So you've finished your book! Good news, if you've already invested in editing and purchased a pro cover. Now is the time to shoulder the wheel of marketing and distribution. Self-publishing is not real publishing until it includes self book marketing. My concise list gives you tasks to accomplish.
You need to write sales copy. That's the brief and enticing copy you will find on every book's page at Amazon. You will also use this copy in a fact sheet (sometimes called a tip sheet in traditional publishing). It's not all words in a fact sheet. A photo of yourself is essential in one. You send the fact sheet out to reviewers and bloggers you'd like to cover your book. You send the sales copy to Amazon and any other retail outlet you're using. For example, IngramSpark needs this copy. So does Bowker, where you registered your ISBN numbers for the book.
Try out promoting at Goodreads. You set up an author account there (mostly by "claiming" your book as your own.) Once you have an author status, Goodreads promo tools like giveaways and book feeds (think Facebook-style) will be in your grasp. In the meantime, tell your tribe to review your book on Goodreads. They can put it on their to-read lists, too. Goodreads is the best place to encourage your fans to post their reviews. Of course, if they're buying from an outlet with a website, a review is good there, too.
Double down on your author website. Bare minimums: a fun About Me page (tell a story or two about how you came to create your book, how you decided to be a writer) and links to the places your book is on sale. A blog is super useful to create writing you will offer for free to interested readers. Have links on your website for the social media accounts you will be feeding with delicious snippets. One big plus is a way to take orders for your book from your website. There's an easy way to take these kinds of orders using Aerio, a service run by IngramSpark. They print your books on demand and fulfill orders. You can also hand-ship signed copies to your greatest fans if they order through your website.
Not only do you make more money per sale by moving books through your website, you also connect to readers (more on that in a minute). Amazon will never tell you anything about who reads a book you've written.
Create Advanced Reader Copy files (called ARCs) to send out to reviewers and allies of the book. Digital files should be in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle (MOBI) formats. Have your cover designer help out. You need these copies to help you land some endorsements of the book. Those are sometimes called blurbs. They give your book some validation, and praise, if you're lucky. Don't leave home without a few blurbs and endorsements.
Get those ARC files into the world for automatic download. Bookfunnel is a good and inexpensive service to use for this process. In some cases, places like Bookfunnel can even round up a few reviewers. Bookfunnel is like NetGalley but less costly. They both have promotional offers.
Create and feed an author newsletter. This can be an email with just three links to interesting webpages where something happened that relates to your book. It's much better if you write a snippet about your writing life and an aspect of your story. It's best of all if it links to your blog. You create an emailing list of your own to send this newsletter to. Simple ways to build email lists are to swap with other authors in your field or genre. You will be doing a lot of asking with humility while you market. It's not so bad once you're used to it
Your author newsletter connects you to fans and readers of your books. Again, Amazon will never do this so you can see who your fans are.
Build a reader magnet to build your mailing list. You might have had good stuff from your book that just didn't make it into the final cut. Revive it. Write histories of your characters. Write an author's guide to the best books from your genre. If you're unsure what a good reader magnet looks like, seek out authors like you who are creating this bonus content. Look over what they're doing.
Develop posts for social media. People use various kinds, but you're never far away from connecting to readers and potential fans when you use Instagram and Facebook. Create a Facebook account for your author life, not just your personal Facebook account. Your book is represented by a Page, which lets you attract Likes. Those Likes are a way of pushing your news into the Facebook Feeds of your readers. Instagram works differently -- hashtags and listing the accounts of others gets you into feeds.
Some of the rest will cost you more. Contest entries are the least expensive. Paid reviews will be more, and some people don't think they're that important. There is advertising at Amazon and at Facebook you can purchase. Take great care with that, and measure and test as you go. For more connection, you can use YouTube or Facebook for chats with fans: tell them when you'll be live by putting the date and time in your newsletter. You can even record a little video for use on Instagram, or post one on your YouTube channel.
What, you don't have a channel yet? It's easy to set up. Use it to get the word out. Buy a ring light to illuminate your smile for the camera. Tell the world about your book. Then you can revel in the life of a self-published author who is doing their self book marketing.
Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash