Before you publish your book, you should develop a book marketing plan that can help you boost book sales. This blog contains fourteen actionable book marketing tips that can help you achieve your sales goals – keep reading!
1. Boost Your Proofreading Skills
Publishing a book that is replete with grammatical mistakes is not going to help you achieve your sales goals. To ensure that people find your book valuable and enjoy reading it, you need to review it properly.
This is why you should strengthen your proofreading skills and ensure your book is ready to go. You can explore online resources to learn how to become a proofreader and proofread your work by yourself without hiring a professional.
2. Get Active on Socials
Having a strong presence on social media will allow you to increase sales of your book faster. Contrary to what many people think, you don’t have to spend A TON of time and effort to grow your presence on social media.
You can start by creating accounts on a couple of social accounts instead of focusing on all accounts at once. Make sure you develop a content calendar so you can share scheduled posts on socials and keep your audience engaged.
3. Build Your Website
An attractive website can help you make a strong first impression on people in your target audience. Your website can help you present all the information about your book in a persuasive manner and share your thoughts online.
You can develop a website by yourself without having to hire a professional web developer if you are on a tight budget. Explore online resources for building websites and ask for help from developers in your circle.
4. Choose an Attractive Book Cover
Not having a good book cover can decrease your chances of making more sales. To make your book stand out on the shelves and pique the interest of potential readers.
Trying to make a book cover yourself can take a lot of time and effort. Even if you cover the basics of book cover designing, you can still never be sure if the cover you made is a good choice. This is why you should consider asking for help from a professional book cover designer.
5. Publish an Audiobook
Converting your book into an audiobook can help you tap into the audience of avid audiobook listeners. There are several tools available online that can allow you to create an audiobook by yourself. However, if you don’t have time, you can consider getting help from an audiobook narrator.
A professional narrator can understand the gist of your book and present the contents in a soulful manner to move the audiobook listeners.
6. Participate in a Book Competition
Entering a book competition can help you get recognition as a writer and increase your chances of making more book sales. You can explore your local book clubs to find out if there are any book competitions in your area.
Besides that, you can also explore online channels to participate in book competitions held in different parts of the world.
7. Build Your Mailing List
The easiest way you can convince people to buy your book is by having a healthy number of subscribers in your mailing list. Sending a direct email to people who subscribed to your mailing list will give you faster results compared to inbound or outbound marketing strategies.
Getting started with email marketing can take some time and effort. However, you should stay persistent to get desired results from email marketing.
8. Try Getting Book Endorsements
You will increase your chances of selling more books if an established writer praises your book. The influence an established writer has on their readership can help you boost your book sales without having to wait for a long time.
It will be relatively difficult to get book endorsements. However, you can make things easier for yourself if you sharpen your networking skills and reach out to established writers the right way.
9. Get Interviewed on Podcasts
Appearing on one of the famous book podcasts can help you share your thoughts as a writer and encourage people to buy your book. By getting interviewed on a podcast, you can also convince people to join your mailing list.
Start by creating a list of famous book podcasts. When reaching out to podcasters, make sure you write how your appearance can benefit the listeners. Doing so will help you increase your chances of appearing on a podcast.
10. Run Ads Online
The easiest way you can convince people to buy your book is by running ads online. Compared to other channels, the good thing about online advertising is that it provides a great ROI. You can run ads according to your budget and stop running ads if you don’t get your desired results.
You don’t have to hire an online ad expert to run ads for you. It’s better to explain online resources so you can learn how to run ads all by yourself.
11. Hold a Giveaway Session
Giving free copies of your book can help you benefit from “word-of-mouth marketing.” Contrary to the popular misconception, you can arrange a giveaway session online without having to spend a lot of time and money.
12. Leverage Online Publishing
Platforms like Amazon Kindle can help you sell more copies of your book in no time. Start by weighing the pros and cons of different online publishing platforms to choose the one that is best suited for your needs.
13. Grow Your Network
Being in touch with famous writers and editors can help you promote your book without spending a lot of time and effort. You can start growing your network by exploring local book clubs and libraries. Besides that, you can also join online forums to get in touch with writers and book enthusiasts.
14. Set Proper KPIs
Keep in mind that all book marketing strategies won’t produce the same results. You need to be careful to focus only on marketing strategies that bring desired results and ignore the ones that don’t work in your favor.