By BookBaby Author Joe Yamulla

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Bookshop manager Joe Yamulla speaks with BookBaby President, Jim Foley, to discuss how self-published authors can find a market and sell their books.

Foley has over 30 years of experience working in both the publishing and music industries. After helping thousands of independent creators make their dreams come true, he advises that every author, regardless of genre, needs to know their audience. Jim emphasizes that all authors need to build a comprehensive list of readers to successfully reach them.

Watch the video and read the abridged transcript below to learn more about reader personas and demographics that factor into effective book promotion strategies. You also will learn the significance of social media, digital advertising, and what it means to invest in yourself as an indie author. Independent publishing presents unique opportunities for self-published authors to make more money than the traditional publishing model. Joe and Jim share how you can take advantage of those opportunities, discuss success stories, and so much more.

Know your reading audience

Joe Y: For the indie author who is serious about selling books, what do you think they need to know about the book marketplace before their book is even published?

Jim F: It seems so obvious, but it’s often overlooked. The most important question for every self-published author is — who is going to read this book? Too many authors think, Everyone is going to read my book, the world deserves it. I get it. I think this way too, sometimes. But you need to be more strategic. You must identify the reader personas and demographics and the things about them that make them the most likely people to benefit from reading your book.

Joe Y: I think some authors struggle because they don’t fully know who their audience is. When you understand your audience, that’s how you form a strategy and start promoting. Even as you’re writing your book, it’s so important to think about who is going to be reading it, and who is going to be interested in it?

Jim F: Absolutely. It’s mission-critical. Researching target demographics might sound like scary stuff if you’re not working in marketing. But it’s very simple. I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say I wrote a book that’s genre fiction centered largely around something historical, like the Iraq/Kuwait War. Who is going to love the story? I would sit down at my desk with a pen and paper and think about who I want to target. Maybe it’s veterans who served during the war who also love thrillers and reading about it.

Establish your reader personas

But what else does that mean? They are men and women who served in all branches of the military at that time. Maybe they were even there, not just stateside. Maybe the audience includes their children, especially around Father’s Day or Veteran’s Day, who are looking for the perfect gift for their father who reads.

Go through that first exercise and write out all those kinds of demographic reader personas. Whatever you want to call them, you need to recognize your audience and build a list. Brainstorm like crazy and don’t limit yourself. Don’t think about an order yet. You just want to throw it all out there and write down all these groups. When you can’t think of any more, rank them. This is where you plan your strategy. Think about all the factors like:

• Where do large groups of these people spend their time?
• What do they like to read?
• Are there groups they belong to?
• Do they read specific newsletters or media?
• Do they live in a certain area?

Your answers will inform you about how to reach them with the message about your book.

Form a book marketing content calendar

Joe Y: That answers a lot of questions many authors have when they want to promote but don’t know where to start. I speak with a lot of authors and there are so many of them who are confused about how to begin to establish their promotional foundation. Once you rank the audiences who would be interested in your book, it provides the opportunity for you to form a content calendar so you can structure your promotion in a way that is progressive.

Jim F: That’s a really great point. And here is the great part about good stories: there is no expiration date. You can continue to market through the year and into the next. Use whatever tactical marketing methods you have at your disposal to spread a message to your audience. Eventually, you can see what worked and how your readership is growing. After the year is over, you can sit down and make a new plan for the next year based on what you learned and what people are telling you about your book.

Building an author platform

Joe Y: Let’s get into the actual outlets used to promote. What do you find to be the most effective way for authors to communicate with readers and market themselves? I think that every author needs a website, needs to build a newsletter, and has to have a social media presence.

Jim F: Absolutely. I would call those table stakes as part of a marketing strategy. You need an online presence. Frankly, a lot of authors will message me and ask why I think they aren’t selling that much.

The first thing I do is search for their name and their book, and sometimes they don’t have a website. They don’t have any online information except store listings that come up. And that’s great, because once I know that I want to buy their book, I can easily go and do that online. But if I don’t know about the book, I’m not going to buy it.

So, yes. You need to have those things but you need to go deeper — you want to build a newsletter mailing list. That’s really important. You need to capture email addresses and names to do that. And you need to look into social media. You don’t need to be an expert. Just start with simple things. We have services here at BookBaby where you can hire professionals for around $199 to develop a whole campaign.

Things are cost-effective these days and — because the way data works with clicking, websites, and analytics — it’s really easy to see what’s happening with your campaign and the demographics who are engaging with your promotions and visiting your site.

Keep creating content

Joe Y: It’s really important to always keep readers engaged with what you’re doing. As an author, there should never be any long periods of time when you go dark. The most successful, profitable authors are always putting out content — whether it be through Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, or LinkedIn.

