THE WRITE CLUB: THE ULTIMATE BOOK MARKETING STRATEGY CHECKLIST
Every self published author ought to be aware of one common fact by now, you're running a full scale business. And like every other businesses, there are strategies to it, there's a product and a market and there's a trade secret to getting more customers for your products. Your book is your product, readers in your target audience is your market and a killer strategy for getting more readers to discover and read your book is what this article is about.
If you have written a book and published it, it means you have made attempts at getting people to buy your book. It also means you have discovered what many of us knew a long time ago that writing the book seems like the easy part while marketing, distribution and sales is the nail-biting part. This is so because as a writer, writing is what you do best. You're not a marketing and sales expert, neither are you a distribution strategist. On top of these you most likely don't have the deep pocket to mobilize the experts in these field to help seek your book.
Don't get me wrong, book sales isn't rocket science. But it also isn't easy peasy. It takes dedication, consistency and patience. There is an age old easy strategy that has worked for the big name publishers as well as the successful indie authors over the world including myself. This strategy will work any time you use it and any author can replicate and see similar result if they can stay commuted to the process.
Let me break it down below for you.
- Great Product. It begins with having a great product. Your book is your product, write it well. Get it properly edited by a professional unless you trust yourself too well to edit it. A great product isn't complete without its packaging. This is where you cover design comes in. The cover design should speak for the book in every sense. Let it convey the theme and primary emotions your book carries. Then write a great synopsis. See here for my article on writing compelling synopsis.
- Publish Like Star. Pick the appropriate digital platforms to publish on. Decide which platform has the right audience for your book and be sure to publish on it. For ebook, publishing doubles as distribution too. But for print books, you need to work out where the books will be available and how people can have access to it. Amazon is suitable for almost all kinds of books and all formats as well. So I would advise you first of all, publish on Amazon. You might also want to have a professional publish for you because there are single Publishing setup process on Amazon that the experts o to help your book get easily discovered in its genre, like picking the right key words, selecting the most marketable genre for it and stuff like that. There are also formatting issues that could arise if you don't know how best to format a book for Kindle download.
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Now that your book is published and available to read, let's get down to the complex part.
- Reviews. The real book readers rarely buy a book they haven't seen a review for. These readers also know when a review sounds genuine and when it is patronizing. It's foolhardy to begin publicizing a book you haven't secured some tangible authentic and genuine review for. Get people to leave a review on the Amazon page of your book and also get proper book blogs to write a review and post it on their websites and social media. These are the places book fans will find it and get interested in your book.
- Author Profile. Another factor for readers is how much they know the author. Some times, readers buy a book just for sentimental unexplained attachment to the author. So clever authors use author interviews to achieve this. Get these book blogs to do an author interview for you where you get the opportunity to talk about your writing journey, your characters and your story telling and even your personal life. This is one more step to nudging a reader to buy your book because reading you talk about these things makes the reader feel like they already know you. It also has a way of creating the impression that you're a big deal author which readers are often impressed about.
- Publish Excerpts. Give readers a glimpse of the book with an excerpt. Make it available on some blogs and even social media. When people get a chance to read an excerpt of a book, they get an idea of how good the writer is and what the story is about. They can also get hooked to the flow and want to continue reading.
- Video Book Trailer. Present the book in alternative media for more attention. A video trailer pushes a book in amazing ways. When people watch a book trailer, the story sort of comes alive in their heads. They can better have a vivid imagery of the book. Readers who have watched a video trailer are most likely to think favorably of the book even when they haven't read it.
- Publicize Like Mad. This is where social media posts comes in. After you've made the above tools available, now it's time to bombard your social media audience with them. Post links to your reviews, your interviews, your book excerpt, your book trailer, and your purchase page. Never be tired of posting about your book. You can never tell what an impression you're creating both of your book and of your self. When people walk into a bookstore, studies show that they are 83% more likely to buy a book which they have heard about before or been told about. And since Social media is the major place we find things, use it to make sure as much people as possible get to know about your book. Do boosted posts of your book and links to it's review or excerpt. Keep putting your books in people's faces till they take a bite.
- Stimulate. Get the awareness of your book started on a trigger by giving a few copies to readers. This is why most authors do free giveaways. You have to be careful though with giveaways. The aim of a giveaway is to ignite word of mouth for your book. Any marketing expert will tell you that word of mouth remains the most effective marketing tool. So the best of them know how to get it started. For authors, giveaways is the way to get word of mouth started. Hence, to ensure a successful giveaway campaign, you need to make sure those you give the book to are exactly those who would love your book and appreciate it enough to tell their friends about it.
- Get Out. Go for book events and participate. There are a number of book reading and book signing events happening in Nigeria you should look out for and ask to be part of it. Naturally, anyone who comes for these events are already book lovers so anyone you take your time to meet and socialize with is a potential buyer and word of mouth agent. You can also consider organizing a small book reading and signing event of your own of you can. But the benefit of joining existing bigger ones is that you leverage on their existing audience to expand your reading circle. Just like reading your author interview or bio, readers you meet as network with at event feel like they know you and they start rooting for your success. Remember, word of mouth is King.
- Sit Back and Wait. When you have done all these, keep doing it. Wash, rinse and repeat. You need to trust the process and and stay the course. It could take a few years before you start recording mega sales but if you stay on the strategy, you will see that it never fails. Think of it like someone starting a new side hustle which you hope will be able to pay the bill someday so you can quit your boring day job. The same way this person will keep investing a little cash and some time day by day, year after year as they watch this side hustle grow, is the same way you should nurture your writing business. You should have a basic budget for you writing business for each year. It could be 50k or 500k, depending on your capacity. The key to it all is consistency. As long as you're investing the capital on these items listed above, for each year that passes, I can assure you, you will be able to see the growth you've made either in outright sales growth or audience growth and some recognitions.
I know you're thinking this is a lot of work. Well, that's why they're only a handful of authors selling tones of books and smiling to the bank. The majority of us don't want to do the hard work. We don't want to spend a dime on publicity. We don't want to be posting our books everyday. We don't have the energy to do any of these, yet we complain that people don't buy books and wonder why we've sold only three copies of our book since we published it four years ago.
Often times when I advice people to spend some money on a book publicity campaign, they tell me people don't read so it's a waste of money and I usually ask them, why then are some of us earning royalties monthly if people don't read. How will they read if you don't make them know about your book? It's a common habit of writers though. We want to believe that once we've written the book and put it on Amazon or anyplace else, the job is done and people should automatically go and be buying.
What we don't consider is that there are over 12 million books on Amazon and each of them is fighting for the attention of readers. Some authors receive Amazon royalty of over a hundred thousand dollars annually while majority don't get anything at all after 10 years. The difference is in this strategy and the consistency of it. Those high royalty earners have stayed on this strategy for a couple of years, growing their audience and reputation. While the others do nothing.
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