How To Market A Book | EXPLAINED

oh my God you're writing a book or have written a book and that is one of the coolest things a person can do in my opinion taking the creativity of their mind organizing it and finding a way to communicate what you've imagined to a potential audience it takes skill it takes a lot of confidence and it's extremely difficult and it's the easy part how to make your book blow up or how to Market it if we're going to not click bait the title of this video which I most definitely will because that is my job and this is going to become your job now I want to make one thing very clear up front I am not using my experience for publishing my own books to try and tell you how to then Market yours YouTubers do not need to worry about this video they have built-in marketing that is free for them and far more valuable than pretty much any other marketing available for most authors we have people who are interested in what we do so we just have to tell them what we have done and a certain percentage of them will buy it a much higher percentage than most other crowds so if you're a YouTuber watching this and you needed advice do that unplug your book plug it whenever you can plug it on your own channel intrude on other people's channels to plug your book whoa are there goblins in my house YouTube is plugging books why is Daniel cutting to me for that I I certainly don't plug my unwriting and word building volume 1 and volume 2 which includes all of my riding and word building discussions plus a ton yeah this is not a time for you to plug your book that's a bad Tim don't worry at no point in this video am I gonna say get a hundred thousand followers I mean if you can do it won't hurt but that's that's not the approach I think most people can take I am basing the advice in this video off of talking to many other authors who have found success for their books through just grinding or intelligent strategies I really appreciate and just researching the industry for the last five plus years that I have been making content for Science Fiction and Fantasy and the end result is the three parts I've broken this video into to to help you Market your book why three parts because YouTube algorithm and that is my job thank you to today's sponsor Galaxy lamps Galaxy lamps is kicking off the start of spring with their Easter sale all products are half price with an additional 20 off not only that you will have a chance to be one of only 10 winners picked from among the Easter sales to get the new limited edition projector worth almost two hundred dollars completely free before it goes live on the website now I'm a huge fan of Galaxy lamps Kayla and I love using ours at night when we fall asleep the app allows us to control the brightness rotation speed color combinations and even set a timer it's great for parties or a chill atmosphere too so if you're interested be sure to click the link in the description but remember the sale ends April 10th so take advantage of this great offer before it's gone now two big notes that if I didn't mention before I get into this a lot of people would criticize me for not bringing up but there's a specific reason why I am not bringing it up the first is I'm not going to cover which platform you should pay for advertising for your book on because it would probably date this video within a matter of months yes you can pay to have your brand new book marketed on Amazon or countless other social media or Market platforms to hopefully get it in front of people's eyes the dirty secret is the current return on investment for various platforms is constantly shifting and over time dwindling I have spoken to several Indie authors about this and Indie authors who have successfully broken into the Trad space and nearly all of them say it was a lot more beneficial to do this a few years ago it can still be worth it but which platform is the best to do it on is something that's going to change you are going to have to do research for the current time you're releasing your book in or marketing it to find out which one you should go with I'm sorry I just can't tell you which is best because I don't know when you're watching this video the second big note before we get into the three parts is Agents if you can get an agent awesome follow their advice trust them if they're a good Agent but of course keep an eye on them and don't just stop your grind for promoting your book altogether that would be bad but I can't really address agents because I've never personally worked with one it's still an area I'm a bit ignorant in and once you have an agent you should probably listen to them over some YouTube video by some [ __ ] online but a lot of people don't want to go the agent route and some people can't get an agent there is more competition for agents attention than ever and that is why the three parts are going to be really important and there is actually one final warning not note War morning before we get into it there is currently a strategy as of releasing this video that could date it if it dies off or make it more beneficial in the future if this trend continues to take on that I am cautious of and that is releasing chapters of your book instead of the full book at once and then as you are writing editing it and feeding into a crowd that hopefully builds as you release chapters all I can say about this is it clearly has benefits some people are finding great success with this strategy and some people are finding audiences that are pretty mad at them because if you're unable to deliver chapters on a consistent basis people can wonder why they're sticking around if it seems like you're just going to drag it on forever it's like you're almost volunteering yourself for some George martinism type resentment from your crowd if you're unable to deliver fast enough and you can't even say hey I gotta finish this whole book what you have to say is I have to finish this next chapter which they shouldn't be but some people are less forgiving on it's a high risk High reward strategy in my opinion and with how how much publishing is going to be changing the next few years it's not a topic I really want to make a lot of this video dedicated towards because for all I know by the