How to market a self published novel is the question for many writers, from all over the world who have written novels over the years, there is one unique problem being faced by all. It is not the absence of talent or interesting story lines; neither is it always the lack of finances. The problem encountered by both the independent and the sponsored writers is marketing. The world has changed, however, and the concept of marketing becomes more natural day by day. The book selling industry is now in the age where one doesn’t necessarily have to buy a book in paperback covers. Books have embraced the digital shift and, as a result, are now available in digital copies popularly known as eBooks. But whether a novel is in digital print or hard print, it must be marketed to the people who are going to buy. There are many ways to do this.
How to promote your book before its published
One of the most profitable methods is to promote the novel through a specialized blog or website. Creating a blog and continuously updating the site with articles related to the niche of your novel. For example, if you’re planning to write a novel that revolves around romance, it is only accurate that you write romance-related articles or reviews on your blog and get your community of readers. When you have your blogs rolling out, people become familiar with your art and will most likely look forward to reading more from you. When that happens, you can quickly begin the promotion of your novel without even sounding like it. Towards the launch date, you can implement viral campaigns to help create hype around your book and get more people to anticipate and talk about it. Having a blog or a website is a great way for you to begin list building for sales.
No matter how good the content of a book might be, not everyone would spare the time to read a little part of it without already having the desire to read it. This is where descriptions come into play. A description helps you analyze the content of your novel, the plots, and twists in simple, yet powerful words. Reading the description and making a lot of sense from it will be the reason why most people bother to finally read your work. That being said, you should try writing different descriptions for your book over and over. Then, you can pick the absolute best among them all and use it as the main description. The same principle that applies to book descriptions also applies to the book cover. The saying that urges people to “never judge a book by its cover” is wrong when it comes to selling books. People are going to look at your book cover and make subtle inferences from how it looks. You should invest all you can to get a professional book design.
Social Media for Book Marketing
Also, social media remains one of the fastest mediums to reach out to people. Set up social media accounts and ensure you interact with people who follow you on social media. Also, you must test out different types of posts and content related to the niche of your novel, find out the one that gets the most engagement, concentrate on creating more content of the same type, and leverage on the content to create more awareness around the release of the novel. The online campaign starts with social media but should not end there. You should explore other online platforms where you’re likely to come across potential fans and lovers of your art. Check out the blogs they read and drop engaging comments on posts there. You can also reach out to high-authority websites or blogs and offer to guest post for them. In the process of doing that, make sure you leave links through which the readers can view your blog, follow you on social media or contact you elsewhere.
HOW DO YOU GET A BOOK REVIEW?
People are, by default, wary of products they buy online if such products have bad reviews or no reviews at all. When they see positive reviews, it encourages them to take action. Bearing this in mind, you should try as much as possible to get positive reviews on your book. This can be done in many ways. You can ask your readers to review the book on your website after they read it. If you do not have enough readers to do the job for you, it is advised that you seek assistance from friends and family in that regard. In addition to this, you can also find book reviewers online. Some request for money before they review for you and, others don’t. The plus side to this is that most of the reviewers are good writers themselves.
Email marketing for book sales
One of the most reliable yet cheapest methods of marketing is email marketing. Like every other product, email marketing can be very influential in the promotion of books. The process of incorporating an email marketing strategy into the novel promotion is just like it is done in every other case. Through your blog or social media channels, you can offer incentives to your audience in exchange for their contact details.
When you receive these details, you can store them with your email marketing software or customer relationship systems according to the needs of each. This segregation is necessary to help you target more accurate audiences in the nearest future. Most email marketing services come with a crm for small business to assist with this task.
After obtaining your subscribers’ contact details, implement an autoresponder to send welcome emails immediately they sign up. Sending these emails help you achieve a level of familiarity with your new subscribers and makes them look forward to your future emails.
Following the welcome emails, you can now send out follow-up emails, which can be about anything related to your upcoming book. Moving forward, these are considered warm marketing strategies. You can send out announcements, short teasers, giveaway sessions, and countdown emails when necessary. This whole process, if implemented right, would help you get as many sales as possible. Selling a self-published novel is hard; selling it the wrong way is even harder!
