you're not a part of their affiliate program anymore so wait to do that until you have a little bit more of a following but I do recommend that this is a great strategy for authors number 27 is to consider paid advertising and specifically after your book is published whether you traditionally published or self-published both can advertise their books I would say usually speaking if you're not sure definitely ask your literary agent or your publisher if you are traditionally published authors if your self-published you have the reins you can do as you think is best I've been doing tons of research in my own journey and from what I have learned through other authors is that paid advertising is best not when your book is on pre-order but once your book is published and it's even better once you have a backlog of books meaning this is not your first ever book a lot of times paid advertising is really tough on your first book because maybe readers read that one book they love it they want to read more and they're like oh my box so from what I hear the biggest return on investment is when you do paid advertising once you have a published book and a backlog of books a few places that are popular to advertise right now in 2020 are Amazon Facebook and bookbub number 28 is to attend in-person events or Expos you could theoretically pay to have your own booth or table at an expo and sell your books there but personally I don't think it's worth doing that until you have a massive backlog of books and this is specifically for indie authors if you are a traditionally published author a lot of times your publisher is going to have a booth at like the bigger trade shows so you don't need your own booth in that case you might talk to your publisher and see if they wouldn't mind hosting and author signing their booth for a particular show either way whether or not you have an author signing going on whether or not you're hosting your own booth and you're an indie author shows our great place to walk around and network with other industry folks and get the word out there about you and your books you can increase your credibility develop a network of influencers offer to speak and so forth so maybe you offer to speak at an expo about whatever you are an expert in or about your book or join on a panel number 29 is to reach out to local bookstores and libraries specifically I would mention that you are a local author you're far more likely to be considered to go into that bookstore or the library if they know that you're a local author in the instances of libraries I recommend offering to donate copy of your book or to host some type of a class or an event a lot of libraries these days host some type of event and do something for the library in exchange for them helping you get the word out there about your book with their patrons and this is obviously when it is safe to do so given the current climate of the world in my video how can self-published authors get their books into libraries in the United States this is not just for self-published authors it's definitely geared towards self-published authors you can totally do this as a traditionally published author as well but I interview a librarian who encourages authors to come to libraries make that personal one-on-one connection and then you're far more likely to have them pick up your book and have a copy in their library for book stores you may also want to visit a bookstore and then again mention you're a local author if you have a retailer discount the library's probably more likely to purchase a copy of your book I think the average retailer discount for most retailers bookstores is 55% on places like Ingram sparf you can list that there has been watch my video for how can self-published authors get their books into libraries I basically do a side-by-side comparison of aggregators the print on demand companies and can they actually get your book into bookstores and libraries will it appear on these various people's databases it might be worth going into a bookstore and offering you know how can we collaborate I'm a local author because they might actually not be able to get to your books but as of right now your book isn't guaranteed to be available to booksellers even if you offer a fifty five percent discount so you might not want to offer that much of a discount because then you as the author make massively low royalties on your paperback and hardcover novel number 30 is to consider doing book readings or author visits again this is for when it's safe to do in-person events this is especially for kid lit authors visit schools or bookstores or do reading some of your books and thinking of like with kids a lot of times that goes really well when you do this in person visits bring extra copies of your books especially if it's not taking place at a bookstore in which case they probably would get the copies themselves but bring extra copies of your books and marketing materials like bookmarks and swag but you can give away and the books obviously be for purchase number thirty-one do speaking events once again this is when it's safe to do so at least for in-person speaking events for like an online speaking event if you are a subject-matter expert whether it's nonfiction or fiction consider doing a speaking event on the thing you're an expert in I thought avenge bring copies of your book maybe ask your publisher if you can if you're an indie author print a bunch of copies of your book you can bring other swag merchandise other things bring it and then ask if you couldn't have a table at the back of the room where you can sell your goodies this is a great way to connect with more readers number 32 is to encourage your fan to leave reviews and share your book ask your fans to leave reviews and share your book especially if they enjoyed it this is a great way to encourage word-of-mouth and to get the word out there the more reviews your book has the more credibility that it also has in the eyes of the reader in addition the more reviews your book has the more likely it will get picked up in something like Amazon's algorithm and then how Amazon start pushing your book to other readers many people think that a book gets more credibility on Amazon once it has more than a hundred two reviews or whether or not that's true it's a really good thing to ask your readers to leave reviews on all the retailer's website on place like Goodreads and so forth number 33 is to repurpose your content this is particularly true for nonfiction is there a way to use your books content to create additional things like online courses or workbooks YouTube videos or content marketing and so forth you could use your first chapter or two as maybe an incentive for people to sign up for your newsletter number 34 is don't stop marketing your book after publication day you've created all this hype that we have talked about in the months leading up to your books release so don't lose that momentum if you can help it as you're writing the next book keep promoting that previous novel that was already published share any new or awesome reader reviews that you see coming in share any reviews that you get from influencers or maybe industry professionals for any specifically one great way to market previous books that you've published is to write new books so the sooner that you can publish a new book the more likely your backless is going to get some new life as well alright guys those are the 34 marketing strategies what did you guys think and what did I miss if anything leave those in the comments below if you want to receive a downloadable PDF of all of the book marketing strategies that I mentioned in this video so that you don't have to take notes you're welcome click the link to join my newsletter in the description below when you sign up for my newsletter you will receive a copy of the book marketing strategies along with a crane checklist and how to format your manuscript for submission which say word document template i'm question of the day what book marketing strategies have you done and what worked best for you and that particular book and now it's time to announce the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway or the cyborg tinkerer the winner of this week's giveaway is this person you will be going home with an e-book copy of twisted fate by Jesse Eliot thank you so much to everyone who's pre-order a copy of the cyborg tinkerer and stay tuned for when another winner is announced in an upcoming video thank you for tuning in to this episode of I ride early book marketing strategies the cyber tinkerer is available for pre-order in paperback eBook and hardcover on all major retailers and the link is in the description below if you pre-order a copy and fill out the preorder giveaway form in the description below you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of the prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinkerer TCT merge character art bookmarks books by authors that you know first page and query critiques by literary agents and more if you want to support what I do join me on patreon that's patron you'll be the first to hear about book updates YouTube updates and more I currently have six tiers with a bunch of different perks including an exclusive discord server early access to weekly videos discounted merch and more the link is in in the description below hit the like button subscribe and ring the bell so you're notified every time I upload a video if you have questions or requests for future videos please do drop them in the comments below let's be friends on social media I'm on Twitter and Instagram I also have a monthly newsletter when you subscribe you'll receive free copies of how to format your manuscript for submission which is a Word document template a query checklist and a downloadable file of the book marketing strategies you will also have first access to the publication journey and status of my books all the links are in in the description below that's it for today as always keep writing [Music]

Channel: iWriterly

Views: 20,293

Rating: 4.9528222 out of 5

Keywords: writing tips, best writing advice, writing advice, book marketing strategies, self publishing, book marketing, book marketing tips, how to market your book, how to market a book, book promotion, how to promote a book, indie publishing, how to sell more books, how to market your book online, book launch, book promotion ideas, how to promote your book, book marketing ideas, book marketing strategies and tips for authors, meg latorre, iwriterly, authortube

Id: Ha3m3D4oqTM

Length: 48min 1sec (2881 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020