Marketing Your Book

Marketing your book is absolutely fundamental as, otherwise, how are people to know that it is out there?

With over one million books being self-published every year, this is becoming increasingly difficult.

You obviously believe your book is of some value because you have spent many hours, if not years in some cases, writing, rewriting and editing it to make the story, characters and settings of as much interest to the reader as you can. You have then spent more time and money trying to get literary agents and publishers to read your book in order to have your work published.

The reason you want your book published is because you feel that what you have written is worth someone’s time in reading it and you would also like to be paid a reasonable return for the efforts that you have expended in writing and working on your story.

If the above is not fundamentally correct, then you need to search your heart for your true motivations very carefully before proceeding any further. If, however, the above is a fair representation of your reasons for producing your work, then you have all the expertise necessary to be able to promote, sell and market your book.

The first fundamental of selling anything is to believe in your product implicitly. The second is to know your product inside out. Who knows your book better than you, and who believes in it more than you do?

Marketing Steps

Approach your local bookshops to see if they would be willing to stock your book and maybe host a book signing.
Local media are always looking for a story with “local celebrity” and it would certainly be worthwhile contacting their features editor to try and organise an interview, especially around the same time of a book signing in a local bookshop.
Word of mouth reviews are incredibly important but good online reviews even more so. As and when you get good feedback, don’t be afraid to ask the reader if they would be willing to submit these.

Marketing Tools

You may wish to consider adding Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature for £35 which allows the potential reader to see a few sample pages before they decide to purchase the book
Amazon offer a free marketing tool called ‘Author Central’. If you have an Amazon login and password, you can create a link from your book’s listing to an author biography, photo, video, events and tweets. You can also use this tool to promote your own website, see https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/
If you, or someone you know, already use social networking, this is an ideal platform for promoting your book
Engage the services of a specialist book publicist who will put together a bespoke campaign for your book. A Google search will reveal that there are lots of companies out there, so it’s a case of finding one that fits your vision and budget.

Marketing Materials

We offer a full range of printed marketing materials at reasonable prices including flyers, posters, postcards, business cards, bookmarks etc. Click here for a price list of our marketing materials.