Now What? How to Find an Audience for Your Book

As part of our “Now What?” Months, we’re shifting our focus to publishing in all its myriad forms. Today, Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors closes out a series on independent publishing, focusing on how to market and promote your book :

This the final post in a series of four that leads authors through the design and formatting phases of the writing and self-publishing journey. You’ve completed your first draft in 30 days, completed the self-editing and editorial stage, the design and formatting stage, and the production and distribution stage. Now what? It’s time to market and promote your book.

Begin With Your Motive in Writing your Book.

The key to good organic book marketing is to connect with readers around your deepest motives for writing the book in the first place. Creative motives for writing a book fall into three categories. We write either to:

educate
inspire 
entertain

The best books probably do all three, but one will always be uppermost in the author’s heart.

Writing As Service

Each of these creative intentions has service at its heart. This is what I call the ‘point of service’, and it is there that you go to reach your readers. What do you want them to feel as they read your books? Can you set up a social media strategy that replicates and augments this emotional response to your work?

Aim to create short bite-sized pieces—blog posts, Twitter or Facebook updates, pictures on Pinterest or Instagram—that connect with readers in the way your books do.

Listening to Your Potential Readers

Go where most of your readers are most likely to be found. Pay attention to what matters to them. Take your time with this phase, as long as is necessary for you to understand them.

Learn from them. How might you be able to help? Inspire? Entertain? Amuse? Inform? As you listen, think of your book, of its deepest messages, of its raison d’etre. When the time feels right, initiate a conversation. Not with the intention of flogging your wares, but with the intention of serving these readers in the same way that your book serves them.

If you are authentic in engaging the “point of service”, you will organically develop that indie author desirable: a strong author platform. But you will also, more importantly, come to value that work for itself and value that direct connection to your readers.

Important Note: Social media provides authors with a strategy to increase the odds in our favor. Unwillingness to do it is often just plain old creative resistance. However, if you’ve honestly tried (not just been lazy or resistant) for a time and genuinely found that it  interferes with your creative process, you will need to find another way. What feeds your writing must always come first.

Email Marketing

You use the platform you build through social media not to sell books directly but to attract readers to your website so you can  build the number one, most important, never to be neglected strand in author marketing—drum roll, please—the email list.

To build your list, you need a blog and/or a website. There, you offer your readers something of value for free in exchange for their email address. This is permission marketing. You have given something to the person and in exchange asked permission to send them more useful information.

Note: List building is not list-buying. It’s the growth of your own list over time, in exchange for something of value.

If you have engaged the “point of service”, people will already know, like and trust you. If you have provided them with education, entertainment or inspiration and then you write and tell them, “Hey, I published a book. I think you’ll like it. Here’s where you can buy it”, a lot of them will.

Even better, many of them will go and review the book, and spread the word for you.

Paid Marketing For Authors

Facebook Ads: Facebook ads are the current hot favorite in paid marketing and they work well when you have a clear strategy. The best use of Facebook Ads, for most authors, is to use them to build your mailing list rather than to sell your books. Mark Dawson, one of the experts on Facebook ads for authors, says he would rather have a sign-up than a sale any day. This is because nothing is more valuable to an author than—another drum roll, please—your email list.

Goodreads Giveaways: Authors who are members of Goodreads can choose to host giveaways. Goodreads only offers print books and authors sometimes make the mistake of feeling they have to offer a large number of books. A one-book giveaway can attract as much attention as a ten-book giveaway.

Cover Ads on Review Blogs: Choose high-traffic review blogs to feature your ads. Keep track of your preferred Review Blogs and Advance Readers, and take note of those you’d like to advertise with. Test your return on investment.

Bookbub: BookBub is one of the more well-known advertisers for indie authors. Their success is based on their email list, to whom they send discounted books. Bookbub may be one of the more expensive options but it tends to have the highest return on investment, which is more important.

Using Twitter for Book Promotion: Popular genres do well on Twitter when the book is well presented, has great reviews, an eye-catching cover, and is sold at a competitive price.

Set your Creative and Commercial Intentions

No matter what marketing or promotional activity you engage in, start by identifying your aims. Not just to “sell books” or “sell more books” but how many books, to whom and how.

You’re an indie author. Your time is limited. So make the Pareto Principle work in your favor. You cannot do everything and it won’t be perfect. Good enough is what you’re after.

Like all aspects of publishing, remain open to learning by doing, experimenting and exploring, doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t, until you have found your own individual best path to your readers.

ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors) has a list of tools and services that makes indepedent publishing manageable. Members also have access to a closed forum, where they can ask questions of other authors who have published this way before them—and access to the “Ask ALLi” program, which promises to answer any self-publishing question.

Orna Ross writes and publishes poetry and fiction as well as creative guides, and is greatly excited by the democratising and empowering potential of author-publishing. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller’s “100 Most Influential People in Publishing” since 2013. ALLi  (The Alliance of Independent Authors) is a non-profit professional association for authors who self-publish. Our motto is “Working together to help each other”.

Top photo by Flickr user unsure shot.