If you’re an author with a Book to promote, then it could be beneficial knowing about Reddit and how you can use this giant online community to market your book to a huge audience—for free.
The 100K-strong community shares content such as stories, links, images, and videos, comments on them, generating discussion, and then votes on the content, sending the most interesting to the top of the daily Reddit listings.
Discussion threads within the Reddit Communities are referred to as ‘subreddits,’ and so users are referred to as ‘subredditers.’
The benefits of using Reddit as a marketing tool are that it’s completely free, easily accessible, easy to use, and offers a huge audience of potential buyers. Post something great telling interested communities about your book, and the subredditers will do the rest for you—they are always looking for good recommendations and so drive purchasing decisions. Reddit also has great marketing support and superb analytics, which you can access via Reddit Ads, although there is a cost attached. It really is a marketing investment for the future. Here’s how to do it . . .
A step-by-step guide to marketing your book on Reddit
- Join Reddit
Sign up and become a part of its thousands of communities—among them will be the multiple potential audiences interested in your book who will form your target audience, whether its fiction or non-fiction—and promote your book among themselves.
Spend a few weeks simply monitoring how Reddit works before doing anything. Look for communities with interests that chime with your book’s subject—there are likely to be many. For instance, if your book is about wild swimming, target communities could include wild swimmers, indoor swimmers, people learning to swim, people looking for a new way to keep fit, people who love outdoor pursuits, nature lovers, swimming goods retailers, and so on. You can adjust your post to suit each subreddit.
- Watch how others promote their books
During this time, watch how other authors use Reddit to
market their books. Look at upward voted posts and note their features, see what generates the most interest among subredditers. Watch the ones that get voted downward too—you can always learn from someone else’s mistakes.
You’ll note that most authors post about their books themselves. If your post generates positive interest, subredditers will want to be able to comment to you directly, posing any questions they might have. A personal response improves your chances of an upward vote. And Reddit users are very responsive, so you should be too.
Sometimes a friend or someone else familiar with an author’s work posts instead. This does no harm and can work just as well in some cases. But, of course, posting yourself and establishing yourself within the interested Reddit communities is going to reap the best benefits.
- Participate
Once you’re confident with the “Reddiquette” and have
noted the successful features of other authors’ posts, then you’re ready to start participating.
You’ll get a much better reception when you do post about your book if you already have a presence among your target subredditers—they’ll feel they know you and that you are already a part of their community.
- Get analytical
So, you’ve already joined some communities likely to be interested in your book, but there will be more out there. Now, use Reddit’s Search, type in any relevant keywords related to your book, including genre and themes.
Compile that information onto a spreadsheet to show you where your most favorable audiences are within the Reddit community.
- Post about your book
Now, you know where to post for maximum impact. While following these steps, you’ll likely have given some thought
to composing your post, but remember to adjust it to suit each subreddit, highlighting the key elements of your book you think are most likely to appeal to the various communities. Using your knowledge of successful book postings, keep it clear and simple, and include all relevant info potential purchasers will need such as launch date, accessibility, and price.
Have you done all that and pressed Send? Then the exciting process of marketing your book on Reddit has already begun.
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