time you're watching this video it's become commonplace for people to edit their book after it's released and changed plot beats or something which is yes genuine plans I have seen various publishing platforms put into the works publishing industry in the next five years is Going to Be Wild yes this is not something that is entirely new for publishing The Hobbit even had a plot element changed for the Lord of the Rings later on books have been changed before and even in as someone mentioned long-form fan fiction it's common for authors to have taken feedback and then immediately changed things but it seems like the publication industry with the internet becoming so powerful for all aspects of it could soon try to commodify in some way an author's ability to make changes in hindsight make it more commonplace and then use that to sell readers to maybe go pick up the latest edition of a book they have already read I have no idea it's something that really freaks me out and because it's something that is already commonplace in some areas of fiction but not others it's something I'm unwilling to predict its success in The Wider publishing space if I had to I'd say it's going to get a very negative reaction at first but if it's pushed hard enough could over time become standard I don't know so I'm not going to speak on it but finally that brings us to our three tried and true tips that I think will stand the test of time to help you find a following or explode in some sense for your book's Marketing in the very competitive current state of self-published marketing now the first part of this video actually has three sub parts I'm great at structure y'all but luckily all of them can be summarized as develop three different pitches for your book why would you need three pitches well because I find there to be three different circumstances you'll be asked to pitch your book the first is the ultimate elevator pitch I like to think make this short enough to fit in a tweet yes really Slim it down so it's just something you can literally copy paste bam respond to someone with and it is so fine-tuned and just perfectly structured to have an introduction to what the base premise of your story is some kind of hook to interest someone beyond the base premise maybe a mention of some main characters really this just comes down to the most enticing you possibly pitch your story as in the least amount of characters possible I don't think this was required a few years ago but on social media platforms where people are scrolling and not reading a full paragraph even before just their eyes glaze over and they move on to something else it has become more important than ever in my opinion to have even just an opening sentence of this short pitch that is going to make people go and please do not wait until you are finished writing your book to develop these pitches while you are steeped chest deep in your story I find you able to figure out the most appealing parts of your narrative so I think if you are still actively writing your book you should be thinking of various moments in the story Concepts within the themes or the setting that are enticing to you specifically or you think would be enticing to your core audience and be sure to take a note to include that in the elevator pitch or the Tweet pitch the second I like to call the professional pitch this is one that you would be comfortable sending off to a potential agent and or hell if you if you want to take a big shot here publisher and this should not only have the enticing points of the first pitch but also tie in some of the wider appeal market research you've done stuff along those lines to make whoever you're trying to pitch this to who is actually tied into the industry understand that you think there is some genuine potential for this to have a market success there are people out there who read dinosaur porn there's a market for your book you are just responsible for finding it cyberpunk is huge right now so you can talk about and relate it to the fact that cyberpunk as a sub-genre has been blowing up maybe you have specific knowledge or research within an area that has been tied into your book meaning that you as an author will have insights that most other people writing about how a damn bursting could destroy a village than other writers could that means you're gonna be able to write it viscerally and impactfully and that could make an agent go oh this person might have some details a little bit let me read this real quick and this also kind of nicely ties into the third pitch which is the past fashion pitch this is for if you have someone who has asked you specifically who's not necessarily tied into the industry but just someone who has genuinely expressed interest in your material you are not worried about being constrained by a character limit and you're not trying to pitch to someone who's necessarily industry related but you want to personally make a connection to your work and show how you are connected to it to then make the reader go oh wow this person's really passionate about this specific topic and I want to read what that passion brought because people across the spectrum of society usually are interested when they hear passion you can have no care whatsoever about earthquakes but if you're listening to someone who is just deeply passionate about seismic activity of that kind it usually becomes pretty enticing passion is contagious so write out why you feel passionate about the story you are writing and definitely take characteristics of this and put it in your professional one and take certain really enticing good points to your professional one and put it in the passion one use each pitch to specialize but also hone each other having these ready to go will save you so much time and nervousness later on if you have these in your pocket ready to go and of course feel free to adapt them slightly depending on who exactly you're talking to but it'll stop you from being frozen looking at an email or a tweet reply or something along those lines are just genuinely standing in an elevator with someone unsure what to say and allow you to be concise and effective and making someone genuinely interested in what you're doing I know this might