According to Seth Godin in his post entitled Advice for Authors, the best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Seth has published well over 20 books, many of them becoming best sellers. He says:
The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.
Seth Godin
But, if you didn’t start promoting your new book three years before publishing it, that’s OK! Plenty of us are right there with you. It’s far more important that you’ve published your book. You resisted procrastinating one more year and your book (and voice!) are in the world now. You can build from there.
This is the second-to-last post in my self-publishing series. In retrospect, it probably should have been my first, but the series reflects the order in which I thought about my first book, Agile Discovery & Delivery, not necessarily the ideal order. I’m also not a promoting expert….yet. In this post, I’ll list quite a few ideas for promoting your book, but I would love to hear others. So, please feel free to join the conversation in the comments!
Pre-sales on Amazon
As I mentioned in the second post in this series about creating your book cover, Amazon rewards you for having pre-sales. The only type of book you can put up for pre-order is your eBook. So, it’s worth it to get a sales page up and to promote it like crazy before your publish date.
Did I get my book out for pre-order months in advance? Um….no! This is one of my lessons learned. I had my book out for pre-order for approximately one month. The sales were pretty good during that time. I was the “#1 New Release” in “Software Engineering” nearly the entire time — whatever that means. I’ve noticed authors who know what they’re doing will have their book out for pre-sale six months to a year before their publish date.
During that time, they are doing a few things.
- Spreading the word that the book is coming and asking people to preorder it. This is where Seth Godin’s advice really pays off. If you’ve taken the time to build a following and a network, you can use that group to help pre-sell your book.
- Sending copies to the media and drumming up interest. That means reaching out to journalists, podcasters, bloggers, and others in their network to let them know the book is coming and getting some buzz going.
- Reaching out to other authors, beta readers, influencers, etc in their genre to see if they would help them promote their new book.
I’m finding the old Field of Dreams adage, “if you build it, they will come” was probably never true. It really pays to get out there and get as many book mentions as you can — both before and after it’s published. I have noticed that the days I speak on a podcast or at a conference are days when my book sales spike. It’s nice to know my efforts are working, but it’s also clear that the book, especially in the beginning, won’t sell itself.
Get Reviews to Promote Your Self-Published Book
The other thing I’ve heard really helps (both on Amazon and elsewhere) is to get as many reviews as you can as quickly as you can. This means reaching out to everyone you know and asking if they’ll not only read your book, but give you a review. It also means that every time you hear someone say, “I loved your book!” You should be responding with, “That’s fantastic! I am so thrilled. Would you be so kind as to review it on Amazon or Goodreads?” I’ve had a few higher profile authors say this to me and it’s really effective. I reach out to them fangirling a bit and they take the time to respond! At that point, you can bet I’ll be reviewing their books if I haven’t already.
Selling Your Book
Don’t be bashful about selling your book. For many authors, “sales” seems like a dirty business meant for pushy people and the thought of doing it ourselves makes us want to puke. I got over this feeling by remembering that there is an audience out there that really needs my book. They don’t necessarily know how to find it and I need to help them.
Ideas to Promote Your Self-Published Book
So, let’s say you’ve already published. And, maybe you did or did not do a good job of the above two items. There are a LOT of things you can do to spread the word about your book. The following is a non-inclusive list of ideas. I suspect you can get even more creative, but here’s a start.
- Reach out to bloggers and podcasters who cater to your target audience and see if they’re interested in reviewing a copy of your book or having you on the podcast. If they respond, be ready to send them a copy and follow-up. Many people won’t respond, so it’s a good idea to do your homework and reach out to as many people as you can.
- Speaking of target audience, have you done the work to determine who you’re actually writing for? This should be done well before you publish, probably even before you start writing. If you’re behind, get clear now about who will get value out of this book before you proceed.
- Reach out to journalists (both local and national) to ask if they’d like to review your book.
- Host workshops, classes, or webinars related to your book.
- Make sure your Amazon and Goodreads Author Pages are up-to-date.
- Reach out to your local library to see if they’ll carry a copy of your book and do a book signing.
- Do the same thing with as many independent bookstores as you can.
- See if you can get reviewed by a reputable and applicable book reviewer like BookList Online.
- Apply to speak at relevant conferences or at online meet-ups.
- Research online ads. For most books, these just don’t seem to move the needle, but for some, they do.
- Finally, find another author (or two!) who has successfully promoted their book. Take them out to lunch and pick their brain for more ideas!
Do You Have Some Ideas?
This is one article I will definitely be updating as I learn more. What are your best book promotion tips? Would you share them below?