Need to Create an Effective Book Marketing Plan? Here's How

Posted by Scott Baylor on October 9th, 2019

In hopes of making their work successful, many authors are in search of information about how to market a book. A book that sells well and becomes successful requires carefully planned marketing and publicity.Leading books marketing firms like Smith Publicity strongly advise authors against "winging it," because books launched without good plans nearly always are disappointments. The first step in successful book marketing is defining your goals. It allows you to reverse engineer from where you want to end up back to the start. No two books and authors are alike, so each title needs a unique plan. For example, some authors may view writing as a marketing tool for their businesses, while others may have done it as a side career or hobby. Therefore, the publicity plans will be very different for these two authors. Your goals may include selling books, development of an author brand, business marketing, or perhaps a mix of all of the above. Most essential is to know what you expect to accomplish in publishing your book so that the marketing plan achieves your goals.

It is possible to overstate the importance of knowing your audience. In other words, the people who will be interested enough to buy the book and become readers and fans. You need to decide who they are, what they need or want, and what will hook their interest. In an ideal world, you will have had these things in mind since you began writing and steered the boon content in the direction of your potential readers' interests. Of course, many people read books from many genres, but it is nearly always possible to define your core reader. Similar to the book marketing plan, determining your audience well includes several steps that are best when you do your research. It explains why many authors employ expert publicity agencies like Smith to help identify and define the necessary steps, create the plan, and put it into action. No matter whether or not you self-promote to hire professional support, think about the time, expense, and energy needed to promote a book properly. It's also essential early on to decide on the publishing method and format. Publishing methods are self-published, traditional, hybrid. Formats are eBook, print, print by demand – or more than one of those. Every successful book today needs a website.

Creating a blog is imperative for book branding and outreach today. You must keep your blog current with fresh posts and reach out to bloggers with similar audiences. You can serve as a guest blogger for them and vice versa. Social media is critical as well, and you need pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter – also a video on YouTube can be very beneficial to book marketing. Each of these allows you to communicate and build interest with your target audience. The relationships you form online quickly can translate to book readers and buyers. It is generally best to select two social media platforms and excel on those. It's unlikely you can keep current content on more than two. Also, if you aren't able to keep your content current, then it is better not to attempt social media. Also, don't forget podcasts. They're quite easy to make and distribute. For an investment as small as per month, you can distribute a quality podcast through several outlets. In the end, keep in mind that the definition of publicity and book marketing is about using the media and digital space as conduits to get out the word about your book to both the general public and your targeted reader.

Scott Baylor is the author of this article. For further detail about how to market a book please visit the website.