This is something that a lot of excellent writers forget about. They’re so focused on their craft and their brains are wired to put everything into the creative elements of their project that they forget about the business side. Independent publishing is a business, so you have to treat it like that. I subscribe to all my favorite authors’ newsletters and it’s a great way for me to keep up with their work — even if they’re not working on a new book. Just knowing what they are doing and sometimes what they think about current events keeps me engaged with them.

When you publish a book, you have a business

Jim F: Yeah, they are fans! Just like you’re a fan of anything in your life — a fan of music, a fan of movies, a fan of books. You’re now a part of that fan community that appreciates all the work being produced.

And for authors, you have to know that you have a business now. When you have a book, you’ve made an asset. And now your job is to find readers for it. And that’s the adventure. That’s the fun part of all this. It’s really exciting. Once people start telling you they like the book, it starts to spiral. The snowballs start coming down the mountain and get bigger and bigger. Eventually, through word of mouth, more people start reading your work. People start talking about you as an author.

At this point, it’s crucial to focus on your brand — whether you are a children’s book author or a genre fiction author. If you’re a nonfiction writer, this is super important. If you write nonfiction, you’re likely positioning yourself as some sort of subject matter expert. You might be a pastor providing spiritual advice. You might be a business leader. You might be a yoga instructor. You might be a dietitian or psychologist. Whatever you are, you have to build a brand and position yourself as a subject-matter expert.

Cover design

Joe Y: Speaking of experts, it’s so obvious when a book cover is not designed by a professional. As soon as I see a book cover, I can tell if it was professionally designed and it influences my entire perception of the book.

Jim F: Absolutely and there’s a science behind this. We don’t talk about this enough. A book cover’s job is to grab your attention. When you’re scrolling through different titles, a cover has to stop you dead in your tracks. So that’s the first job. It has to catch your attention.

Number two, whatever is on that cover has to compel someone to read the book description. Okay, now we have to talk a bit about metadata, book descriptions, and author bios. After the cover has my interest, I’m going to read the book description. If the book description does its job, I’m going to read the author bio.

So many times, when an author reaches out to me wondering why their book isn’t selling, it’s because those things were overlooked.

Market research and book metadata

Joe Y: We already talked a lot about how self-publishing is a business and when you write a book, you’re going into business. A lot of businesses model their actions based on what other similar, successful businesses are doing. So, if you’re an upcoming author, look at the most successful authors within your genre. Look at best-sellers on the New York Times. Get inspired by how they write their metadata and author bios.

Jim F: Yes. We developed a service where we take what you did for metadata and optimize it to ensure you are set up to achieve your goals. Poorly done metadata is probably the biggest problem with books not selling and it’s a shame because it’s so easily resolved. There are people like us who can help.

Even if you have the greatest book, the most original idea, you’re still up against other books in the genre. So, you have to win the attention and money from readers. If you want to be on a level playing field with all the competition, you can’t skimp on any aspect of this project. You have to go all in.

Joe Y: You and I both know how many successful authors we have here at BookBaby. In your opinion, what are the bestselling authors doing right?

Self-published authors can find success

Jim F: I get asked why I love working here so much. It’s seeing a person do the right things and be successful. It’s so rewarding, so easy, and it’s fun. We make it so easy. We’re doing things like this conversation to help people understand the things they’re supposed to do in the right order. Do the right things in the right order.

If you believe in your story, and it’s good, it’s going to sell. One of my favorite authors is a retired US Navy Master Chief, Raul Ramos. When you interviewed him, he said, “I’m not an author,” and you said, “Whether you like it or not, you are an author because your book is out there in the world.” And it’s a best-selling book that is selling more than most of the books that came out last year. And you know, Raul has this great asset and he can build a whole career on this wonderful book he produced.

And guess what? He never wrote anything before this. He spent his career in the military. He just had his story, and he needed to get it professionally published so his story could be shared with the world. When people started reading it, they loved it.

Self-published authors can sell books (and make money doing it)

Successful authors follow the rules, believe in their story, and invest in a professional publish. If you do everything we talked about here and you pencil out your target audiences and get creative about how to reach them, you are going to sell books. And you can make money doing it. And the reason why you’re going to make money doing it by self-publishing is because self-published authors make more money than traditionally published authors do today.

At BookBaby, on our Bookshop, you get 85 percent royalties on eBook sales. If you sell a print book with BookBaby, you get 50 percent royalties, and 75 percent on audiobooks. You can do the math. If your book costs $14.99, you’re getting $7.50 for every print sale. If you sell 100 books, that’s $750. If you sell 300 books, you’re a profitable self-published author.

By the way, no one who invested all the time into writing a book should aim to sell only 300 copies. Everybody should come into this with the idea of being a best-seller. Some become best-sellers overnight, but most build readership over time. If you’re a new author, people have to read the book and start spreading the word about it.

There’s a lot more to the conversation — watch the video to hear it all!

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