#16 in an occasional series on writing non-fiction
As marketing is such a big subject, I’ve spread it across three blogs. Here we have a quick look at the mechanics of your book marketing plan in the twenty-first century.
Identify market channels before you even begin to write. If your primary audience will be inhabitants of a specific region or tourists visiting it, target that region’s book shops, craft fairs and local media. If aiming at a special-interest group, such as mums-at-home or model plane enthusiasts, feed into their websites, Facebook groups, online fora and specialist magazines.
Obtain a professional quality author photograph to use in your promotional material that reflects the image you want to project; fitness guru, mountaineer, super-mum, chef. I regularly take carefully composed pictures on my camera or phone when out and about to give me a library of images I can use to support my blog and social media posts. These can be as generic as sunsets, or posed shots of my books in unusual locations.
Your book should be a quality product, well edited and proofed, and free from glaring errors. Disappointed buyers will be merciless in giving you one or two-star ratings online.
Create an author website to show you are a serious writer or reinforce your ‘brand’ as cook, boatbuilder or world traveller. It need not be fancy and easy to use formats are available for free, for example on WordPress, but it is worth buying your own domain name as they are not expensive. Keep it up to date.
Create an Author Profile on Amazon, if they are carrying your books, and on sites such as Bookbub if your book is available as an E-book. You should also be on Goodreads, as the site links through to Amazon and reviews on one site can be seen on the other. This is pretty straightforward, but you will need to give thought to what you say about yourself, your interests and your writing. There is a fine line between selling yourself and boasting but never be boring (we’ve said that before).
Social media helps improve your digital footprint, makes you more visible and allows readers to engage with you. You could set up an author page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or even Tik Tok. Use only the channels which you are comfortable with, and which you have time to service as feeding them with content and responding to reactions eats hours. The best strategy may be to concentrate on just one or two. You may wish to keep these sites separate from the ones you use to keep in touch with real-world friends and family.
On its own, social media posts may not sell a single book, so are there to support your other marketing. Most of the content should not be ‘buy my book’; the 20/80 rule applies in that you will get away with one blatant piece of promotion in every five posts. Your remaining content should be ‘value added’ pieces or images that are interesting in their own right.
Be aware that you will regularly be stalked by criminals and fake profiles on social media, so be wise to their tricks.
A blog makes your website more interesting and creates material to share to your other social media platforms. Blogs again are time consuming, and you might want to write one fortnightly or monthly. Mine takes between one and two hours to compose, then more time to share to appropriate platforms. The content should again be ‘value added’, that is giving the reader something for free. You will probably have a good deal of ideas and research that did not fit into your book and this makes ideal material for a blog. Keep posts short – 500 to 1000 words is ideal – and be aware that copyright and libel laws apply to the internet too. Beware ‘I strain’, in that readers are far more interested in the subject you are talking about than you as a person.
Engage your local media, get them excited about the ‘war veteran turned writer’ or whatever your image is. It helps to develop personal contacts to give names to send material to. There is a lot of competition for attention, so prepare for your email press releases to be ignored. Local media can be lazy so write your press releases in the style of the intended newspaper or radio blog; the reporters can then ‘lift and drop’ parts of your text straight into theirs. Tabloid newspapers are good examples to follow, in that the key information should be in the header and the opening lines. Your text should be spare and to the point, avoiding long and complex sentences. Try to keep it to a single printed page, include your contact details and links to your social media sites. Include an image of your book cover and your author photograph.
Get reviews, and not just from your best mates. You will need to do some legwork here and identify magazines, blog sites and respected reviewers who are likely to want to see your book; you will need to provide free copies. Once your book is for sale, encourage your readers to post reviews. Brace for a few bad ones and those trolls who delight in being horrible. Take note if there is a pattern of comments that indicate flaws in your work, but do not let negativity deter you.
In the third and final blog on marketing we will dare take a look at the dark arts.
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