19+ Sample Book Marketing Ideas

What Is Book Marketing?

The goal of every book marketing is to get a book into the hands of target booksellers and consumers. With all the possible book marketing ideas you can adapt, it is ideal to come up with one that is a combination of online and offline marketing tactics to reach a wide selection of booksellers and readers effectively. Getting results from book marketing campaigns shouldn’t be that much of a challenge because, according to Statista, books remain a popular pastime for most US consumers with 74% of US adults who read at least a single book in 2018. In addition, a Statista study also reports that 98% of their respondents read for pleasure.

With 675 million print books sold in the US alone in 2017, one can say that the book industry remains a strong global market despite the continuous advancement of digital platforms. Such numbers wouldn’t be possible without the effective book marketing tactics cooked up by self-publishers and publishing houses. This type of marketing benefits the sales department in a traditional publishing company because this is a vital tool in the promotion of the book and is an important instrument that gets a book in the storefronts of booksellers and book distributors. Book marketing demands a lot of time, energy, and monetary investments especially that some marketing strategies require you to enlist the services of a PR firm, publicist, marketing consultants, and the like.

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Book Marketing Ideas

There is no best way to market your book but to find the best one that suits the kind of book you’re writing, try checking out the vast number of book marketing ideas that you can adapt. Below, we offer some of the book marketing ideas that you can use for the promotion of your book.

Conduct Author Events: One of the famous author events that you might consider is a book tour. Touring is one of the best events that help authors make connections with people from different places. The downside to this is that book tours are already deemed as a thing of the past. However, there are still some authors who go on tour when they release a book?sometimes, all you need is a good revamp to make old things and ways look new. One example is that most authors and publicists no longer host events at bookstores. They have already caught on and started branching out to alternative event locations such as restaurants and even bars or clubs. Collaborate with Bookstores: Try contacting your local bookstore and inquire if they are open for book signings. Do not hesitate to collaborate with bookstores as they can also benefit from events like a book signing. If you are already a famous author, hosting a book signing event is also a way for you to show your support to your local independent bookstore as this earns them the exposure they deserve.Create Online Events: Take advantage of digital media by creating online events. You can host a live-streaming party days before the grand launch of your book or you can host one on the launch day itself. Among the famous live streaming sites that you can use include Twitch, Periscope, Blab, and Facebook Livestream. Various things can happen when conducting virtual book launches such as live readings and live chats with a live audience. See to it that the activities you conduct online can effectively encourage book sales. Be sure to include an active pre-order or buy link during your live stream. You may also include exclusive discount codes to those who watched your live stream to encourage them to purchase your book.Take Advantage of the Traditional Media: Who says traditional media no longer has power? One of the advantages you get from tapping the traditional media for your book promotions is that your message tends to create a remarkable impact. Through traditional media, your message easily gets stuck in the minds of people, particularly your target audience. You may conduct an interview online but an interview that people will see on television will stick more than the former.Take Advantage of Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram): In this time and age, who has not signed up for at least a single social media platform? Nowadays, approaching social media is already one of the things you need to invest in if you are planning to survive in your chosen career path. If you have difficulty figuring out what to do in your chosen social media platform, consider checking how other authors manage their social media presence. Check their daily activities. Know how many times they upload within a day. Determine how they write their digital content.Create Dedicated Websites or Blogs: Having an author blog or website is effective if you want to take advantage of the power of mouth in the digital world other than the use of social media. In a website or blog, you can easily gather guest posts, build an email list, answer frequently asked questions, and turn traffic to readers especially if the website or blog you created is solely dedicated to the promotion of your book. However, creating a blog or website from scratch can get tricky because it requires you to invest too much of your time in building it while getting little returns. You can always make use of a ready-made blog template that you can conveniently customize to suit your marketing needs.Send Email Newsletters: Another way to take advantage of the power that word of mouth holds is to send email newsletters. This is especially easy if you have already built an email list through your blog or website. If you rely on your social media posts alone, there is a tendency that people will miss out on your post unless they will go out of their way and visit your page. Everyone reads their emails and recipients can conveniently keep the information you sent them via email. Through emails, you engage your network without having to meet them personally. And when you are expecting another book release, you can easily get in touch with them again.

How to Build a Successful Book Marketing

When you only write a book for pleasure and gain, you would no longer bother marketing it. However, if you write because you are driven to relay a message to a certain audience, then you would go out of your way to get your book in the hands of your target readers. To do that, you need to build your way down from the basics up to where you finally create the best book marketing strategies fitting for your book’s promotion. That said, be guided with the following easy-to-follow steps.

Step 1: Know Your Audience

Every good marketing campaign planning starts with knowing one’s audience. Knowing your audience enables you to narrow things down and avoids getting you worked up and overwhelmed. Start by knowing who will most likely buy your book. Be more specific with your target audience so you can achieve success much easier than anticipated. Keeping things broad will only make things difficult.

