How to promote your book to sell

The launch of any book should be focused on more than just its upload to Creatspace or Ingram Spark, for lots of authors this whole process of making the public aware of your book should be something you started many months prior to the actual completion of your book.

But this is now something that we’re seeing more and more writers beginning to understand and take seriously, launching a book is a long term process which is almost akin to launching a business or product (although no author will ever consider their work just a mere product, and rightly so).
 
So for those of you who are in the last stages of writing or editing their books (or even halfway through), you should now be considering the promotional plan you’ll use to help its launch and ongoing long term advertising.

The thought of selling anything (for most authors) sounds ghastly and not the reason why you became a writer in the first place, however, if you haven’t got the backing of a large publisher behind you, then you are left very much to your own devices as an indie author. This is an important reason as to why you need to have a plan and why you need to stick to it.

The launch and publication of your book should be considered (if possible) from the very moment you start writing it, this can be done easily at first with the use of social media and moving on to your own website. Having your own site shouldn’t be off putting and it shouldn’t also soak up your entire life at the same time (if you run a website you know that it can be incredibly time consuming). Your own website gives you a great platform to start from and one which you can build that all important mailing list from.
 
When using social media, the key is not to become a spammer, we use both Facebook and Twitter and have found that it can become quite tiresome, the sheer volume of authors who excessively self-promote (this can be a very quick way to lose followers). You can of course use automated systems to update and manage this for you, but even so, keep it to several updates per day (not several every five minutes).

Use graphics and images, it’s proven that people respond better to images than just text alone, we design many banners which can be used to help get your message across, but even if you’re doing it yourself, at least use a picture of your book or image which symbolizes your message.

This leads us to your social media home page too, how does it look? Does it look professional, would a reader assume you are an author who takes their work seriously? Using a banner which compliments and gives the best first impression is priceless, it’s the same for each and every ‘touch-point’ you have with the reader.

As you get closer to the launch of your book you’ll want to get more details out to your readers, if you have collected a mail-out list from your own website then you can send out details and even the first chapter to them. Again, ensure that your graphics and posters (digital ones) look great and represent you well.

The book cover design you use needs to look professional, cutting corners here will speak volumes to your potential readers, if your cover doesn’t look great then people will assume the same about the content within, you don’t have to spend a fortune but just make sure you give your cover the respect it truly deserves.

When it comes to the actual launch of the book then you should have a great cover, website, social media pages and any other promotional materials such as posters and 3D renderings in place ready. These should enable you to have a professional presence online and in the ‘real’ world whilst at book fairs and launch parties etc.

The competition has never been as great as it is now for any author (with about 1250 indie/self-published books coming out every day), but with planning and focus you can make your book a success.