Marketing Your Book
How to Set Your Book up for Sales Success in 2023
Writing a book can be intimidating, but there are plenty of helpful resources and tools to help guide you along the way and make your work easier. This article will share some of the most popular and useful tools to market your book, as well as tips on what to look for and what to avoid in terms of marketing during your self-publishing journey. Feel free to revisit this article anytime you need to find the tools listed.
Marketing 101
In publishing your book, even if you wrote the most incredible book of all time, and despite whether or not the editing and the aesthetics of the final product are flawless, you likely won’t be successful without proper marketing.
Differences Between Self-Promoting and Hiring an Agency
When you decide on how you want to promote your book, there are a few things you want to consider that will affect how you go about the process and the results of your promotion.
When you opt to publish and market traditionally, you will probably find it easier to sell your book through physical retail stores and reach the audience that will be looking for your book there. However, it can be more expensive and limit your involvement in the process. If that’s what you’re looking for, we recommend looking for a reputable marketing agency.
The alternative, however, allows you to connect more personally with your audience and target exactly who you want without the middle-man.
Where to Market Your Book
Google Ads
Google Ads is an easily accessible and incredibly wide-reaching platform that you can use to market your book. With Google being by far the most popular and most used search engine across the globe, you will be able to access a huge audience for your book without the limitations of region or time. However, Google allows you to specify your target audience down to the most specific detail, allowing you even more control over your audience. You can operate on any budget, and you can even take your advertising campaigns day-by-day, which lets you experiment with how you’re advertising to see what works and what doesn’t.
You will need to set up the Google Ads campaign yourself, as well as design the ads, which can be a difficult task. You could also hire out as much of the work as you are not comfortable doing yourself, and it’s really easy to manage and revise once you get going with your campaign.
Youtube
Marketing your book through Youtube may be a surprising method to some, but is actually a very effective way to promote awareness of your book and find very niche audiences. Google Ads offers a way to advertise through ads that appear before other videos, but another method may lead to more success at a lower cost.
You’ve already written your book, now all you have to do is sell it. If you’re willing to put in the work of creating your own videos and promotional material to post under your own account, you can build a lasting audience and reach readers who might not bite simply from an unskippable ad.
The benefits of creating your own Youtube channel don’t stop there though. If you can build your audience up enough, not only will you funnel readers to your books, but you can begin earning passive income through advertisements and sponsorships through the Youtube partner program. All in all, Youtube offers authors a vast potential to expand upon their body of work and grow their audience in a lasting way.
Tiktok
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing and arguably most popular social media apps of 2023. It draws readers of all backgrounds and ages to one place, and it’s a great way to advertise through either Tiktok’s business side (which offers very similar features to Google Ads, specified for Tiktok) or through deals with other influencers to promote your book to their own audiences.
The methods you can use to find success on Tiktok also apply to other social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (as well as countless others!) The choice is yours depending on who you are trying to reach and what type of book you’re promoting. Each app is slightly different in form and in what audiences are comfortable with looking for, and you can utilize anywhere from all to none of these platforms. Once again, the choice is yours depending on your goals.
More Thoughts
In marketing your book, one of the most important things for your success is convincing the audience of your credibility as a source, which means several things. You should aim to get as many good reviews/testimonials as you can because the more quality reviews you can show the better.
Continuing to promote your book before, during, and (importantly) after its release date is critical to building your audience. You don’t want to only sell your book one time, you want to continue to sell it and earn the rewards of your hard work for as long as possible. So be aware that marketing your work is a long game, but the payoff is immense.
It’s easier than it has ever been in 2023 to market your book yourself, and the tools are out there waiting. We wish you well with your promotion and the best of luck on your self-publishing journey!
