I always love reading pieces on author success, especially when they offer juicy and easy-to-implement book marketing strategies that authors can dig into right away.
And while some of this is always a tad obvious, it’s always worth a mention – because repetition is a good way to make an idea stickier so that you’ll remember it with ease.
These Book Marketing Strategies Can Sell Lots of Books
Write a good book: The author points to this as his first piece of advice, and I believe it cannot be said enough. There are lots of bad books out there vying for attention and wind-up languishing somewhere at the bottom of Amazon’s 7 million-plus books on their website.
Know Your Platform: Right off the bat he mentions this and again, super important. But to go even deeper than that, you’ve got to know your genre, and know it well. Your platform can’t exist without you knowing the lane you’re in – absolutely. Conversely, your genre helps build your platform, too.
By “genre” what I mean is this: if your book was in a bookstore, what shelf would it be on? A lot of times I talk with authors who have books that aren’t on any one particular shelf, but many.
A bookstore would never stock a book that way. Sure, you can have sub-elements to your book. But your primary genre should be clear, and it should exist. You aren’t allowed to make up your own genres until you’re super famous and even then, it’s a bit sketchy.
Relentlessly Pursue Book Reviews and Exposure: This is another point he makes, which I think is absolutely smart. Never stop marketing, never stop trying to get your book out there. But one thing I will discourage you from doing is becoming hyper-focused on just getting reviews. Don’t get me wrong, book reviews are great – but other exposure matters, too. Doing speaking or book events, being interviewed by a media outlet or podcast. So while you want to be relentless in your marketing, you also want to keep your eyes and ears open to any and all opportunities for your book. Book marketing is a conversation you have with your soon-to-be-reader, when you stop marketing, your conversation stops, too and your reader moves on, without buying your book.
Record an Audio Book: This was the author’s final point on which I disagree. Yes, audio books are huge right now – but an audio book is expensive and not in every author’s budget. Instead, consider releasing your audio book later in the life of your book. In fact, having an audio book that comes out even a year after the book is out, gives you a fresh opportunity to market the book again – with your newly released audio.
The other reason that I sort of bristled at this, was because sometimes it makes sense to “stage” your book editions. Meaning you lead with maybe your eBook and paperback, and then you can add other editions to the mix, like hard cover, audio, and large print.
And here’s a tip for you: so many authors forget to create large print editions of their books, but large print is a fantastic way to not only go deeper into your market or reach markets that you couldn’t get to with a regular edition. But it’s also a great way to get yourself into libraries.
The author: Robert Dircks, did a fun job of sharing some ideas that helped him sell lots of books – and these book marketing strategies aren’t just geared to one particular genre, they’re universal.
Sometimes the biggest boost to your book can be the simplest thing you neglected, or have been putting off. So dig in, and let’s kick those book sales into high gear!
If you want to read the original article you can find it here.
Resources and Free Downloads
How to Market Your Book Without Losing Your Mind
Tuning Into Your Perfect Reader Market: Book Marketing Podcast Episode
Monthly Book Marketing Planner
Check out the Alliance of Independent Authors for news and resources
I would appreciate an insight into finding Literary Agents that deal in the Crime Fiction genre, as well as, should it be necessary, the best way of having my novel self-published for e-readers and softback.