Step 2: Determine Where to Find Your Audience

Determine the places where you can find your target readers. Research if possible and know where they read or watch the news and get information. Do they read news stories from a daily newspaper? Do they watch morning or evening news? Do they check out online news sites? Do they check live news updates on Twitter or Facebook? Another thing to check up on are social media platforms where your target audience might highly active.

Step 3: Figure Out Ways on How to Reach Your Audience

After conducting research and determining where you can find your audience, you can now figure out ways on how you can figure out ways how you can reach them. If your research revealed that your target audience prefers to use Twitter in checking live news updates and that they are also active Twitter users, then maybe you should direct your book marketing solely on Twitter. Know how you can use Twitter effectively and appropriately. Figure out engaging ways on how you can connect with them using this specific social media platform.

Step 4: Discover Your Edge

Now that you have determined the group of people who might be interested in your book, discover what sets you apart from your competitors. For example, your target audiences are 15- to 17-year-old teen girls who are in the middle adolescence stage. For sure, you are not the only author or publisher who’s focusing on this type of target audience. That is why you need to discover your edge and pinpoint how you stand out among your sea of competitors. Know what makes your book different from others and use this as your primary focus during your book promotions.

Step 4: Decide the Right Message and Medium

When you market your book, you must know the right messages to share about your book. You don’t just beg people to buy your book?you should tell them why they should buy your book. This also the step where you must decide on what communication tactics to use for your book marketing or how you present your main message to your audience. What you need to secure for your book’s marketing includes a book cover that sells and a book description that entices people to read more. Your book cover design plays a vital role in your book marketing as this is the primary image that should encapsulate the entire message your book aims to convey. Your book description should be able to hook your target audience and help you successfully grab their attention, interest, and desire, which eventually calls them to action and that is to purchase your book.

Step 5: Distinguish the Right Book Marketing Tactics

After having determined your audience, the message, and its delivery, it is now the time for you to distinguish the best book marketing tactics that fit your needs. There are a lot of book marketing ideas you can find online and you can even create one of your own. See to it that you use or even come up with your own that fits the type of audience that you have, the message you want to deliver, and the method of its delivery. For example, if your target audiences are those who are in the middle adolescence stage, you’ll probably want to opt for social media promotions over traditional media since your target audience belongs to those age groups that have the luxury of time to surf various social networks.

The Dos and Don’ts of Book Marketing

To build the best book marketing for your book, you might want to get input from some of these dos and don’ts that can serve as your guide.

Dos

1. Do understand the industry you belong to.

As you come up with marketing ideas for the promotion of your book, you need to keep in mind the kind of industry you belong to. The book industry per se is not as competitive as other industries but its competition nowadays mainly comes from the outside and that is the digital content industry. That is why if you have fully understood the industry you belong to, you can quickly determine the competitors you have both inside and out and know how to stand out from the rest of them. Some authors now take advantage of the digital content industry as a promotional tool for their book marketing. In the process, they also stand out from their fellow authors who haven’t tapped the internet as part of their book marketing efforts.

2. Do prepare to shell out cash.

For any type of marketing to be successful, you must always be prepared to shell out some cash?unfortunately, there is nearly no excuse for this. If you think that you don’t have enough money to do self-promotions, you can always cut some of your expenses, especially the discretionary ones. If you can’t easily give up your drinking or smoking habits, shopping addiction, or your so-called travel goals, your desire to get your book in the hands of your target readers might not be burning enough. To prove that you badly want to become a writer, then get that book marketing budget ready.

3. Do improve your craft.

You may come up with the best book marketing idea; however, it would weigh no significance if you wrote a poorly written book. Thinking and troubling over what possible book marketing ideas you can use even before you write the book is a waste of time. What you should do first instead is to focus on writing more well-written books. For instance, you wrote a poorly written book and created the best marketing for it. Once your book gets out and receives terrible review scores, it automatically puts your book under a bad light. Your marketing efforts will only go to waste.

Don’ts

1. Don’t assume all feedback is relevant.

Getting feedback from people is crucial to the success of your book marketing especially if you are still starting to market your book. See to it that you know how to select only the significant and helpful feedback that can improve your marketing strategies. If the feedback comes from your family and friends, maybe you should consider thinking whether or not they are in the position to give the best one. Aim to get feedback from those who are working in the same industry you belong or at least those who know who your target consumers are.

2. Don’t have a “spend money to make money” mindset.

Even if one the dos here include preparing to shell out money, this does not mean that you need to spend a lot of money when marketing your book. Making merchandise just for the sake of showing that you are going out of your way for your book marketing is completely unnecessary. Most of the time, all you need is a talk. Having a simple conversation with a bookstore owner gives you more guarantee than giving your friends a shirt with your book cover printed on it.

Through book marketing, you showcase to your target readers what is so significant and remarkable about the book you’re selling. And from that, you discover who your loyal and avid readers are. Are you now ready to take your book marketing efforts to the next level? Then do consider taking notes from the book marketing ideas that we offer to get a good start.