This year our focus at Your Literary Prose is to take a holistic look at the entire process of publishing a book which includes the writing, publishing, and marketing phases. When someone decides to write a book i’ts important to understand they will need to do much more than just write a book. In order for a book to be successful and reach the right audience you need to make sure to holistically look at the entire process. It’s not advisable to print 100, 250, 500, or more copies of your book if you have no way to sell them. In today’s blog I am going to share a “How-To Sell My Book” guide. As a quick reminder, marketing is a wide and variable field and you may find another approach which works for you. If so, let me know about your success stories!
How-To Sell My Book
This how-to guide is meant to be able to be crafted to map a wide range of marketing ideas; it’s not, and can’t be, a one-size-fits-all plan. While this is not a cookie-cutter approach, I have crafted “How-To Sell My Book” into a step-by-step plan with general ideas you can craft to your own needs.
Step 1: Your Audience
Like I mentioned above, marketing is a wide and variable field. The first step to making sure you sell your book is understanding your audience. Who is your audience? This is a question you will ask yourself throughout the entire writing, publishing, and marketing phases. I believe knowing your audience is the most important thing to know when you are an author. Knowing your audience will allow you to better craft your book and craft your marketing materials. Your audience will show you where to market and how to market to them, so keep you ears and eyes open for what they are saying, doing, and more.
Step 2: Your Expertise
As an author with something to share you have experience and knowledge your readers want to hear. Take your knowledge and expertise and use it to your own benefit! Are you a speaker? Great, lean into the video and audio side of marketing. Are you a business coach? Craft a great worksheet for readers to use with your book. Create a list of your strengths and expertise and find the marketing avenues you can use to highlight those strengths.
Step 3: Where To Go
The next area to focus on when you ask yourself how-to sell my book is understanding where your audience hangs. What do I mean by this? Find out as much as you can about your audience. Where do they live? Where do they hang out? What social media platforms do they use? What conferences, meetings, or associations do they belong to? This goes back to Step 1: Your Audience. Your audience will show you what they want so listen to them! You will want to market to your audience at the places they are active. Pick the most beneficial place; for example, a conference or Facebook, and begin marketing there. Do your research to make sure you spend time in the right places! You might have to experiment a bit but once you find where your audience lives, use that to your advantage!
Step 4: The Online Basics
No matter what your marketing strategy includes, there are a few places I suggest everyone start their marketing journey. The “How-To Sell My Book” beginner marketing path:
- Website
- Email Newsletter
These three areas are crucial online marketing steps. In today’s day and age, a website is the most important area an author can use to market their book. You need to have a place where readers, bookstores, potential speaking engagements, media, and others can find more information about you. Your website needs to be the place your readers will know to visit for all your information.
Facebook is another marketing tool. Facebook is the largest social media platform and you have the best potential to reach the most people.
Your email newsletter is a place where you can send readers important information like where your book is on sale or where you will be speaking. You can also send promotional emails where readers can buy your books!
Step 5: The Extras
So outside of these three basics there are many other ways to market your book. When you are trying to figure our how-to sell my book you need to understand some of the other avenues to sell your book. These might include:
- Selling at conferences
- Speaking engagements
- TV apperances
- Radio shows
- Podcasts
- Newspapers/Magazines
- Goodreads
- Book signings
- Bookstore shelves
- Beta Readers
- Much more
Planning How-To Sell My Book
It doesn’t matter how you decide to market your book but what matters is you take the time to really plan out how you want to accomplish your sales goals. Marketing should be as early as possible. If you have not started writing, you can begin marketing and if you have already had your book published, you can still begin marketing. The earlier and more consistently you market, the more your audience and readers will connect with you.
If you are looking to become clear on your audience and what you have to offer your readers in your book, download The Guide To Develop Your Best Seller. We crafted this guide so new and returning authors can better understand the fundamentals of their book. When you know your audience and your book your marketing can explode!
All very good, practical advice
Thank you Sandy!