How To Market Your Self-Published Book

Or, indeed, your traditionally published book.  Because the world of publishing is changing.  Many of us, as writers, have an image of the writing life largely informed by rather fanciful descriptions of said–usually given by the writers themselves and that reflect, if any reality at all, then an aspirational one.  Lord Byron famously described his poetry as flowing off the page, an act that barely required any conscious thought.  And yet a look at his notes reveals that he, in fact, labored over every line.  That each poem was a grueling, often disheartening labor.  And to hear John Updike tell it, writing was merely something he did to pass the time between bouts of inappropriate activity with other men’s wives.  So I suppose it’s not inexplicable that, today, many writers dream of the same: creating, effortlessly or not so effortlessly, and then leaving others to do the hard work of translating that fun into money.

Putting aside, for the moment, that neither Lord Byron nor John Updike were precisely in need of money, nor did they write to generate income, the days of calling up your buddies from Harvard and telling them to “publish this” while you go back to lounging on Crane Beach are over–if, indeed, they ever truly existed in the first place.  The literary world is, less and less, a ghetto of white male privilege.  Self publishing has leveled the playing field in more ways than one.  And even traditional publishing is changing; swelling catalogues and dwindling profit margins mean that you, as an author, are more responsible for your success than you ever were before.  A contract with one of the Big Five no longer guarantees that your book will be successfully marketed, or marketed at all.  An unfortunate fact that’s especially true if no one’s ever heard of you.  As in, if you need marketing the most.  Because your publisher is looking at his bottom line, just like you are; there isn’t the excess cash to spend on gambles.  All you’re getting, with a traditional publishing contract, in exchange for giving up your rights to your own work in perpetuity, is the promise that your book might get marketed–and a lot of directions for how you’re supposed to help out.

Which means that, unfortunately, the problem is inescapable: you have to market your own book.

The good news here is twofold.  First, it’s a lot easier to give up the dream of some mythical publisher in the sky doing all the hard work when you acknowledge that it’s magical thinking.  The experiences of, say, Updike are pretty irrelevant to a world with internet.  And the most successful writers in the world, like Stephen King, have always been open about the fact that writing was a heck of a hard job and involved a heck of a lot more than pecking at a typewriter.  In no field that I know of does there come a magic point where you get to stop working, or at least stop working at those parts of your job that you don’t enjoy, but still continue to enjoy success.  Especially growing success.  Success takes work.  Taking responsibility for your own success, in the form of marketing, is part of success and yes, it too is hard work.

Second, although marketing is hard work, it doesn’t have to be misery-inducing.  I talk to writers all the time who feel completely overwhelmed by even the idea of marketing.  Where do they begin?  How much money should they spend?  How can they know if they’re even successful in their efforts?  There are a lot of ideas out there for how to market yourself as a writer but not a lot of metrics on what, in terms of real numbers, constitutes success.

So, much like the publishing process itself, you’re essentially throwing yourself off a cliff.

What fun.

First, before I get into specific marketing strategies, I want to give you three life strategies that you can and should apply to marketing–and everything else.  The internet is like a gas; it expands to fill the space provided.  Give it the opportunity to take over your life and it will.  Before too long, your best marketing efforts are going to seem like pouring your soul into a black hole.  You can tweet and post and do whatever else for sixteen hours straight and there will still be more to do.  You’ll end up feeling hopeless.  Which is why you need to:

Limit the time you spend each day on marketing, and other writing-related activities that aren’t actually writing.  Set yourself somewhere between ten minutes and an hour and after that, let it go.  Move on to something else.  The side benefit here, too, to limiting your time is that doing so forces you to think seriously about which endeavors are most worthy of your effort.  Is it posting to your blog?  Researching new ad space?  You can’t do it all; giving yourself unlimited time only feeds the (dangerous and ultimately debilitating) myth that you can.
Write.  Writing is still your priority, or should be.  Don’t let telling people about your writing become more important than actually doing it.
Recognize that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and chill out.  You won’t see results right away, if by “results” you mean sufficient book sales to cover your mortgage payment.  And that’s okay.  Your goal, here, should be to get your name out there.  To build your fan base and to maintain the fan base you already have.

So, all that being said, here’s how you should be marketing your book:

