Why you should create your marketing plan before you even publish your book

Many authors (including me when I first released Lichgates) wait until their book releases to think about marketing. Don’t make my mistake!

New releases are a great way to excite people into reading the book. It’s important to use this time effectively and to market yourself strongly in the first 4-6 weeks after your book is released. Is it the end-all, be-all for your book’s success? No. But it’s the most forgivable time for you to have few reviews, and it’s a great springboard to propel your book’s notoriety. So before you set your release date, create your marketing plan!

There are too many components of marketing to list in this post. It’s a huge task, one that requires a lot of research and understanding. However, I do want to give you a start.

 

Books on Marketing

To get a good idea of how to create your marketing plan, read books on marketing books. Here are some great suggestions:

 The Complete Guide to Self Publishing
1001 Ways to Market Your Book
Frugal Book Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing for Writers
Plug Your Book
Sell more Books!
Promote Your Book

These are all books I found and purchased after scouring Amazon for a few hours, reading reviews, and researching the books’ authors. Of the books I found, these appear to be the best.

Networking

You want to start building your network if you haven’t already. Find authors you like and start discussions with them. Talk to readers and just get to know them. Reach out to book bloggers and start to make connections with them. Have conversations, make friends, and build your writing network.

 

Blog Tours

Next, you want to look into scheduling a book tour. Tours are a great way to create buzz, though they usually aren’t great for sales because of all the giveaways frequently associated with tour stops. Still, a tour is important because your name and your book essentially go on tour in a similar way to traditional book tours. The perk of blog tours, though, is that it’s cost effective.

A traditional book tour is when authors travel around to various book stores for book signings and speeches. You, however, can stop at multiple blogs across the country on a single day without spending a dime. Over the course of the week, you can be international. Blog tours are cost effective and arguably a more effective marketing tool for this reason, and thus you will see many of them if you frequent book blogs.

For now, just research what it will take. Look at tour schedules from successful authors or from authors you like. You can make mental notes of people in your network you’ll want to ask to be a stop on your tour and return favors for them. It’s the give and take of networking. Also, though, begin researching other book bloggers who aren’t in your network. See what their policies are on tours and begin to compile a list. This will help get you started when it’s time to actually plan your tour.

 

Advanced Review Copy (ARC) List

An Advanced Review Copy is a great way to get reviews before your book even releases. It creates a push for the book that gets people excited, but also gets you reviews before your book is released. Not all ARC reviews will be glowing or even positive, but the important thing is to be reviewed.  BTW, ARCs are free for the reader in exchange for a review. Just in case you didn’t know.

Create a place for people to sign up for a free eBook copy of the novel like I did with Treason. A good tool to use is Google Docs because you can create a form pretty easily and embed that into a post. These forms can be managed using Google Docs and even exported. It’s a nice way to manage data.

If you don’t want to let just anyone get onto your ARC list, you can also invite people quietly by tweeting or emailing them. Whichever way you choose, it’s important to have this list. The goal is to get as many people who like your genre or your writing style on it as you can.

 

The VIP Email List

Some people just want to hear updates. They don’t want to review, since they think of themselves as just readers. Give these readers a chance to still know when you plan to release the book by giving them a place to sign up for updates. I use Mad Mimi to manage my email blasts and weekly blog update email subscriptions, so I highly recommend them. They’re great and make editing, sending, and managing email promotions very simple.

Another perk to having an email list is that you can send them promotional emails about the series, like when a free chapter goes up or when sales go out. Readers don’t want to be blasted with information all the time, so I recommend sending these newsletter type emails at most once or twice a month.

 

These were all just ideas. You can ultimately do whatever you want, but the important part is that you should create a marketing plan before you release your book. Do something every day to market your novel, even if it’s small. I’ve heard you should do 5 things a day to market your book, and I think that’s a good start. Pick your plan and stick to it for the most part, but always be on the lookout for fun new ways to make it better.

What other ideas do you have to help someone who’s just starting out? Let’s get a discussion going.