seem basic but the amount of times I have asked someone who has approached me about their own writing oh okay why did you write this what's it about and the response I get is just ah well I think it's good because um stop you don't want to come across hesitant you want to come across confident and you want to come across well-researched this might sound stupid too practice giving these pitches I mean honestly you're putting on a bit of a performance when you're trying to get someone to pick up your book like an actor does in an audition and those people practice in the mirror and if you are nervous talking in front of people maybe you will be too practice pitching it's okay it's not that weird a lot of people do it in various Industries and it could actually make the difference between someone thinking ah this is just some shmub who's written some fanfic and trying to pick me up versus wow this person's coming across confident and like they really care about this and they've got a lot of time and effort into it it's tied into their professional career I'm gonna read that and this brings us to part two which is where I tend to get the most pushback and it frustrates me because the pushback I get doesn't make sense if you actually do the research into what you're talking about I understand the hesitance so I'm not mad it's just like no you gotta get over this fear and that is to especially if you've had your book out for a while and it's gaining no traction or if you're releasing your book and you have zero following No One's Gonna Be looking into what you've written send it to people send it like mad but Daniel won't that cut into how much money I make no because you're not gonna make any money if people don't have and talk about your book don't just send people a Word document though I did that with my first couple books it's fine to do to Beta readers maybe uh it's not fine to do to most people make a PDF or something along those lines that has some layout effort put into it looks nice and start shooting it to anyone who asks for it of course and whoever you want to potentially review it or talk about it I have said don't send it to Big booktubers mainly out of fear of my inbox getting even more flooded but hey take a pipe dream shot send it to whoever you want to send it at I personally don't think a lot of the big booktubers will have time to get to it but I certainly have had people send me an effective pitch in an email that made me go oh okay that's interesting and it pushes through because it seems like they had a lot of effort put into the pitch and when you're sitting into a booktuber in my opinion or a book talker do the passion pitch really let me know why you cared about writing this but also do a bit of a read on who exactly this reviewer you're sending it to is if they have a lot of connections to the book publishing industry and maybe they really want to see what the market viability is tie in more of your professional pitch adjust it to the influencer oh that word I just want to reiterate if you are having zero sales sending it to people for free isn't going to cut into your bottom line especially in modern day marketing when so many books are available out there for free you want to be as competitive as you can so find smaller medium-sized booktubers book talkers who will be excited to even just be getting a book from someone send it out to people who seem to tweet a lot about the books they're reading anyone who will potentially give you some traction help the snowball that can take so long to form to get some momentum behind it because really that's how books get big very few books who are not Trad published just sell sometimes the Indie book that seemed to blow up out of nowhere in 2022 and suddenly the author is being praised and heralded everywhere if you look into it that book was released in 2017 and they've just been slowly grinding it for ages and back in 2017 they sent out 400 free copies which helped that snowball build into 40 000 sold copies if they win the lottery of the Indie scene and of course there is a sub part to part two network network network you'll hear author after author right now who managed to make it big in this industry talk about how the competition is rising and that is true it is harder every single day to get eyes on your manuscript and it's personally why I find the AI boom of just like using an artificial intelligence to write your story and pump it out all the more disgusting because these people are just trying to flood a space that's already flooded with stuff that's unoriginal and feels like it's written by a machine yes it's the worst it'll ever be right now and eventually those stories will probably be okay but oh my God it just feels so wrong when there's so many people grinding a passion project but I'm talking about getting into writers groups on various social media platforms find local ones in your city or town meet with people you never know who the individual you could meet who has the right connection of someone interested in your story type will be you never know where they're gonna be it can be a literal make or break connection for your series but Daniel I'm socially anxious I am too and trust me it sucks that's why I think this is genuinely harder work in some ways than actually writing and getting the damn book edited because that can be a pretty isolated task and then you send it off to an editor you get feedback it's not very anxiety inducing but to get traction behind your book you kind of have to push yourself socially in some ways and it can feel weird and wrong to be like here's my book please read it please on social media or in a writer's group but that's how you get the ball moving you gotta be able to pitch and sell it sucks but in the day and age of social media it's becoming all the more important for eventual success but the good news is in the day and age of social media there's also more and more groups out there that are looking to promote various Indie series we have authors like Rob J Hayes that are doing like self-published book lists every month reach out to those people we have YouTube channels like this one that's just putting up free audio books from the Indie scene and yeah I think it's