Writing your book might seem like the toughest part about being an author, but really it’s only the first step. The second step, book promotion, is where most people fall short. You see, it’s not enough to write a great book and just expect it to sell itself. That worked back when eBooks first came around. All you’d have to do is put your book online and people would start buying it.

Nowadays, your focus needs to be on spreading your book to as many readers as you can across the internet. The only problem with this is that there are hundreds of different strategies to try and market your books. It can become difficult to decide which ideas are worth trying and which ones are worth tossing in the trash bin.

Do you want to learn the best ways to promote and sell your books or content online? I’ll teach you the specific techniques and strategies that have allowed me to sell 1000’s of books. CLICK HERE to sign up for my 1 on 1 Coaching Program.

We’ve spent multiple years testing different book promotion ideas on our own books and have concluded that there are 10 tried and proven strategies. If you apply all or most of these to your book you will have a much greater chance at hitting a bestsellers list. So without further ado let’s begin.

Pre-launch

Book promotion strategies can be separated into two different sections: Pre-launch and post-launch. There are a number of things you can do before your book is actually launched that will allow you to build followers and hype. This is beneficial because on launch day your book will already have a ton of momentum and sales. Meaning higher ranking in search engines like Amazon and Google. As well as more exposure to a larger audience.

1. Create an Author Website

This is one of the most important pieces of a pre-launch book promotion plan. For this you are going to want to create a website. The website can be about you as an author or about the book by itself. If you choose to make an author site then you can list all of your works. This allows you to have a centralized location where you can send traffic to and advertise each book you have.

Another benefit of creating a website is that it will greatly improve people’s view of you as an author. It tells people that you are serious about writing and that it isn’t just a hobby. You will also be able to create forms where interested readers can sign up for news related to new releases that you have as well as promotions you may be running.

2. Start an Email Campaign

The most important part of having your website is what I mentioned about creating a newsletter for interested readers. Once you have a newsletter you will be able to email your readers directly. The sooner you start this the better because you the more people you have subscribed the greater results you will have.

A good book promotion idea to add to your email campaign is to update followers at each stage of your books production. You can do this with pictures and stories. For example you might send an email when the draft copy is complete and then another email when your get the book back from the editors or the cover is done.

A great strategy is to create a series of follow-up emails that you pre-schedule to be broadcast on specific dates. This way you don’t have to manually email each subscriber. One of the best ways we have found to handle email marketing is a service call Aweber. They were recently voted the #1 email marketing service provider by PCMag.

(Click Here to View Aweber)

3. Social Media Pages

Next on our list of pre-launch book promotion ideas is to take over social media. Even before you publish your book you want to begin establishing as much of a social media presence as you can. This will allow readers to learn a little about you and create more of a connection with you. It also gives you a way to connect with more people and spread the word about your book.

Another great thing is that if you have an email list you can link the email list to social media. By doing this you can get your email subscribers to follow you on social media or vice versus. Both of these strategies can be leveraged to get more sales as well as book reviews.

The main social sites you should be active on are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. However, technology and trends are always changing so I’d recommend that you stay up to date on the most recent social media activities.

Post-Launch

These are all the strategies to implement after the book has been published. You can begin starting these the day the book becomes available for sale. Post-launch can be broken down into two categories: Organic and paid. Organic means that after the work has been done this strategy will continue to drive sales and traffic to your book for months or years to come. Paid means that you will pay for advertising either through exposure to audiences or per click.

Organic Book Promotion Ideas

4. Optimizing Search Engines

One of the absolute best ways to drive traffic and sales to your books is to boost your rankings on search engines. The main ones you want to focus on are Google, Amazon, and Bing. I’d recommend doing research into each one to figure out exactly what criteria they look at to determine ranking.

To get a good picture of the power of this think of the Harry Potter series. If you type the word Harry Potter into google the entire first page is filled with either links to buy the book or read about it. You want that to be the same for when someone either googles your author name or the name of a book you published.

