You need a marketing plan for your self-published book or all that hard work—the blood, sweat, and tears, will be for naught. Over 11,000 books are uploaded to KDP/Amazon every day, and your book is just one small fish swimming in a tsunami. Gone are the days when you could put a book up on Amazon and you had a chance to be noticed. You need to start working on your marketing plan for your self-published book while you are writing your book, not after.
Why?
Start with Your Reader in Mind
A marketing plan helps you focus on who your reader is and what they want from you. It has you take stock of what other books are already published and, with the magic of Amazon reviews, allows you to see what people liked in a book and more importantly, what they wanted and didn’t get. Understanding your target reader will shape the actual content that goes into the book, as well as the way you present it.
It will also allow you to build in some marketing hooks and to create engagement with your readers. Tim Ferris is a genius at this. Throughout his books, he will discuss a topic and then send the reader to his website to get more information, watch a video, or download helpful worksheets. Many of these little extras are behind an opt-in form: It’s a way for Tim to capture his readers’ names and email addresses so he can continue to market to them.
I work in the realm of business books and how-tos. Most of those have built-in value for their readers—people buy them because they are looking for information and solutions. Memoirs and inspirational books should uplift people. A book of essays might give life-lessons, have practical takeaways for people—or it might just make them laugh and forget about their worries. As a writer, you should constantly be asking yourself if what you are writing is valuable to your reader. Again, knowing your target market, what their needs and wants are, will shape the content of the book.
Should You Write Your Marketing Plan Before You Write Your Book?
In a word, No. (Wait for it…) BUT, you should create an avatar of your ideal reader—that person who is going to love and appreciate your book. I use a Target Market Analyzer when I create a marketing plan for both me and for my clients. I know the age range of the majority of my readers, what their experience and education levels are, what problems they are looking to solve, and what their wants are over and above their needs.
First of all, having an avatar gives you someone to write the book to. Some authors go as far as cutting out a picture of a person and putting it up in their work area. Writing in a me-to-you voice creates a personal connection with your readers; having an avatar of your ideal reader will help you do that.
Another reason to go deep into researching your target market before writing your book is that you might realize there is no audience for the book. There’s a reason there are so many 101 Ways to Cook Chicken books and not a whole lot of How to Cook Frog Legs books. There’s nothing worse than spending months (or years!) writing a book and finding out that you are one of only a dozen people who care about the subject.
That being said, you would be amazed at how well some niche topics do. I saw someone post who was writing a book on something like antique locks or doorknobs. I thought, Wow, how niche is that? What I really thought was, Is there a MARKET for that? Then he mentioned he ran a Facebook group on the topic and had several thousand people in the group. Apparently, there is a market for that. If you’re not sure people would be interested in your topic, start a Facebook group, share it around, and see how many people it attracts. And guess what you just did when you started that Facebook group? You started your marketing—you’re building an audience.
Can You Reach Your Audience Easily?
A secondary consideration is whether or not your audience is easy to reach. The Internet makes it easier to find people who are interested in various topics, but some people are more available to market to than others. If you are writing a book that will help real estate agents, for instance, they are super-easy to find. Why? They are licensed in their states and you can purchase mailing lists for them. You can also find associations of Realtors, there are schools for training and continuing education that you may be able to tap into. You can speak at their meetings, advertise in their newsletters, even contribute articles (or better, write a monthly column).
It’s no fun selling books onesy-twosies. In fact, it’s frustrating as hell. David Chilton (of Canada’s Dragons’ Den fame and author of The Wealthy Barber) has a wonderful video course on how to sell your book in bulk. You want to explore ways that you can talk to a group of people who would be interested in your book or better, find companies or associations that would like to either supply the book to their employees or recommend it to them. I reconnected with my childhood friend Bob Burg because his book, Endless Referrals, was given to me as part of a sales training course. He sold his books in bulk to companies that had large sales teams.
Use Your Time Before Publishing to Set Up Your Marketing Basics
Do you need an author website? Technically, no. Should you have one? Absolutely. You definitely need to have an email platform, a place to manage your mailing list and to send messages to your readers and prospective readers. Many of these platforms have a free-to-start program and only start charging after you have reached 500 or 1,000 subscribers. I use Convertkit. I tried several others but Convertkit was recommended so many times by people with large lists that I finally just decided it was time to move up to what the grownups were using. It has everything I need and more. If you don’t have a website, Convertkit can build very professional landing pages for you to send your opt-ins to. And yes, it has a free starter program.
If you don’t have one already, you might start a YouTube channel or podcast, depending on your skills and comfort level. You can start your own Facebook group around your topic. You should definitely join Facebook groups that have your target audience in them and contribute to the conversation; be helpful without being a know-it-all. Take this time while you’re writing to experiment a bit, test the waters, find where your ideal readers are hanging out.
As you are nearing the end of your book, you definitely want to create a book launch and marketing plan. If you’ve been building an audience, three months before release is not too early to start seriously marketing your book. Start posting things like your title and subtitle, a build-up to the cover reveal, perhaps post some short excerpts or quick tips. This is also the time to start asking for (and vetting) beta and ARC (advance review copy) readers as well as volunteers for your “street team” who will help you get the word out about your book.
Writing Your Book Is Only Half the Job
Most self-published books don’t make money because authors don’t know how to market and/or they don’t want to market. Writing your book is only half the job. Marketing your book is an ongoing endeavor which is a nice way of saying never-ending job. It is quite easy to get that initial bounce when you launch your book and make an Amazon bestseller list; it is very hard to have sustained sales for the weeks and months after. But it is those ongoing sales that help keep your book fresh in Amazon’s algorithm, which helps your sales… which keeps your book fresh in Amazon’s algorithm.
You’ll notice I didn’t talk specific strategies. The strategies you use will be a function of what type of book you write, your target audience, your specific marketing and tech skills, and your comfort level with various techniques. If you’re not comfortable speaking in front of an audience, you either have to get comfortable or use a different strategy. If you’re not technically skilled, creating a podcast or YouTube channel may not be for you. Or you might be fine with spending money to have someone do the technical side of things for you. When I build marketing plans for authors, we go over skill sets and comfort levels and I create a marketing plan that can be successfully carried out by the author. The most amazing marketing plan in the world is no good if it can’t be implemented.
The takeaway is this: You work on your marketing while you’re writing your book, not after you’ve finished. Join writer groups, look for free courses (David Gaughran’s Starting from Zero is a phenomenal course—he really should charge for it!), start building your email list. The more prepared you are at launch, the better the chances for your book’s success.
