Seven inexpensive ways to promote your own book

Self-publishing a book is a rewarding but sometimes challenging endeavor, getting your work in front of a large group of readers can feel like a never-ending task which can overwhelm some indie authors over time.

However, there are plenty of things that you can do to promote your book, and they don’t have to cost a fortune either, here are SEVEN great options that you should consider.

One – Run Facebook ads

Facebook is still a popular social media channel, although it is becoming less used by the under 25 age group, however, depending on who your target audience is, it is still a great option with having over 2 billion active users.

You can set up your ad to run for a specific period of time and also cap how much you want to spend, and as Facebook is so large, you can target your readers very specifically (almost to a frightening level of specificity).

Facebook does give some good performance reports for your ads and you can pause them very easily too, you can spend $20 to $40 and still be able to reach a wide audience.
 

Two – Guest Posts on Blogs

Do take your time to do your research first, getting in touch with a popular website about plumbing to guest post about your latest thriller novel is wasting everyone’s time, so match your article to the website.

For example, you could guest post for a publishing website about how you researched your own book, or how you found the best path within self-publishing (topics that the visitors to the website would be interested in and expect to see).

You can then sign off your post with your name and then title of ‘Author of …….book name here along with link to its sales page.

Three – YouTube Channel

Having a YouTube channel is of course free, but you will need to put a little time into it, but, it can be a great way to engage with your readers and self-promote your book too.

Here you can talk about the writing process, overcoming any challenges that may help other writers, commentary that supports existing books, and even interviews with professionals who helped you with your book or other authors (the list here is pretty endless).

You can let your viewers know where you read your work and include links in the description area below the video. Read our article on creating your own author’s YouTube Channel.
 

Four – Start your own Podcast or appear on one

Over the past few year’s podcasts have grown to a massive number, with literally every subject and topic you can think of having a podcast dedicated to it, with more and more of them coming out, you could either join the trend and start your own, or appear as a guest.

Starting your own will require a great deal of work and time, getting the gear you’ll need can be expensive, but if you make a success of it you can make money from advertising. However, if this sounds like too much, you can always try to become a guest on someone else’s.

There are several ways to do this, the first is in researching the podcasts that suit your genre and stye of writing, then try to reach out directly to them. The second is in using a podcast guest service, and there are a growing number of companies now offering this service, here they connect podcasts to guests, offering experts that they can interview on their show. 

Five – Run a promotion on your eBook

Most eBook sellers will give you the option of running a free eBook promotion for a limited period of time, this is a great way to get more people to read your book and hopefully gain some new fans and reviews online.

This you can combine with Facebook ads and your other social media channels, promoting your limited offer ahead of time, it’s even better if you have several books, giving the first away for free so that they purchase the rest in the series.

 
Six – Advertising on Amazon

Amazon is such a large global company that it is worth considering advertising your book with them, the offer two options for ads, one which is sponsored ads (these you will have seen when searching on their website) and the second is lock screen ads, these are just for eBooks and appear on the kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire devices lock screens.

The process is fairly straightforward, and you can set a budget too, you can see more about how to set up ads with Amazon by following the link.
 

Seven – Have your own author website

Having your own website is a great deal easier and cheaper than ever before, it’s a brilliant way to show off your books, update your readers with news, offers and promotions, you can build an email list, sell copies of your book directly and start your own blog.

There are plenty of services offering self-build websites, where you don’t need to know any coding, using a simple click and drag format to enable you to create your own site.

But it is worth taking your time on designing a platform which is engaging for your visitor, also, you will need to learn about search engine optimization or SEO, check out our article on this at SEO for authors.