INTRODUCTION

This column is for writers and authors who, like me, are not experienced book marketers.

Gone are the days when writers sold their work to publishers who promoted their books. Marketing was never traditional publishers’ strong suit anyway. If you are writing and self-publishing in the digital world you must be in charge of your own book marketing.

I’ll find you free or inexpensive promotions. However, they will cost you time.

The time to write your book will be multiplied many times by your promotion of it.

I’ll tell you about methods used by

• successful professional writers;
• experts have not yet tried;
• some friends.

NOTES

• Some tips might not be as good in six months. Facebook specifically changes its rules frequently and without much notice. Other platforms change fast too. Be vigilant.

• According to many experts up to 90% of marketing is a waste of time (a least by new marketers). We can’t afford that.

There are critical aspects of a book that influence attention, curiosity, and sales. We’ll deal with all these in more detail in later posts, but this is how you start. You need the following:

A GREAT BOOK:

This is a given except when it’s not.

We all know of execrable books that sell more than good books.

You can sell a poor book with great marketing (for a while at least) but you can’t sell a good book with poor marketing.

We’ll assume your book IS Good.

COVER.

You need a strong, attractive cover. The image and copy have to be ‘readable” on a thumbnail which is what generally we see first. The images should be genre-specific.

TITLE 

Obvious.

SUB-TITLE

(If used- and it can be used to advantage even with fiction.)

Sub-titles can narrow the focus re genre, period, or sub-genre. It can utilize keywords for search engines allowing interested readers to find it easily.

DESCRIPTION

The book’s description is more compelling than the cover or title. Yes, you need to grab attention but then you have to get people to the description, to get a strong idea of the book.

REVIEWS   

We need reviews, social proof, testimonials, that indicate other readers like the book. They are difficult to acquire. You might get 1,000 downloads of a book and get just a few sales and fewer reviews. And Facebook, for one platform, has made it more difficult to get reviews. For example, they hide things we used to be able to see, the emails of some reviewers. Ad they have other restrictions.

CLEAN MANUSCRIPT  

Even though we sell books often for $.99- $2.99, people still get upset if they find a manuscript with errors in alignment, grammar, spelling, etc. It appears amateurish. This means no errors or tiny ones (even the best books usually have a typo or two, but they don’t help) good interior design, clean font for reading, etc. That means using an editor. Yes, it is expensive but it’s more expensive to lose reviews and sales you might have had.

There’s no point promoting a book that doesn’t conform to these seven “must-haves.’”

WC : 515

Frank Daley writes near Toronto in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.