How to Market Your Self-Published Book: Tried and Tested Strategies to Increase Sales Part One

I talk quite a bit on my blog about self-publishing books. I love the freedom I get with self-published books, and I love being in control of my own release dates, promotions etc. I also think self-publishing is a great way for any writer who is new to it to get a good insight into the publishing and marketing side of the industry.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is how to successfully market your self-published book. This really is the million dollar question.

Honestly, writing the book is the easy part. It’s getting it out there in front of your target audience that’s the hard part.

Before we get into the strategies, I want to make it clear I am not an expert in book marketing – I am an author who’s learning the hard way through trial and error, and I hope by sharing these ideas, it will give new authors an idea of how and where to get started.

Why You Need to Market Your Self-Published Books

If people don’t know your self-published books exist, they won’t buy it. It’s as simple as that.

There are over two million books on Amazon at any one time. The chances of someone stumbling across your book whilst browsing the site are slim to say the least.

Even if we don’t count the books by household name authors which are pretty much guaranteed to hit the best seller list, that leaves a LOT of competition in the market place. The average book on Amazon is reported to sell anywhere from seven copies to two hundred and fifty copies depending on which website you get your stats from.

That means a huge number of books are selling one or two copies, even not selling any copies at all. The self-published books which sell well are the ones whose authors know a thing or two about driving sales.

I think it’s clear why you need to market your books considering how many books yours will be in competition with.

How to Market Your Self-Published Books Part One – Free (or almost free) Strategies

One of the first decisions you have to make is how much money you are going to spend on your book marketing. I’ve heard so many opinions on this, ranging from you can do it completely free all the way through to needing £20,000 budgets.

Not to make assumptions, but I think a £20,000 marketing budget is way out of reach for most authors who are self-publishing. If you are someone who can spend that on marketing, you don’t need this post – go and hire a professional publicist who will know all of the inside tips and tricks already and have a huge list of contacts.

If you have a more modest budget (or no budget at all) then there are still ways to sell books. Today’s part of the post will be talking about the free (or almost free) options to use. Part two  will talk about paid options for various budgets.

As I mentioned above, I don’t claim to be a marketing expert, and what works for one book won’t always work for another, but following the steps below worked for me.

By the time I released my fifth book, Start Your Blog Like a Boss: 10 Steps to Set Yourself Up for Success, I had been experimenting with various marketing strategies and I knew what worked for me and what didn’t. Start Your Blog Like a Boss reached the UK top 10 and the US top 20 in it’s first week of release and exceeded the average sales per book even at the highest end.

These are the free strategies I used:

Tap Into Your Existing Audience

If you want to successfully sell books, you must have a way of reaching people.

At the very least, you need:

• A blog or author website (I would recommend a blog as you actually get to interact with people that way)
• An author page on Amazon
• An email list
• A Twitter profile
• A Facebook page.

There are more options which we’ll discuss below, but those are the absolute minimum places you need to be.

Here’s how to use each one to promote your book:

Your Blog

There are a few ways to use your blog to your advantage:

• Do a cover reveal prior to release
• Do a release announcement post – include the hook from your book and maybe a short excerpt to get people interested
• Consider running a giveaway where your book is the prize (or part of the prize) to get people interested in it. Even if you have never done a giveaway before, it’s really easy, especially if you use a site such as Gleam which it will take you through the process in simple steps
• Have a link to your book selling page in your side bar
• Have a page dedicated to your books with links to buy them
• Do a series talking about your inspiration for writing the book, your characters, where you got the ideas, anything you think your readers will enjoy. Again, this builds interest.
• Add links to your books in any relevant posts – there’s no harm in a cheeky little plug like the ones above

The sky really is the limit here as the cliché goes. Be as creative as you like with this one.

Amazon Author Page

An Amazon author page only really works once you have multiple titles released. It only takes minutes to set one up and it basically means that if someone buys one of your books and enjoys it, they can easily access your other titles as they’re all in one place. This is particularly useful if you choose to run a free promotion on one of your books.

An Email List

An email list is by far the fastest way to reach people who may buy your books. You will probably have an email list set up already for people to subscribe to your blog posts. Don’t be tempted to spam this list with details about your book – that’s not why these people signed up and you might lose subscribers (and they will get the emails about blog posts relating to your books so you will still reach them).

Set up a separate list specifically for news and updates about your books (mine is in my sidebar to the right hint hint).

People who sign up to this list are much more likely to become readers of your books – they wouldn’t have signed up if they didn’t have any interest in your books. You will also find that people who don’t want to be notified about every blog post will sign up because the emails will be much less frequent and relevant to what they actually want.

Social Media

Twitter – Schedule regular tweets promoting your book. Don’t just say buy my book – be creative and give people a reason to buy it.

Facebook Page – Post about your new release. You’re not limited to characters here, so again, you could include an excerpt. You could also do a live where you read a chosen passage if you’re brave enough. There are also a lot of groups specifically aimed at book promoting, where you can add your book. Don’t just link drop – talk to people, comment on their things and share useful information.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is another fab place to find groups dedicated to book promotion, but you will also find author groups were like minded people discuss real marketing strategies and more – you will learn a lot and often get a chance to talk about your own book too.

