Recently the good folks at BookBuzzr.com, a company with innovative book marketing programs, asked me to do an interview for them, and of course I agreed. This article is adapted and expanded from part of that interview.
If you are an author with a minuscule marketing budget, how can you ensure that your book is noticed at the time of the book launch?
This is a terrific question, and one that applies to many authors. With the tools so readily available, it’s tempting to simply push books out there, upload them to Kindle and wait for the orders to come in.
But it rarely works out that way. Inevitably authors come to understand that nobody is going to market their book for them. It takes a kind of dedication to continue to find ways to let people know about your book. You can get off to a good start with a book launch.
Book Launches for Fun and Profit
Book launch is an exciting, terrifying and exhausting time for self-publishers. As an author you might have thought your work was done when the manuscript was finished, but the publisher knows the hard work is only starting.
Self-publishers are in a good position to market their books, regardless of the budget involved. You know your book better than anyone. You also know the people who are likely buyers of the book, and what other books deal with the same subject.
As you consider your book launch, think about two things:
- Who are the people who will benefit most from your book?
- How can you communicate those benefits most effectively to those people?
9 Ways to Market Your Book For No Money
If you know who the people are, you just need to figure out how to communicate. Hey, you’re an author, a content creator. This won’t be that hard.
Not only that, many of the best communication methods we have cost nothing but your time. Here are some examples:
- Writing articles for publication on article sites or in offline media
- Participating in discussions in online forums about your book’s subject
- Communicating with the media by issuing regular media releases
- Curating content from other sources for people in your niche
- Creating content for publication by bloggers in your field
- Going on a blog tour and visiting blogs in your niche
- Sponsoring contests and giveaways, using your book as a prize
- Querying book bloggers and reviewers to see if they will review your book
- Setting up a mailing list for people interested in your work, and using it to communicate ideas that expand on your other communications
This list could go on. Although there’s no financial cost to these activities, each one will support your image as an expert in your field and put you in contact with networks of people interested in your subject. And each place you make a contribution is somewhere else people can find out about your book.
That’s where book marketing meets the real world. There’s nothing more valuable than the contact you have with readers of your content. And there’s no more efficient way to spread your message than through the networks of other people interested in your work.
In a sense, your book launch may never end. We will probably never run out of communities to communicate with about our work. And when you publish your next book, think how much ground will already be prepared for your book marketing efforts.
Photo by Dan Moyle
