Okay, so either you’re thinking about writing a book or you’ve taken the time to put all your thoughts onto paper and now need a plan for how exactly you’ll market your book and get people to buy it! When you’re thinking about writing a book tips on how to actually market your book can make a whole heap of difference between an actual book sale and many, many book sales!
Writing A Book Tips To Consider
There are probably a million ways to get your book in front of possible buyers including pressuring family and friends, tagging random strangers on social, as well as shamelessly dropping links to your Amazon buyers page in FB groups.
While I’d caution you against those tactics, I will say that when I published my first book, I had a few strategies that lead up to some big success right out of the gate. Not only did my book hit #1 on Amazon in several categories in less than 3 days, but it’s also got over 200 5-star reviews from people who just love the content!
This post will be about these strategies and I strongly suggest you try a few if not several, starting with the creation of a book launch team.
Create A Book Launch Team
Do you have an email list? Do you have a few friends, fellow entrepreneurs, or maybe some raving fans? I’m sure you have at least a few people who you can rally together to help offer some much-needed outside feedback and be your support system throughout this process!
If you don’t or don’t want to lean on family and friends, you can always do what I did and send out a blind email to your subscribers and see if anyone will help you out as part of your book launch team in exchange for a free copy once your book is published!
This ended up working out really for me with my first book– as over 500 people initially signed up. And while many of them ended up dropping out as time went on, I still had a core group of like 300 who offered pretty amazing feedback and helped to edit over 200 pages!
What can a book launch team help do?
I would assume everyone has different ideas in mind when it comes to writing a book. Tips on how to allow people behind the scenes of such a big project can come in handy and help make the process less stressful. For me this was tough, but in the end, it was free help that was so constructive I just couldn’t pass it up!
Here are some things I had my book launch team help out with
- Vote on a cover design
- Offer suggestions for chapters
- Choose their favorite title and subtitle
- Make suggestions on specific pages and chapters
- Offer feedback on the book description text
- Read initial chapters for clarity and flow
- Read the final draft
- Offer a public review in the early launch days
- Share book details and posts with friends
- Host a VIP Launch Party
Publishing a book is such a big deal! I mean it really is… I could have never imagined getting 40,000 words curated into one pretty cohesive non-fiction book that kind of sets the tone for people coming to my RV website. It was a huge undertaking and I’m really amazed it turned out as well as it did- to be honest- because there was always that one BIG lingering fear…
What if no one buys this thing?
Deep inside I was so afraid that only the 300 people getting a free copy would ever actually own a copy… I had to constantly talk myself out of wrapping up the whole project and just calling it quits- but because I had already announced it and already set a date, I felt like it was way too late to scrap it at this point. So there was really only one thing to do-
Go big or go home…
Instead of retreating, the only thing to do was to make a big deal out of this book I was pouring so much time into. I like to call it a VIP Launch Party but ultimately it was a launch campaign.
A launch campaign is a series of activities that basically work together to accomplish one specific goal. In this situation, that goal is getting eyes and buys for your book!
Tips for your VIP launch Party:
- Create a landing page for your book that provides a sneak peek and details about what the book will cover.
- Consider a waitlist sign-up in exchange for a few early chapters.
- Go on a podcast tour- and line up guest interviews
- Ask for members of your launch team to leave an honest review.
- Set up a few emails to your list about the upcoming publication and keep them informed on your progress and the publication date.
- Publish blogs about your book, your progress, and promotions.
- Contact Facebook Group Admins and ask if they will allow a post or two about your book and any promotions you may run for the launch.
- Promote some Facebook Posts or create a full-on paid ads campaign to drive some traffic to your book’s landing page.
- Consider hosting a webinar to cover topics related to your book’s main theme.
- Use tools like Amazon KDP Select to offer free downloads and discounts for early buyers.
The goal is to get people excited about your book ahead of the launch, keep them excited and engaged with you throughout the next week or two, and then have them download either a free digital copy or a discounted copy in hopes of getting some pretty early reviews!
Reviews are everything, especially on Amazon, so make sure you concentrate on getting as many reviews as you can!
Get To #1 With A Free Download Day
As far as I can tell, downloads are equal to sales on Amazon. So if you utilize the tools Amazon provides in their KDP Select program, then you can offer your book for free for a certain number of days. This allows eager readers to grab a digital copy of your book and start reading immediately.
For some people, giving away their hard work isn’t going to sit well. For me, it was pretty easy. I love free information, so it’s only natural I would return the favor and provide many tools and information for free!
Here’s how it works.
Whether you’re creating a course or writing a book, tips on how to leverage a freebie or free download are some of my favorites! The main point with this strategy is that each time someone downloads your book, it counts as a sale. So as you work your way up the FREE Charts on Amazon, you’ll be giving yourself a head start on the PAID Charts.
Once your free promotion is over, Amazon will switch you over to the paid charts and you’re standing will remain for a short period of time. During this time, you’ll hopefully be in that glorious #1 spot in your chosen categories and as a result of being #1 more people will see and ultimately click on your book to purchase.
The more people that purchase your book, the better it is for you.
They’ll again add to your rankings and hopefully, give you enough juice to stay in that spot or at the very least the first page of search results for your keywords.
This strategy and the book launch team in general really attributed to most of my success with writing a book. Tips I gathered on the internet and little pieces of information passed from here and there were incredibly helpful as well, but putting it all together in some sort of plan was a job, to say the least!
Marketing doesn’t just happen and neither do sales. You can’t simply list your book on Amazon and think people are just gonna start buying up copies left and right…
You need a plan and you need some tips, like the ones I provided, to help you figure out what to do and what to expect. So make sure you have a plan for success and have done your research on ways to get your book in front of the most people possible.
Writing a Book Tips
If you enjoyed this post on tips for marketing your finished book, then I think you might also enjoy these posts on publishing as well.