Write your next book.  Writing should be your priority.  Remember, you’re trying to succeed as a writer, not a media icon.  Building up your backlist is the single biggest thing you can do, in terms of ensuring your own success.  Doing so will both help you keep the fans you have–who are fans of your writing, remember, not you–as well as give new fans more books to buy.  Readers tend to binge-buy books; if you give them the first entry in a series and they like it, they’ll buy the rest of the series (or at least the next few entries) to have it on hand.  Moreover, as I’m fond of pointing out, one book does not a successful career make–any more than one good week at the office does a successful career make.  As an attorney, for example, it’s a great feeling when you win a case.  But you don’t retire after your first win, to spend the rest of your life basking in the praise.  Because, well…the praise dries up.  What’s next, everyone wonders?  A lawyer makes her reputation on a lifetime of successful cases.  Similarly, you’re going to make your reputation–or not–on a lifetime of well crafted books.
Make sure it’s a good book.  Once in awhile–and this is particularly common among self published authors–I’ll find a great first book and be really excited.  So I’ll pick up the author’s second book and be hideously disappointed that it’s just a hot mess.  You have to, as a writer, remember that that’s your name on the cover and hence your stamp of approval.  Putting out any old product isn’t enough; your goal here is to build a reputation for consistent quality.  Each book is, in that sense, your first book–and your last.  Your last in the sense that, if readers don’t continue to love your series, or each of your stand alone novels, they’ll drop you.  And deservedly so.  So remember that, and don’t get cocky.
Start a blog.  Post to it regularly.  Commit to quality content.  I’ve written a lot here, on this site, about how to write and how to write a blog, specifically.  So have a lot of other people, on a lot of other sites.  In my case, I’m not a new writer but I am relatively new to the published world; my first book came out in June and it’s now the first of July.  I started this blog a couple of weeks before my first book came out.  In that time–so about six weeks–I’ve gone from getting a handful of hits a week to several thousand.  And you, my readers, have pretty much found me through a combination of Google searches and word of mouth.  Several people have been generous enough to share my work on Twitter, or in online digests, and that’s been a tremendous boost as well.  Now, the thing about having a blog is, just having one isn’t enough to drive traffic; just like publishing any old thing and calling it a book isn’t enough to make you a bestseller.  You have to have good content, and content tailored to your readership.  Done right, a blog is a tremendous opportunity to share your voice with the world and, yes, with potential buyers of your books.
Make large portions of your book available online, for free, for people to read.  “Try before you buy” is an age-old formula for success.  Just check out the sample stations at Costco on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see what I mean.  That is, if you can even see what’s on offer through the lines of expectant samplers six people deep.  If you have a good book, you’ll want people to read it.  Conversely, not letting people sample your work speaks to a lack of confidence.  Are you afraid that they won’t like your writing?  Won’t be interested enough in the story to buy the book?  If you’ve written a good enough book, you can put everything up but the last chapter and people will still spend 2.99 to find out what happens.
Get a Twitter account, and use it.  But not to spam people.  Check out the tag “Twitter” on this blog for my (many) thoughts on that subject.  The goal of your Twitter experience, and indeed of your entire social media experience, should be to build personal relationships.  Slowly and painstakingly, one fan at a time.
Connect with your fans.  When they write to you, be gracious.  Thank them sincerely.  Make the time to write back.  Let them know how much it means to you that they’ve enjoyed your book, without placing any burden on them (i.e. don’t tell them, now read this next one).  I do recommend asking, politely, if they’d consider writing an Amazon review.  Few readers realize how much this means to writers, or how much positive reviews can drive up their sales.  But, again, be gracious; don’t push the issue.  A review is a favor.
Start a mailing list.  Put content on that mailing list (which should clog up everyone’s inboxes no more than twice a month, or it’ll get marked as spam and defeat the purpose, not to mention alienate those fans generous enough to sign up in the first place) that readers won’t get anywhere else: writing tips, exclusive chapters, things like that.  I have a mailing list, and it’s awesome!  I know, you’re probably thinking, a mailing list sounds so very 1997.  But this isn’t your (older brother’s?) listserv.  It’s not a listserv at all.  It’s classy.
Hand out review copies like there’s no tomorrow.  Is there a blogger you like?  Send them a review copy (or, if they don’t have directions for how to do this, ask them if you can send one).  Do you have friends and neighbors?  Give them some, too.
Approach a writer you admire, and ask him if he’d consider blurbing your (next) book.  The worst than can happen is he’ll say no.  But a seal of approval from an already established writer can do a lot to boost your credibility.  Which, really, this operates off of the same theory as an Amazon review–only turbocharged.  Other people like this is proof, to the reading world, that there’s meaningful content behind the advertising gloss.  Anyone, after all, can pay for impressive advertising; a good publicist can write an Amazon page that makes almost anything sound fascinating.  Reviews–from whomever–are proof of an independent opinion.  Someone saying yes, this is good without being paid to do so.

Which is why paid advertising only gets you so far.  My limited experience with paid advertising is that it isn’t nearly as effective, in terms of generating book sales, as word of mouth.  And so far, while I have–more as an experiment than anything else–engaged in a couple of paid promotions, I haven’t found them to be worth much in terms of sales.

For the most part, my readers have found me–not the other way around.  And I’m incredibly grateful for that.  But I think the heart of success, in marketing, is remembering what you’re marketing and, moreover, what your marketing is endeavoring to produce.  Too much advertising, in my opinion, makes things too much about the writer and not enough about the book–or, ideally, books.  Your best bet is absolutely always going to be to continue writing and for your focus to be on producing consistent, quality work.  Remember, you don’t have to be a bestseller right off the bat for your first book to eventually become a bestseller.  The virtue of particularly self publishing is that your book is on that virtual shelf forever.  It’ll never be remaindered.  You have all the time in the world to become a billionaire; trying to make it happen overnight is self defeating.  Just keep writing and remember: cream rises.  Quality always will out, in the end–and, conversely, all the marketing in the world can’t make a bad book good.  If you produce a quality product, eventually it will find its market.