How Do I Market My Nonfiction Book?

A question I frequently see in the self-publishing/indie author groups I belong to is “How do I market my book?” And just for more fun, it is usually posted using exactly those words, with no context as to genre, target market, what the author has done so far, etc.

Marketing Your Nonfiction Book Has Many Variables

There are many different types of nonfiction books, from biographies and memoirs, to self-help, how-to, academic and reference, history, medicine, etc. Even books in the same category can have totally different audiences (think holistic medicine and genetic engineering).

How you market your self-published book is a function of your book’s genre, your target audience, what you want your book to do for your reader, and what you want your book to do for you and your business. For some nonfiction authors, the book is just about telling their story: There’s no backend sale or upsell to coaching, consulting, etc. That’s fine… and it’s going to affect how you market your book. In this scenario, your end goal is to sell copies.

If you’re a coach or consultant who has written a book, you might want to use the book as a manual or workbook with your own clients. You may want your book to be a lead magnet to bring in clients. You might want it to establish your authority and credibility. In this context, for many business writers, their book is a marketing tool. They send it out to event promoters, heads of various corporate divisions like sales or HR to get consulting, speaking and/or training gigs.

Because there are so many different genres and different goals, there is a wide range of marketing strategies available, and some work better than others for various types of books. Putting your book in Kindle Unlimited is a great move for many romance genres. It’s not such a great move for a technical nonfiction book. If you’re not comfortable speaking in front of a crowd, going on a lecture tour is not a comfortable option for you. You might be okay with podcasts or talk radio. You might not. If you are great at analyzing data, you might find the sweet spot for running ads to your book(s), on Amazon, Facebook, Google, or other platforms. TikTok works really well for fiction. It can work well for nonfiction. Again, it’s a matter of genre and the author’s ability to tap into what works on a specific platform.

So, in order to answer the original question, we need to ask more specific questions.

How Do I Market My Nonfiction Book?

1. Who is my target/ideal reader?
2. What will my book to do for them?
3. What do I want this book to do for me?
4. What should I put in my messaging that will attract my ideal reader and tell them what results they will get from reading my book?
5. What kind of languaging will my ideal reader respond to? (Casual, formal, corporate, heartfelt, etc.)
6. Where can I find my ideal readers, online and offline?
7. What is the best way to put my message in front of them?

Once these questions are answered, there are dozens of strategies you can use to put your message in front of the right people. But until you understand who you are selling to, and in the real world, usually until you have experimented with some of those strategies, you won’t know which will work best for you and your book.

Gone are the days when you could upload a book to Amazon, get a dozen sales, and gain traction. Selling books, especially in today’s market where 10,000+ books a day are uploaded to Amazon, takes careful consideration of what you offer and who your customer is. There is no one size fits all marketing strategy.