You have written and self-published your Book. You are now sitting in front of your screen waiting for those order numbers to increase. You think, “I have written the book, now people will buy it.” Still, you don’t see the numbers as per your expectations.

Writing your book doesn’t mean your work is finished there. You need a proper Book Marketing plan as a self-published author. Here are the steps you can take to market your book and sell more copies of your book(s).

1. Is your book the best?

With so many tools available now, writers today are tempted to get their book out in the stores immediately. One thing they miss out is the proper editing, revising the plot, and it takes research.

For example, if you would check out the successful authors out there, they take years to write their novels.

You may be a great storyteller, you might not be a great editor. It’s the best thing to have that feedback and get your story edited by a professional.

2. Spread the word

This is not about your book alone, but for you as an author. If people don’t know that you are a writer, they will never relate your personality as being the one.

Book Marketing is often kick-started with your network. You as a self-published author have to create that platform of your readers, supporters, followers so that you can build your audience.

Now there are several ways you can use to build the platform to market your book –

– Website/Blog – Yes. A blog is the best to invest in. Your book marketing journey can have a big impact on your website/blog.

Share your stories, your thoughts, your excerpts, your reason for success as an author, et al. The blog will help you gain followers who will be your readers eventually. They will buy your books and share the word with their friends as well.

– Social Media – This can have a huge impact on your book marketing as a self-published author plan. There are billions of users on social media. You can imagine the reach, the geographies you can spread your work to.

Wondering how you can do this? We have written a detailed post on building a successful online presence without going nuts.

– Author/Book Pages – Websites like Amazon, Goodreads, etc. have separate spaces for the authors. If you have self-published your book on Amazon and you would like to be noticed, fill up every space they provide to you.

Write detailed descriptions with keywords, phrases, and fill up the author page with as much detail as possible.  Amazon has a variety of products so, to not get lost in the crowd, you need to secure that unique space for yourself.

– Email list – This is something not new. For your book marketing plan, don’t forget to create an email list of your followers, potential readers to whom you can reach out to.

There are several tools available to make your book marketing campaign using emails easy. One such popular tool is Mailchimp.

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3. Involve News/Media and bloggers

Book Marketing Plan is incomplete if you don’t have reviews. Reach out to book reviewers, journalists, give interviews, ask them for including excerpts from your book on their online and offline distribution channels.

The exposure that you will get with all these activities will help you sell more copies of your books making your book marketing campaign successful.

4. Offer your book in different languages

 If your book is about mythology/history, or on the people of different region than yours or may cover some genre which is read by people with a language other than English, it’s a great way of attracting the locals to buy your books.

We have seen books or novels on mythology/history and other books by famous authors Amish Tripathi, Ravi Subramanian, Ashwin Sanghi translated into regional languages to diversify their audience and sell more copies of their books.

5. Book cover

We judge the book by its cover although the saying is, “Don’t judge the book by its cover”. Why do we do it?

The book cover can play a crucial role in your book marketing campaign. Go back to your book cover and ask this question, “Can this be improved or something  is amiss?”

It can be true that your perception change or you plan to change the cover or do the modifications, but make sure that it is not done impulsively.

6. Co-promote your book

Heard about authors helping authors? Yes, you can leverage that power by taking help from your fellow author friend(s).

You promote his/her work and let them promote yours. This co-promotion strategy can work wonders for your book marketing as a self-published author plan.  This can be done by including your name in the lists and compilations.

When it comes to marketing, this technique is well known as “the sandwich technique”. There is a reason why the compilation and lists are all over the internet. An example of this would be, “Top new book releases this month”.

So, get your name on the lists and roundups to get discovered!

7. Offer an audiobook

 As per Microsoft’s recent study, “Humans now have an attention span shorter than that of a Goldfish”. The attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds and that of a human is 8 seconds.

Maybe that’s the reason the readership is going down the drain. Multiple formats of content are available nowadays, most popular being videos and audiobooks.

Platforms like Amazon, Storytel are coming up with new audiobooks which the story lovers can enjoy while working in the kitchen, while driving, while working in the office.

They can listen to their favorite stories by their favorite authors. This can be a great new way in your book marketing plan for reaching out to the audience interested in your story and prefer listening over reading.              

8. Promote your book (Paid Marketing)

You have invested a lot of effort and time in writing your book. If you have that marketing budget and wish to reach a wide audience, you have plenty of choices out there.

If your book is on Amazon, you can use the KDP Select service. It is an exclusive service in which you have to sell your book exclusively on Amazon only. With this approach, you can run an ad campaign or the countdown deals on Amazon itself to get more users to buy your book.

– Online Advertising – The major book marketing services platforms offer paid advertising services as well. You can use the Google Adwords platform for running a PPC campaign for your book(s) or you can contact book marketing service providers to do the needful.

For each of these, you can set a daily budget not to exceed, a start and end date, and live monitoring of response.

– Social Media Advertising – No doubt about social media’s capability to boost your reach and give your book marketing efforts the needed spike. Social media advertising can help you gain an untapped audience.

These tips will help you in your book marketing plans and sell more copies of your self-published book. Keep on writing more books and you will be automatically noticed by the media people helping you in marketing your book.

Are you a self-published author? We would love to hear from you on how you market your books, what helped you, and what not?

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