actually a good idea to put up your audiobook for free somewhere especially if you have zero traction even after I put up my audiobook for free my paperback sales and ebook sales sent upward because people who read it and like it a lot of the time go oh I like that book I want to have it on my shelf we are collectors and so probably is your target market but this brings us to the most labor-intensive part tres [Music] find your audience it's hard but there are niches out there for specifically people most likely who are interested in your story I know that sounds insane because you're probably writing like a super specific sub-genre that involves an orc that befriends a dragon and they're going off to successfully seduce a world serpent well simultaneously the apocalypse is happening I'll just remind you though that there are specifically people out there reading fan fiction that is not as well edited as your book is going to be about the One Direction group surviving during The Purge there are billions of people on this planet very likely there are a group of at least a few thousand of them that have gathered somewhere who have an interest that aligns with what you have written I don't know what you have written but if you understand how to do keyword searches on Google you can find fandoms that let's just say are super into uh post cyberpunk apocalypses right where there's a bunch of people who have cybernetic implant plants but the world itself has fallen apart to a point where it's just straight up in Apocalypse Now you can find that group and if you have written a full-length novel for that Niche they might be pretty excited about that because yeah they may get some cool artwork maybe some fanfic written stuff but getting something that's been edited has a cover an author some real appeal and a pitch you can suddenly really get some traction there if your book is standing outside a dark Forest somewhere in there are your core demographic of readers keywords are the GPS coordinates to navigate the internet's Dark Forest to find them while you are writing your book it is so important to build and maintain a list of between 10 to 20 keywords you know will work within Google to help find communities who are interested in this kind of stuff many things like that on multiple ends to them and to you to put within the marketing or to use when researching how to find these communities it is literally a two-way street treat and helps navigate both of you to each other keywords I so wish when I first started writing my first book are integral to eventually allowing your snowball as we've been saying to gain or start its momentum and that snowball once people say oh the characterization is really nice and the World building was enticing and Drew me all the way through you can start expanding outside that Niche maybe people who are just into cyberpunk who didn't realize an apocalypse angled a cyberpunk is something they're really into it's going to sound dumb but this is how I have started thinking of getting my book to spread you are building a virus and you want to find as many people as possible who are super susceptible to it to become your spreaders I'm very sorry for that phrasing in the modern day and age but it actually goes back to one of the first authors I ever talked to about marketing this was well before the No-No times and it's just so apt there are people who are gonna have a natural immunity to your story you want to avoid them they're going to hate it because let's just say they hate cyberpunk but then you're gonna find super spreaders people who loves cyberpunk and they're really excited to talk about anything in the space let alone a full-length novel or Novella written by an indie author they're going to feel like they're helping find Their audience so summarizing these basic points General warning on just releasing chunks because that is kind of an unproven method that seems a bit hot as of releasing this video but I have no idea how it's going to be received in the long run or how it'll apply to various styles of writing it's just a bit too unproven for me to be like do or don't hone your pitches make sure you have at least three different approaches to pitching your book that can come off either as just quick and enticing super professional and possibly Market appealing or just passionate and very personally connected to you those are just the bare minimum three that have been very valuable in the long run send that book out I actually did do this a good bit too I sent my book to at least 10 people a day for a couple weeks before it came out just hoping to get as many room views outside my own audience as possible fortunately because of my audience size I had a bit of an advantage and more people said yes you're probably going to have to grind a bit harder than I did but it's really really important especially while you're even writing it or editing it every time you notice someone who seems like they could be interested or is someone who just in general has a platform take a name down take a social media handle down get ready to start just sending them a book no 90 of them you might not even get a response but in the long run it can really help getting that snowball going related to that Network meet people find writers groups find people who are just exchanging books to give feedback and thoughts just because your book is out in the Indie space doesn't mean you're completely done with it either there are tons of Indie books that get feedback and I see authors make a change release a version two and that's just something that's becoming kind of standard now so it's also okay to join a group that's going to give you feedback on a book that's already released and then finally [Music] one of the smartest things I have ever seen someone do in terms of marketing their book in a way I never would have thought of in a million years but is brilliant for them to have done is they had a very well liked steam review of a game that aligned with their book's basic premise and they left a brief review of the game that got people to upvote their review and then they basically said like just to show you that I actually kind of know about this space I've written a book that takes place