The Best Tool in Your Marketing Box
We are self-publishers. And that’s definitely not a bad thing unless you cannot fathom partaking in an uphill battle. I assume that you can, and if so, you are suitably equipped for a self-publishing journey.
Warning to all of those who have not yet pressed the PUBLISH button: There are certain aspects of this journey that will never be easy.
As self-publishers, we have a story that we want to tell so badly that we write the book and hire someone to edit the book, and then we polish and proofread the book, all on our own. We create a page layout for the book and hire a designer to make a cover for us, and then we send the whole thing into the world via KDP, IngramSpark, Apple Books, and what have you. Not an easy task!
So, congratulations to us. We didn’t need a publishing house to get it done.
But we all know that producing the book is only half the voyage. The second half is getting readers to pick it up and read it. We can’t just put it out there and hope for the best, though that’s what many people do.
Alas, whether we promote the book or not, at some point during this journey, we are likely to ask the question, Why isn’t my book selling?
In most cases, the answer is “marketing.”
SELF-PUBLISHING IS AN UPHILL BATTLE
Strike One Against Us. Anyone can publish a book, and some of “anyone’s” books are, let’s face it, not too satisfying and/or enjoyable (due to bad writing, unattractive interior, amateur cover, etc.).
This is why to this day there's a stigma on self-published books.
Strike Two Against Us. A sizable portion of the general public will assume that your self-published book is “most likely subpar” even before they’ve opened it. And people don’t get excited about things they assume are subpar.
Strike Three Against Us. This one has to do with our lack of an established publishing house to back us. We have no known company name, no brand recognition, no celebrity—nor do we have the industry experts who work under the well-known company name to guide us and toot our horn.
In other words, we don’t have anyone to reassure potential readers that our book is so darn goooood that they will gratefully lose sleep turning pages into the night.
Reese and Jenna don’t pick our books for their lists. Good Morning America doesn’t ask us to be on the show. Drew (or whoever else is out there) doesn’t want to dance with us. Most of us can’t convince Barnes and Noble to agree to a two-hour book signing.
Even the kindest of places—libraries—aren’t exactly thrilled for us to occupy their precious shelf space. (Though, we can and should try to secure some of it.)
Okay, by now you’re probably wondering, with all of these obstacles in our way, do we have even the tiniest chance of climbing out of the black hole of author obscurity into the gleaming supernova (or little rays of sunshine) of success?
The answer is YES. Thank goodness, right?
In 2023, 50 percent of Kindle’s Top 400 books were self-published.
You will be happy to hear that with time and effort, yes, you can find success (however you define it)—and your strongest marketing tool lies completely within your control.
That tool is writing.
Yes, it’s writing. Plain and simple.
You love to write, right? So make your new mantra "Just keep writing."
Writing is the strongest of our marketing tools.
The write-yourself-to-success marketing strategy is as follows: Write a book and then write another and another and another. Publish all of them, one by one. Every book you write and publish is a marketing tool for every other book you have ever written and published.
Seems too simple, doesn’t it? I know what you’re thinking. Oh, keep writing, how original. Thanks so much.
But if you take a moment to study the successful self-publishers who have come before, you’ll find that writing a large number of books is actually the key to success a lot of the time.
Because think about it: Both readers and writers get excited about NEW books. We can’t help ourselves. It’s the intrigue of a new story. The sparkle of a fresh, beautiful cover. The excitement of an interview about how this new great story came about. NEW gets our attention every time.
And that’s basically what marketing is: doing the things that draw attention to your book.
We love NEW, and our need for it never dwindles. That’s just human nature.
As far as marketing goes, when you do a promotion for one book, and you have seven others in your backlist, you are actually promoting all eight books. If the eighth book captures a potential reader’s imagination, they may be willing to give Book One a try. If they like that one, you will have hooked them with your story or your talent (or both), and they’ll buy another book.
In addition, readers who read Books 1 and 2 awhile back will be reminded that it's time to read the third and fourth.
In this way, you can potentially make a lot more book sales and a new avid fan out of every interested reader.
Here are my tips for a marketing plan based primarily on writing books:
Create the best product you can. That means everything from writing the best story you can with a professional editor’s help to getting it copyedited and proofread. Pair all of that with an attractive interior page design, and, most important, a sharp, appropriate cover and a splashy sales description.
In other words, take your book writing and producing very seriously. Yes, you want to write many books quickly, but you cannot sacrifice quality in the process. Putting out a bunch of badly written, slumpy-in-the-middle novels and slapping a mediocre cover on it will not get you where you want to go.
Do what you can to drum up marketing and promo. Claim your little piece of the internet by building a website readers want to explore. Then venture into the land of social media (whatever apps work for you), even if you’d really rather not. In addition, work whatever in-person network you have, whether it’s a friend who owns a bookstore or the town librarian you’ve spoken to a few times. Use your connections, whatever they may be.
Write a series or be like Jodi Picoult. Start a series that you can take to installment fifteen (if you’re still inspired by the story world by then) or wrap up one series and begin a new one.
If you’re not writing in a genre that’s conducive to series, you can write several stand-alones that have their genre in common (like Jodi and many other best-selling authors). Or you can loosely tie those books together, for instance, by place or family. (Click Here for more on writing series.)
Sneak in info about your prior books when posting about the new addition. This is easy to do. When writing a caption on social media, use mini blurbs for each preceding book to bring potential readers up to speed. Also, let it be known which books make up the series by creating posts that include images of every book cover in the series.
Take advantage of paid email promos that specifically feature series. And when it comes time to announce the finale of your series, do your best to convince readers they can’t live without knowing how the story ends. Do as much as you can to shout about the final book because it will bring returns on all of the books that came before.
Continue to encourage readers to pick up the first book. Never stop promoting the first-in-series or, if you don’t write a series, the book that best represents your work. Take advantage of those free days KDP allows for (five per period), or make the first book perma-free or just 99¢. This is a low-risk way potential readers can sample an entire novel before deciding to purchase your others. (Click here for more on free days.)
Just-keep-writing is a strategy that I have invested in. As a person who loves to write, I can get behind it one hundred percent. I’m sure many of you can say the same!
I’m not claiming it’s easy or flawless or guaranteed to bring us fame and fortune, but it’s doable. All it requires is 1) patience, 2) belief in ourselves and our products, and 3) the motivation and focus to do what we love consistently and well.
Let’s make our writing and publishing dreams come alive in 2025!
Share this newsletter with a friend 🤓
