The plan is simple, your goal being for the book to reach the desired audience numbers you aimed at and the more the better. Book marketing is a process that begins way before you even publish the book. Any good product or art requires a proper stage to launch the thing. Similarly, the same goes for your book.

Let’s break down the steps into two categories, pre and post.

Pre (being the time before you have published the book)

A Solid Stage Before Marketing

An author’s website is vital for publishing the book, a place which traffic can be directed to, a solid foundation, the closest thing to a physical bookstore’s isle dedicated to your works.

A Channel to Funnel

Like I was saying, traffic is the key, the way for people to reach the book. This channel consists of a plethora of websites where you must market the content, including Quora, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even YouTube. This sets the tone for the book to have a favourable environment to be published.  A simple case of creating demand before production.

Widening The Channel

Building a channel is not enough, you must ensure your constant presence in the literary circles and especially the genre you want to publish in. This includes constant interaction on literary groups on Facebook, comments on literature focused Twitter accounts, sharing of Instagram material, recreating of material with the assistance of current trends. This will warm up the market before you eventually publish.

Dusting the Launchpad

This includes keeping all the promotional material for your book ready, from posts related to the book, to book trailers, giving a heads-up to the affiliates and influencers you have contacted. Including all the copyright legalities and everything that you don’t want to invest valuable time in once the book is out and about.

Mind Holds All Might

Perhaps the most important of them all is getting your mental state right in order. This includes you taking a short break from working on the pre-publishing of your book and patting yourself on the back because you deserve it. Also try not to have second thoughts at his point and let the literary gods guide you, that being your creative confidence and faith in the audience.

 

Post(being the time after you’ve published your book)

 

1. Navigate the Amazon

Amazon being the biggest online bookseller, a master at amazon is a master at book marketing. From building a proper author’s page to building an Amazon author’s portfolio to asking your known ones to post honest reviews on your book’s product page and to not use nefarious means to trick the Amazon algorithm is the key to getting noticed in amazon. You must also aim to bring traffic from all the other channels you’ve worked on building an audience to the amazon book product page. If Amazon notices the genuine traffic that your book is generating, you will rise in leaps and bounds in the organic product rankings.

 

2. Using the Launchpad 

Now is the time to use up the army of influencers you have contacted, and utilize them for generating hype just for a couple of initial weeks after the book launch. From distributing copies to them to discussing and arranging for them to conduct free giveaways to setting embargos for them to follow. This is an excellent way to create huge waves in the market. They get valuable content and material for giveaways and you get the valuable attention the book needs initially.

 

3. Use up even the pit

Amazon may be one giant you have to deal with but you must not ignore the other, possibly bigger giant, that being Google. According to Google, the more places you pop up, the more relevant you are organic, the more Google sees fit to push your product. Try selling your book on multiple platforms, both through paperback, hardback as well as eBooks, even audiobooks if possible. The more you appear on the internet, the more the internet deems fit to reveal you to the audiences.

 

4. The extra push

The organic way to promote your book and increase your book’s google rankings may be slow, that’s where advertisements come into play. A proper ad campaign on Google including PPC (pay per click) campaigns and sponsored ads on Instagram, Facebook and Amazon are helpful if not vital. This is great because even if all the people seeing the ads don’t buy the book, they at least get to see the book thereby increasing the book’s visibility in this flood of products and content.

 

5. The final push

Now having done most of the things humanly possible, it’s always a good idea to keep pushing the book in the literary community, including groups, forums and other places people generally notice stuff, like the comment section of posts that have something common with your book.

 

Now if you are like me and all the above steps seem too much of a hassle to do for someone that simply wants to concentrate on writing and nothing else, there is always pioneers and industry leaders like Orange Publishers who do all the above for you and beyond, they will sort out the pre-publishing, the publishing, the post-publishing as well as the constant support your book needs in the physical as well as digital marketplaces.