If you read the blogpost titled “Books on the Brink,” you will see steps detailed in the making of a book after it’s written, from finding a publisher to securing blurbs. If you’re an experienced writer, you’ll already be familiar with that process. If you’re new to the game, then hopefully those insights will be useful.
For my audience of writers, I want to focus here on the final step I mentioned in that post: promotional activities. These include online ads, social media posts, newsletters, blog tours, podcasts, a book launch party and subsequent signings, book club talks, pleas for reviews, and other means of encouraging purchases and word-of-mouth recommendations. All these suggestions assume you have a website where potential customers can learn about you and your work and that your book has been set up for online sales with bookstores and/or Amazon.
My first piece of advice about promotional activities is to be careful not to overextend yourself or your finances. You could do one or more of these activities (especially social media) 24/7, forsaking your health, your family, friends, and job(s), and still not feel as if you’re doing enough. From the outset, it’s important to realize “enough” is an impossibility in a world of infinite choices and seemingly endless opportunities. Better to set yourself a time limit and a budget for each promotional activity you want to pursue and stick to these, lest you tumble down the marketing rabbit hole. Let’s address each promo activity in turn:
Google ads vs. Facebook ads vs. Amazon ads vs. other websites: Your top priority is to spend your money where others could spend their money on your books. Love Amazon or hate it, the reality is that this is where most people shop for books in all formats: printed, ebook, and audiobook. Start with YouTube and search for videos about “how to use Amazon ads to sell books”—you’ll find quite a lot. Don’t take any single person’s word for anything; watch a bunch of them and pay attention to the advice they have in common. That’s the safest bet. Some friends of mine have had more success running Facebook ads that link people to their Amazon book page than with Amazon ads alone, so you might set aside some of your promotional budget for this, too. In your genre, there might be dozens or even hundreds of websites catering to fans of those kinds of books, and some of these might have opportunities to place pop-up or banner ads on their sites. And then there’s the venerable Google ad. I frankly have no idea what the return on investment (ROI) is for any of these ads, but if you have the money to diversify, try numerous things for a few months and then calculate your ROI—not just driving people to a purchase webpage but getting them to actually buy.
Social media posts: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok’s Book Tok seem to be the best social media outlets currently to create a presence so readers can discover you. Posting about yourself and your book, finding followers, and following and engaging with others can truly consume your days and nights. The budget you need to set in this case isn’t financial—it’s your time commitment. You need to engage with other writers by liking and sharing their posts, commenting, and being authentically interested in them. Check out their followers who appear to be genuine readers (not bots) and engage with them to encourage them to follow you. When posting, vary your messages between sharing resources, opening up about yourself, encouraging purchases, and providing information so you don’t come off like a carnival barker. A few authors I know post nothing but sales messages every week. I bet they would sell more copies of their books if they treated their audience like people instead of ATMs.
Newsletters: Some pundits like to say email is dead, but the vast majority of us still use it daily, and it remains the most efficient way to send a message to many people simultaneously. Your website should provide the means for people to join your newsletter mailing list, and whenever you do in-person book events and book club talks, you should encourage signups with an old-fashioned clipboard, pen, and paper (or a tablet device if you can always trust your WIFI connection). I put my most recent blogposts in my newsletter, share some resources that readers will enjoy, and, yes, remind subscribers that I do book club talks at no charge and have books available for sale. I’m trying to get back in the habit of doing a newsletter monthly. More often than that could make me a nuisance; less often and folks might forget about me or think I’ve stopped writing.
Blog tours: a blog tour gets you on numerous websites for readers of your genre, so book buyers will become intrigued with you and your work and want to make a purchase. There are blog tour companies you can hire to place you on various sites as a guest blogger or interviewee, but make sure these are sites with readers of your genre. To find blogs on your own that are dedicated to your genre, search for them on Google well in advance of your book launch and reach out to those bloggers to set up a date when you can make a guest appearance, respond to interview questions, or submit an Advance Reader Copy of your book for review. If you can string enough of these together, fans of these blogs will see you in numerous places, making it more likely they’ll remember you and decide to give your book a try. Being a guest on blogs also gives you something new to share on your social media channels.
Podcasts: Think of these as audio or audiovisual blogs. As with blog tours, you can set up guest appearances on numerous podcasts, so fans will become familiar with you and hopefully buy your work. Instead of writing skills, though, you will need to get comfortable answering questions verbally, smiling at the camera, if there is one, and be engaging toward the podcast hosts. This provides still more content to feed the insatiable social media beast.