5. Maximize Revenue Streams

So many authors look past this simple but effective way to increase revenue. You need to take advantage of every marketing avenue and format available to you. Don’t just create an eBook version of you book. Create a paperback version and even an audiobook version as well. Then if you really start to gain traction create a hardcover version. If it’s in an appropriate genre you could even try translating the book into different languages.

What this does is opens you up to many different types of customers. There are some people who only read ebooks and some people who only listen to audiobooks etc. By having more versions of content you will be able to reach a much greater audience. You will also be surprised to find that some of your existing customers might even buy different versions of the same book.

For instance a reader who bought the ebook version of your novel might decide that they want to listen to it while they are driving. So they then go and buy the audiobook version as well. This allows you to make much more money from the same book.

6. Guest Posting on Blogs

Another effective book promotion idea is to guest post on blogs that are related to you or your books niche. To do this you will want to find blogs that align closely to your book and contact the owners. Some blogs will have systems set up for you to submit content to them to post. For others you will have to contact the admin directly.

It’s always good to offer something to the blog owner in return for posting about your book. A couple good ideas for this is to create content for them, write something on your own blog about their blog, or do a review for them.

By posting on their blog you will be accomplishing two things. First you’ll be advertising to their customer base and thus reaching a larger audience. Second you will be providing a backlink to either your own blog or your books sales page. This helps prove to the search engines that your blog or book is popular and will help you to rank higher. (Remember when we talked about that organic search strategy)

It will also provide more traffic to your website where they can sign up to your email list autoresponder.

7. Create Video Trailers

For this book promotion idea you will want to create a video about your book. There are a couple different tactics you can implement for this. One of them is to do a review of your book where you explain to people what it’s about or why you created it. Another is to do a book release video where to try to build hype about the book. Lastly, you can create a trailer for your book similar to those that are created for movies.

Once you’ve created the video you’ll want to post it to a social video sharing website such as YouTube or Vimeo. By doing this you’ll be able to continually reach new customers as they search for different things on YouTube and find your videos and then link to your book or blog.

8. Forums and Groups

Often times people will join forums or groups related to their interests or problems they may be facing. Posting in these places can be a very effective book promotion tactic. You already know what the readers are interested in because they joined the group or forum. Therefore, you will have better luck when trying to promote to them.

Usually these forums and groups are well moderated so you can’t just spam advertisements to them. The best way to use these groups is to make yourself active within them and then slowly promote yourself while providing help and value at the same time.

Paid Book Promotion Ideas

9. Paid Advertising

This one might take a bit of experimenting to get down. Paid advertising will work better for physical books. They are generally priced higher which allows you to spend more money on your ads to still make a profit.

There are many different places where you can run advertisements for your books. A couple of examples would be Google Adwords, Bing ads, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and Bookbub. Each one of these is going to take a slightly different strategy and will reach a different audience so I’d recommend you try them all separately to figure out which works for you.

All in all if you can spend $1 and in return you get $2 then why would you not do it?

10. Book Giveaways

I included this one in the paid book promotion ideas because you might take a cut in revenue and often times it is coupled with paid advertising. Basically, to run a book giveaway you would give your book away for free or at a huge discount for a specific number of days.

By doing this you will be able to gain more followers as well as rank higher on search engines such as Amazon. You might want to also try coupling a book giveaway with a couple of the other promotion strategies to give it a boost. Even though you make less money immediately you will have a much larger exposure and make more money in the long term.

Promoting your book can be a long and grueling process, but it doesn’t have to be. By using these book promotion ideas you will be able to make a much stronger connection with your audience. You’ll also reach way more people and therefore sell more books.

Do you want to learn the best ways to promote and sell your books or content online? I’ll teach you the specific techniques and strategies that have allowed me to sell 1000’s of books. CLICK HERE to sign up for my 1 on 1 Coaching Program.

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