Others – You can post a cover picture and talk about your book on Instagram and Snapchat, pin your cover on Pinterest, and add your blog posts about your book to Stumble Upon. You can also try something like Reddit (which I’ve never done, but many do with great success).

And of course, there’s Good Reads. I’m going to hold my hands up here and say I must be the only author in the world that doesn’t “get” Good Reads at all. I set up a profile and that’s as far as I got, but most authors swear by it.

Word of Mouth

What happens if your book’s target market isn’t the same demographic as your blog readers?

Well, most of my readers are bloggers and I still used all of these strategies to sell copies of Blog Like a Boss.

The book is a guide to setting up a blog the right way – why would I waste my time marketing it bloggers?

There’s two reasons – the first is specific to that book – although it’s aimed primarily at someone looking to get started, much of the information in the book is stuff I learned along the way and then incorporated into my blog as I went, so bloggers who are already set up can still use the techniques in the book to help them.

The second one is simple – word of mouth.

As a free marketing stream, word of mouth is one of the best ways to increase sales.

Are you more likely to buy something (in this case a book) because:

• You saw an advert for it?
• The person selling the thing said you should?
• Someone you know and trust recommends it to you?

Most people will be more likely to buy something that’s been recommended to them. So yes, some of my blog readers will already know the information in my book. But if someone else mentions to them that they’re thinking of starting a blog, maybe one of those people will recommend my book.

As well as bloggers, ask your friends and family to mention your book to their friends – it all helps.

Blogs That Aren’t Your Own

There are several ways to get your book on other people’s blogs – some of those ways will cost you money (which we’ll be talking about in part 2) and some won’t. Being visible on other people’s blogs is a great way to get your book in front of other people. And if that blogger’s readers trust them (which they will or they wouldn’t read regularly), they will be much more open to buying your book when they see it on there.

Here are some ways you might be able to get your book on other blogs without spending your marketing budget:

Ask Your Blogging Buddies for Help

If you are a blogger yourself, then chances are, you have a handful of good blogging friends. You read each others blogs, share tips and advice with each other, and support each other.

These are the people to approach first. Ask them if you can write a guest post for them about your new book – they already like your writing style, and you already have a good idea what will fit with their blog. Make it clear they are allowed to say no if they don’t want you to write them a post – a couple of extra sales is not worth losing friends over. And be sure to return the favour if they have anything they want to promote too. Thank you Becky and Clare.

If your blogging buddies agree, make sure you write a good quality post that’s about more than just pushing sales – if you wouldn’t want to post that thing on your own blog (unless it’s down to a niche thing rather than quality) then don’t expect anyone else to.

Share the post with your readers too and answer any comments on the post.

Ask Bloggers to Review Your Book

Ask in your wider blogging social circle if anyone would like to review your book – thank you Michelle.

You can also ask for guest posting opportunities too – look for blogs you enjoy that post in the niche of your book. For example, Parodies and Piss Takes is a book of funny rhymes, so naturally, I asked the queen of rhyme for a guest posting opportunity – thank you Dawn.

Again, don’t be pushy – you don’t want to be seen as someone who can’t take a polite no for an answer.

And let the bloggers know they can be honest – most bloggers will be honest either way (their readers trust them and they aren’t going to recommend your book if they hated it) but make it clear you won’t be offended if they don’t like the book – and mean it.

You will have to develop a thick skin – not everyone will like your book, and that’s ok. We can’t all like the same things. If you are confident that your book is good enough to put up for sale, then be confident that your reviewers will like it. If it’s not something they’d want to read (maybe they love sci-fi and your book is romance) they will probably pass on the review anyway.

This is the option that isn’t quite free – if a blogger agrees to review your book, you will need to provide them with a free copy.

Again, promote the post to your readers and followers (the blogger has taken the time to read and review your book, the least you can do is share it with your audience and maybe introduce some new readers to their blog).

Ask People to Share Your Tweets, Facebook Posts Etc.

You can ask other bloggers, other writers and your friends and family to share your posts. Most people in your life, however fleetingly, will be happy to share the odd thing for you. It’s a way for people to support you without a whole lot of time on their part and most people want to help others.

Local Media

This one depends largely on where you live. If you live in a big city, local media outlets will be plagued with requests for features. If you live in a smaller town, it might still be a bit of a novelty to have a local writer.

Ask your local papers if they would be willing to an article about your writing journey or review your book.

Ask your local radio station if they would have you as a guest on one of their shows.

They might say no, but it never hurts to ask.

Wow, that was a bit of a book in itself – and that’s only the free marketing ideas.

I hope some of these ideas help you to sell more copies of your books.

Don’t forget to come back on Thursday for part two, where we’ll be talking about marketing strategies that require a budget (not a huge one though).

If you have any other suggestions for free marketing for books, let me know in the comments

You can find me here: Twitter Facebook Bloglovin Pinterest and Instagram Please do stop by and say hi!

And if you want to learn more about my books, check out my Amazon author page – see what I did there 😉