Writing a book that will be a bestseller is what many people want these days. Creating a written world that will capture thousands or even millions of people is an honorable goal. If you one of those writers or only writers-to-be, read on.
Some people write a book and think it is enough. However, you definitely need to create a marketing strategy and to make your book visible to people. With the number of works written every year, your one can get easily lost in the sea of other pieces and it won’t get the attention it deserves. If you choose to market your book on your own instead of hiring people for that, the following tips may be useful.
How to start
Marketing a book should be started with an author. If you already have a reputation, it is great. But if you don’t, you definitely need one. No one wants to read a book written by a person they cannot Google. Make yourself visible for starters. Register on the biggest writers’ platforms, friend some authors, publishers and other important people in social networks, get involved in discussions, etc. It is also a good thing to have a blog. Quite a lot of successful bloggers ended up as successful book authors. If you get the authority of a respectful blogger and many people will read your stuff, you will definitely have an audience for your book, too. Besides, blogging can be a nice tool to fight writer’s block when you write a big book.
Another option is to create a site dedicated to the lovely you. Write everything about yourself there, describe your works, post your pictures and organize meetings. Even if it’s not popular at the beginning, maybe in the future you’ll be glad you made it. Anyway, there are different methods to become visible as an author; use at least some of them.
Have a plan
If you want to become the best in anything, you most certainly need a plan. Trying to market your book randomly may work if you are super lucky, but having a plan is always a better way to handle things. You can make a plan by adding the tips from this very post and deciding in details what you will need to do to achieve every point. Or it can be your own plan including your own ideas and steps. Having a strict plan often guarantees that you will know what to do and will get to your goals much faster.
Make the right connections
In one of the previous points, there were a couple of words about friending important people in social networks. Let’s talk more about that. Having the right connections is one of the most important things both in life and business. Imagine how much interest there would be in your book if one of the best book critics wrote a review of it. Making such connections is not always easy as you can imagine how many writers want to be friends with famous bloggers, critics, journalists or authors. But you definitely need to try.
A great way to do it is to visit different literary events where all this elite often hangs. And don’t go there with the single intention to make cool friends; it will always be noticeable. Just go have fun, get new information and maybe you’ll be lucky to have someone important read your book and tell people about it.
Social networks are good for connections, too. However, you shouldn’t just friend some literary critic, ask him or her to read your piece and hope for the best. Build some ground for it. Like their posts, participate in discussions and get the idea of who they are before you ask them about anything.
Tell people about your book in blog posts
You already are a writer, right? So what stops you from writing a couple (or a couple of dozens) of articles and ask people around to publish them on their sites? It can be either a direct promotion of your book (“Young author wrote a book about unbelievable friendship” or “The new book breaks gender stereotypes”) or you can write some general articles or lists and include mention or link to your own book (“Ten new books worth reading” or “New horror novels that will make you really scared”). When you write such a blogpost, you can look around online for cool sites and blogs about literature and ask the owners or editors to publish your post. Many sites accept such content if it is interesting and well-written.
Publish your book on free literary sites
There are plenty of sites today that offer writers to publish their books for free. Some of them will offer readers to read new books for free and some will have a paying system. So, choose whichever you are more comfortable with. If your goal is money, naturally the second option is more suitable. If you want to be recognized first, better choose platforms where people can read books with no charge. Note that not many people would pay for new unknown and unmarketed books. Another good option is publishing only a part of your book so that when people start reading and get mesmerized by your talent, they will want to buy it.
So, these were some basic content marketing tips for writers. Of course, what matters the most is your book itself. The most of your effort should go to writing a piece that will make you proud and will make people excited about it. If you truly believe you’ve created something worthy, then you cannot but make people read it, too. As you know, it took more than a year and twelve rejections from publishers before J.K. Rowling could make Harry Potter visible to the world. So, never get desperate if your book doesn’t get enough attention at the beginning. Maybe it just needs some marketing from you to become a true hit.
William Sarto is a marketer and content strategist from GoHunters – freelance writing board. He shares his knowledge and experience in his articles based on current marketing trends. He is passionate about all new techniques and methods appearing in digital marketing. Stay tuned via twitter or Google+.