Marketing and publicity 101
Part 1.7 of becoming an independent author
Introduction to Marketing and Publicity
So, before I get into this week’s topic, a few caveats.
I am not an expert at all at marketing or publicity - I have no experience in either prior to doing it for my books, so I am going from zero knowledge to some knowledge.
I am by no means an expert in this - and there is an increasing number of people claiming to be experts out there who may not spend your money very well or for much return, so be wary - but I just wanted to give you an overview of some of the basics so you might be able to make a small start yourself when the times comes.
I’ll go through both free and paid things you can be doing and both can be effective but one requires lots of time and energy for possibly no return and the other requires lots of money and time and energy for possibly no return, or even a loss.
So keep that in mind before you embark on either, because it’s not going to be easy.
But nothing in life, that’s worth it, ever is easy.
Before you begin:
Know your budget - this will dictate how much what you can and can’t do and where your focus should be. Obviously there’s an advantage to having a larger budget, but there’s also so much you can do for free or at least free except for your time and effort.
Know your audience/readers - this is something that so many people misunderstand. They basically market too widely and end up wasting a lot of time, energy and money on people who will NEVER buy their book or be interested.
Where to market (free):
Community Building
Create a reader's facebook page
Run a kickstarter to find passionate fans
Use Ream or Patreon to build a fanbase/community via exclusive content and bring them along for the ride
Publicity means putting yourself out there - you have to be brave and willing to do things outwith your comfort zone.
Podcasts, blogs, mags, recording short videos, posting about yourself and your process (and your book, as a by-product) on social media.
You can even start your own podcast and elevate others, and in doing so elevate yourself, as a rising tide lifts all boats.
Magazines and blogs - often if you write them a piece of content, they will in turn share your book and it’s links - but be selective and make sure the reach is worth the work. I wrote a few articles for the BookSeller but those are £ articles, so even if they sold no books, at least it was money in the bank to pay for other marketing.
E-book giveaways - you can do this yourself, or via somewhere more organised like BookFunnel (which is a £ service that delivers your e-books to people).
Social Media - obviously this means building a platform yourself and making people come to you - it involves a big time/energy investment from you, but it is free.
Where to market (paid):
Mailing list companies that ask you to reduce your book to 0.99 or free.
BookBub (the big tuna)
The Fussy Librarian
Written Word Media
Hello Books (now merged with WWM)
And MANY MORE!
Amazon kindle deals
You can nominate your books for the Amazon controlled deals in your marketing tab on KDP.
You can also do your own price reduction (0.99 or 1.99) for 7 days or make the e-book free for 7 days (these do not have to be consecutive).
Paid Ads:
Facebook Ads
Facebook is a wide-reaching platform that help you find your audience but it can be costly if you don’t get the targeting just right.
Amazon Ads
As the ads are placed in the world’s biggest online bookstore, where people are already looking for books, it’s an ideal place to advertise. But the ads system is not easy to navigate.
You will probably need to do a course for both to help you get the best return for the ads you place on each platform as they are very different.
I have found both to increases sales and reach but also have made mistakes with both, and I’m currently not doing either, having reached a point where I know I’m unlikely to do better than break even or ‘just’ make a profit, neither of which is worth the time and risk involved for now.
I will build my backlist and lengthen my series, so when I do advertise in future, I have ‘read through’ and will get a greater return for the cost of advertising the first in my series.
So, there you go - the basics of marketing and publicity for self-published authors.
I should also say there is much more that you can do, that I haven’t mentioned, and I know I haven’t gone into each thing in too much detail for now.
The plan is to write this newsletter indefinitely and so there will be time to delve deeper into each and spend a whole newsletter on Facebook Ads, for example, or newsletters, or social media - they could all warrant a whole discussion discretely.
And lastly, I do hope these newsletters are helping those of you who are considering publishing your own work, or maybe even a few of you who have already published might find the odd thing you hadn’t tried or known about.
Next week we will be discussing upland your work to the various distributors, such as KDP and Ingram Spark, among others.
