Every author’s dream is to have a literary agent who will quickly get back with you to sign a wonderful, all-inclusive contract with a major publisher who is thrilled at the opportunity to handle your book. Wouldn’t that be great?
Unfortunately, this dream happens to only a relative handful (compared to the total number of new books coming out) of author’s each year. Far more authors embark upon the challenging task of self-publishing. Although it can be satisfying and rewarding, it can be difficult to know where to start in marketing your book. There are definitely some authors who succeed at generating book sales and who make money off their books.
Here are 9 quick tips for authors who want to promote their self-published books:
- If your book interior typography is not at a professional level and you do not have an attractive cover design, you will not get any placements in bookstores, either through chains or independents, unless you are good friends with the store manager.
- The absolute best marketing website for self-published authors is http://www.bookmarket.com. Buy John Kremer’s book and study it.
- Social media and blogs can be effective marketing tools, but only if the author is an active, honest participant in discussions rather than just promoting the book.
- A book website is a good idea, but competition for keyword placement in search engines for book websites is incredibly fierce. Only a sustained campaign of search engine optimization, blog posts, search for reciprocal inbound links on related sites, active social media linkbacks and long-tail keyword optimization will give you any traffic on the site.
- Kindle books are outselling soft cover books. Get your books converted to Kindle editions and setup an amazon.com account for them.
- Createspace (amazon.com) is great for authors who don’t know where else to get their books formatted, get a cover design, or have it printed other than by using a service. But it can be expensive and will not necessarily generate hoped-for sales. Another option is to look at Lightning Source. They are print-on-demand only, but offer most of the same distribution opportunities as Createspace. LSI is owned by Ingram Books. If a distribution option is selected, the book will be included in the Ingram Book Catalog and can be ordered through book stores using the online catalog.
- The best selling self-published books succeed because the author has made a conscious, solid, time-consuming effort to sell books without trying to attach an hourly amount to their personal time spent in promoting the book.
- Non-fiction self-published books are far easier to sell than fiction, especially if they are written by subject matter experts and used as back-of-room sales for workshops and seminars.
- Successful self-published authors are not afraid of “shameless self-promotion.”
These are just some basics. If you want to travel the self-publishing road, be aware that it is difficult and requires persistence and commitment. Good luck!