#17 in an occasional series on writing non-fiction
If you are self-publishing or are with a small press who will play ball, you can employ a number of sophisticated strategies, particularly if promoting e-books outside your local region. You will need to study the various techniques on offer and apply them rigorously. These are in a constant state of change so this blog written in late 2025 could already be out of date by the time you read it. Be very surgical on how you spend your time and be realistic as to what you expect to achieve. If you have the money, you can employ a marketeer and stop reading here.
Be productive. If you have written five books you will find marketing the sixth much easier. You will benefit from ‘sell-through’ by people who liked your earlier books buying the new one. If your books come as a set or a series on a related subject they can also be promoted jointly, meaning the time and money spent per book is much less. You can offer deals such as a box set or offer one book free as a ‘reader magnet’ to attract buyers to your others.
Every marketing blog will tell you that a newsletter is crucial and say ‘build a mailing list!’ Then neglect to tell you how. The newsletter is much like a blog but sent out to a list of email adresses you control. Easy in principle, easy to compose, but you will need 500+ email addresses to make it worthwhile. Many people will ignore your email when it arrives in their inbox and only a fraction of those who read it will go on to buy a book, so you need a lot of addresses to make one sale. People will be unsubscribing all the time, so the list needs to be continually maintained. Be aware of data protection legislation so ensure people have specifically opted in to your email list and they always have the right to opt out. Sharing of mailing lists generally infringes data protection, even if done accidentally. The easiest sin to commit is including the whole list of addresses in a ‘cc’ which everyone else can read.
My website is built using WordPress and incorporates a mailing list sign-up tool that links directly to Mailchimp (the link is at the bottom of this blog). Tutorials on Youtube explain how to write and edit a newsletter within Mailchimp, how to send test emails and then release it to your list. Formal requirements relating to data protection are built into the site and its wording, including the right to unsubscribe. Many other options exist; some are free to use while your list is below a certain size. The key to a newsletter is to keep it brief, to the point, and interesting to your subscribers. Direct the content at a well defined group, model soldier enthusiasts or home knitters, rather than a nebulous ‘everyone’. Some authors are now using Substack instead of Newsletters, which may reach a wider audience but you do not control the mailing list and your ability to monitor effectiveness is less. There are also training tutorials for Substack.
‘Reader magnets’ attract people to sign up to your mailing list. They can be actual prizes that suit your target audience, or free stuff you have created such as articles or access to a video. You will need to create this before you start your campaign, and of course you still need to find a way to tell hundreds of people about it.
Paid advertising on Amazon or Facebook can be cost-effective if well targeted in conjunction with the techniques mentioned above. Unfocussed adverts are a good way of spending more money than you are bringing in.
Sales tracking is helpful to understand how effective your marketing has been, and whether one trick is working while another is just costing time and money. You will need to create at least a spreadsheet or get hold of a more sophisticated sales tracking tool.
Be flexible. You may find that changing your cover or even your title will make a book more attractive. Adjusting the price can be a way to achieve more sales and gain reader reviews. You may make an E-book 99p/99c in the run-up to its launch, for example. Do you aim to sell 100 books with a 40p profit margin or 10 books with a £2 margin? Backlist titles could be given away for free in order to promote the new one. If you are selling physical books this tactic is more difficult as your profit margins will be quite small and a book that is for sale at ‘half price’ sounds as if the shop has a heap of unsold copies. However, consider knocking say 10% off the cover price for a specific occasion, such as during launch week or at a signing event. You will need to track your sales to see how effective these strategies are.
This is all a great deal of work and can take up as much time as writing, so is not something to be taken on lightly. But if you have the skills and the time, perhaps you can master the dark arts.
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