Book launch: After enduring all this, you deserve to throw yourself a party, otherwise known as a book launch. Pick a venue, reserve space on a convenient day and time to permit maximum attendance, decide what inducements (food, drinks, and party favors) you need to provide—if congratulating you and buying your autographed book isn’t lure enough—and send invitations. Make a big deal out of it on social media, too, in case there are friends of friends or people who’ve become fans of your posts who want to attend. Decide whether you want a bookstore or friends/family to handle the sales. If the latter, be sure to sign up for, at a minimum, a service such as Square or PayPal so you can accept credit/debit card payments. Venmo, Apple Pay, and myriad other options abound as well. Send reminders as the big day approaches and be sure to thank those who attend and ask them to leave a review on Goodreads or in a social media post (purchases not made on Amazon cannot be reviewed on that site).
Book signings: While you’re setting up your launch event, you’ll also want to ask retail venues with lots of shoppers if you can do a signing at their store. The typical split is 60% of each sale for the author and 40% for the store (after all, they are setting aside space for you and giving you access to their customers). Again, try to pick a day and time period when there is good foot traffic. Bring your clipboard and mailing list, so you can gather more names and email addresses of future newsletter recipients. Have bookmarks made with your website, in case your customers want to buy the ebook or audiobook version and need a reminder. The secret to in-person sales is to talk to people. Don’t wait for them to notice you—call out a greeting and engage them. Yes, some people will ignore or rebuff you, but I’ve made hundreds of sales from people who had no knowledge of or interest in my books or even had no intention to buy anything in the store—they were just wandering around when I caught their attention and intrigued them with the pitch about my novels. Some of them have become my biggest fans, and it all started with a friendly greeting and a willingness to chat with strangers.
Book club talks: How do you get these rarified opportunities to speak with passionate readers—the people (mostly women) who buy, read, and talk about books and help to keep the entire publishing industry afloat? You ask your customers at your signing events, “Are you in a book club?” And you need to have a business card or some other informational tool ready if they are, so they can walk away with your contact information. Be sure to make a promise on whatever item you give them: discounts for book club purchases, no charge for book club talks, special gifts for book clubs, or some other way to honor them. When you do get an invitation, be prompt and professional in all your responses. Hone your talk to let your audience get to know you as a person and as a writer and tell the story behind the story (why you wrote what you did). Practice it, perform it for friends/family, and make sure you have it down cold, because a book club talk is a performance. You owe it to those who’ve invited you into their home, clubhouse, or other venue to tell them a good story and answer their questions such that they’ll want you back when your next book comes out. And for goodness sake, bring that clipboard and newsletter sign up sheet. These are the folks who are most likely to read and share what you write.
Reviews and spread-the-word requests: Be sure to ask your customers to leave reviews on Amazon (if they bought your book there), Goodreads, or on social media (a photo of your cover and some kind words about the writing, plot, or characters are all that’s needed). Also ask them to tell their friends about the book, recommend it to any book clubs in which they participate, and become literary evangelists, spreading the word far and wide about your work. A book becomes a bestseller largely because readers talk about it and recommend it to their friends. I’m sure some people have spent their way onto a bestseller list, but word-of-mouth is free and longer lasting. If you’re proud of what you’ve written, you shouldn’t hesitate to ask family and friends to help you tout it.
What about publicists? I have mixed opinions about them. A publicist once helped me get my novel Watch What You Say named as a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance “Okra Pick,” which meant regional bookstores were more likely to recommend it to their customers. The same publicist secured reviews with some bloggers for me. But was it worth the thousands of dollars my publisher invested? Probably not. Some publicists I know get their clients mentioned in places those authors could’ve (and should’ve) contacted directly for free. Again, it’s all about ROI. Writers of nonfiction—such as a leadership or personal finance book—might find a publicist who can land them a mention in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc., and that might be enough to help their book take off. However, especially where novels are concerned, I think writers are better off doing the work themselves. On the other hand, if you have ample money but not enough time, then hiring a publicist to help you could make a lot of sense.
There are numerous other gambits and schemes to make your work visible and encourage purchases. Books such as Ricardo Fayet’s How to Market a Book and Tim Grahl’s Your First 1,000 Copies are full of great advice, much more than I can synthesize in an already-bloated blogpost. Still, I hope this helps to give you a sense of the possibilities and the effort required to get your baby into readers’ hands!