in a similar setting if you want to check that out if you're a fan of the brilliant [ __ ] 10 out of 10 right there I know that seems like it's tied into point two but think of point two as finding specific either critical feedback or reviewer feedback to get an audience that way whereas three is more about just trying to mass spread it to anyone who could specifically be interested as a fan rather than reviewer or critic in this video I didn't want to think I was the end-all be-all of just general advice for people out there to find success publishing their book and I wanted to utilize my own following for additional feedback I got authors following me who have found success so what did they have to say I sent out this tweet and here's some of the responses we got and some of them are really valuable as well currently writing a book my strategy is a YouTube channel about fantasy even though I'm planning on a traditional route so also counting on some moderate publisher support to get things done channel is directly related to my theme slash keywords brilliant this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about where if you can build a hundred thousand followers do so and if you have the time to also kick up a channel where you could get an audience who may eventually be interested in what you're working on chef's kiss I understand though not everyone has the desire to start a YouTube channel I believe more traditional Publishers are actually going to start forcing their audiences to do this with the success of people like Sanderson Paolini and podcasts from the likes of Brian McClellan soon authors are going to be pushed more aggressively in the Trad space onto social media media so you really could just be getting ahead of the curb here step one yell about it on social media step two curl into a ball and cry that's kind of the most common response I get uh but please plan more than that I've still been thinking about publishing my story chapter by chapter weekly or monthly on my own website I love this way of publishing but I honestly have no idea how to promote or even build websites maybe I'll make a YouTube channel or something this is that space I'm talking about where I just don't know either it's a really kind of not New Concept people have been doing this since like websites became a thing but it's just still getting some very interesting feedback from readers I think if you're the right type of author it can be a really good thing to do but I think if you're susceptible to writer's block or severe anxiety about feedback to the chapter that maybe wouldn't be loved by fans uh possibly avoid this I'm not saying do I'm not saying don't I'm saying proceed with caution interacting with the Twitter Indie Community while throwing money at Amazon basic strategy but it is appropriate I have heard though from a lot of people that throwing money at Amazon to promote your book at this point is essentially like lighting it on fire but that's not something I can speak on with authority now or in six months so I have none I think I'll just try to throw it at publisher slash agents heads until one picks me up in some 30 years or so I don't like this strategy because in my opinion if you're able to come to an agent with sales through other marketing strategies you've taken on yourself you're more likely to get an agent's attention if you can show even without an agent you've built some traction an agent is more likely to go oh money well-placed threats I've got a few Connections in the extreme horror slash trans author space which I plan on leaning into perfect yep if you've got those connections use them however I had recently been considered releasing a chapter by chapter as if web serial before actually publishing in full time will tell yeah I think that could be a high reward way to go especially I think in the more specific the niche I think just in gut feeling a higher chance of reward for that strategy Rob J Hayes responded one of the most successful Indie authors in the space who also does so much amazing work for other Indie authors I can't wait to read what he said this is an issue that's getting more and more difficult both with the amount of books being released and also the and [ __ ] fit in [ __ ] fiction of social media I think the best tactic these days is probably interacting with readers and potential readers through various platforms Yeah the more aggressively you're involved in the communities he's absolutely right the more likely someone's willing to pick it up if you've been talking with someone through social media for six months is like a parasocial relationship and then you finally say oh yeah that book I've been working on is done they has your online friend are more likely to read it I think obviously one of the big takeaways from this video and what even other people are saying is marketing for books is changed a lot in the last couple of decades because of course the Advent of the internet and so if you can even think of a strategy which maybe someone else hasn't done yet do it what can you lose if your book's not selling yet be risky be bold be dangerous so maybe that high risk High reward strategy is the way to go I hope this video has helped you get some ideas rolling I would recommend staying away if you have zero traction from just throwing money at places like Amazon or Facebook because I've just been hearing more and more that it's not giving the authors the return on investment they need for it to be worth it especially if you're already tight on cash and there are other free routes to go like giving away your book that I think are more likely going to lead to reviews which lead to people buying it but this has just been my advice after quite a bit of research into tried and true safe routes and riskier ones for marketing your book please leave any additional advice you have in the comments down below and like And subscribe if you have not already hit the patreon if you want to support what I do here and have a good one y'all pitch your goddamn book well [Music] [Music] oh

Channel: Daniel Greene

Views: 60,575

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Id: wof4C8VZP4Q

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 04 2023