Covid-19 has accelerated online content consumption, positively impacting people’s reading habits and reading time. The pandemic has also boosted global online book readership by 30% in 2020. As the book industry shifts to an online setup, having a digital presence has become essential for self-publishing authors to promote books and pursue readers. Needless to say, it is more so now than it was in 2019.
If you plan to self-publish your work and wish it to be read by global readers, an awareness of digital marketing strategies will help you successfully launch your book. But digital marketing trend is constantly changing, and as a writer, who’s consumed in words, you can find keeping up with the trend pretty difficult.
Therefore, to make your career launch easy, we have suggested digital marketing ideas that will improve your book’s visibility and boost global sales.
Create Your Author’s Website
When readers come across your book, they’d obviously want to learn more about it and the author, i.e. you. Your author’s website will fulfil these demands – it will introduce you as a professional, serve as your books’ advocate, give a sneak peek into your personal life and ride through your social media profiles.
When readers search for you online in different ways, make sure they always find you. That’s why a professional strategy is important. When you’ve taken a lot of time to self-publish your book, your author’s website should reflect the same professionalism.
You cannot throw stuff and call it a website – hire a professional website designer who can create a 3 – 4 pages website for you.
If you are able to muster a little bit of courage to learn the technique, you can also establish your WordPress site on your own at no cost. The platform gives everything a self-publishing author needs to start their website in minutes. Explore the goodness of WordPress.
Write Blogs
You cannot survive the digital evolution without an author’s blog. Writing is your strongest point, so sure, you can cook up an article or two relevant to your industry every week. Blog posts are particularly important in the modern digital landscape. Blogs will project you as a thought leader in your field.
If you have published a book on film production, keep adding blogs on cinematography, lights, direction, media and journalism, film distribution, and more. Similarly, if you are a fiction writer, you can add blogs on topics like ‘how to write a grasping novel’ or ‘favourite fiction writers of the yesteryears.
Tips for Website Development
- Post only quality and informative blogs
- Post consistently
- Develop an SEO website
- Use keywords realistically
- Add meta description and meta tag
- Include Contact Us and Book Purchase link pages
- Make your site mobile-friendly
Establish Your Social Media Presence
Social media can be the most powerful marketing weapon for authors if rightly used. You may think social media is time-consuming, but it provides a gamut of opportunities to interact with readers personally and build their trust. Besides, social media is cool and fun where you can proactively promote your book in different ways.
While it is important to build followers on all sites if time is your biggest constraint and you cannot hire an expert, start with Instagram, followed by Twitter, then Facebook, Goodreads, and YouTube.
Instagram is ranked as the most engaging digital tool of the year. There is no hard and fast rule to start with it. Create an account and post good content in different formats for the target audience. Make sure you are honest, real, fun and entertaining.
You may not hit it immediately, but a little bit of observation, tracking popular posts and hashtags, following industry experts, and engaging with fellow writers can definitely pave the way to a greater online presence on social media platforms.
It would help if you also remembered that each is meant for a specific genre. For instance, if you are writing a cookbook or photography book, self-publishing, Instagram and Pinterest will suit you more. Likewise, if you are a fiction author or children’s storybook writer, the Facebook community will be a better choice.
Consider Pre-Sales Marketing
Most first-time authors overlook the power of pre-sales marketing and do not start promotion until after the book is published. This can lead to the loss of many advertising opportunities. When you self-publish your book at Writat, you can connect with online retailers to make your book available for pre-sale.
You can boost pre-sales on social media and use email marketing campaigns. The best way to increase pre-sales is through incentives and promotional offers. They may include signed copies, freebies, exclusive content, customized book tags, and more.
Pre-sales marketing builds momentum for the actual book launch, which in many cases help authors gain the ‘Bestseller’ tag on popular platforms, like Amazon.
Writat.com makes promotion pretty easy as we are associated with 40,000 global distribution channels across 150 countries. For more information, you can speak to our Assisted Self-Publishing Service expert.
Connect with Beta Readers for Book Reviews
After engaging your readers in multiple places, it is time to earn reviews for your book. The millennial generation takes ratings quite seriously before making a purchase decision. Reviews are the true breadwinners of a book. And here’s where a Beta Reader will come of help.
Beta Readers are readers who read and review your book before publication.
It is a type of influencer marketing, where your readers act as the influencer, and you give away your book for free in exchange for a fair review on Goodreads or Amazon.
Where can you find Beta readers you would want to know? Goodreads has a network of 65+ million readers, and it also allows reviews to be posted even before the book is published. Alternatively, you can talk to book bloggers, newspaper and magazine editors, authors and post on Facebook and Instagram book groups for Beta Reader connections.
Being a self-publishing author, you will have to figure out book marketing, editorial reviews, signing and book launch events, an aisle in bookstores and book fairs, and the designing and formatting, all by yourself.
Writat will exclusively take care of book distribution, editing and proofreading, book interior and cover designing, formatting, printing, and shipping. So all you will have to do is buck up for the marketing.
While this is not a comprehensive list of digital marketing ideas for self-publishing authors, it will help you understand how to start. As and when you progress, you will encounter many more tricks and ideas to promote your book on the digital front.
