How do I promote a self-published book?

Question

I am in the process of writing a book and I'm considering setting up my own publishing agency to get it published, or else publish solely through the internet, but there is the obvious problem of distribution that arises. If and when I actually finish writing it to a level that I deem satisfactory I would not be personally particularly opposed to taking out a loan if that is what is necessary to get it promoted, though I wouldn't want to take out a loan without knowing what I'd first do with that money. As such, I suppose that this one question is really more akin to two:

Can I effectively promote a self-published work via the internet for minimal cost, or would I require a loan to get my name out there?

How would I go about doing paid advertisements of a book? I have never seen an ad in the beginning of a movie for a book, nor on television, nor on a billboard - where would I advertise instead?

Answer 1

The fact that you have never seen an ad for a book should tell you something. Advertising doesn't sell books. If advertizing sold books, you would see lots of advertisements for books, because publishers would do what works. (As the comments indicate, publishers do certain amounts of targeted advertising in some markets. Nothing so far indicates that ads help an unknown self published novel, however.)

What does sell books? I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell, it comes down to word of mouth, hand selling, and bookstore placement.

Word of mouth happens when a few people read you book, love it, and tell their friends, who then tell their friends, etc. etc. You only need a few initial readers to spark a word of mouth expansion, but you also need a really good book. (There are stories of books that languished unnoticed for years before a word of mouth expansion suddenly vaulted them to prominence.)

Hand selling means that someone -- the author or a bookseller -- personally talks up the book to a customer, usually in a book store, but possibly in another venue (I have hand sold my technical books at industry conferences). Hand selling a book yourself is, of course, incredibly expensive and time consuming and is only really going to pay off if the book gains enough momentum to start a word of mouth expansion and to inspire hand selling by book sellers.

Bookstore placement means that your book gets on the rack at the front of the store, gets placed on an end cap, or turned face out on the shelf -- anything to make it more noticeable to a reader who is just browsing with no clear idea in mind of who or what they are looking for. You get bookstore placement by being published by a major publisher with a lot of clout with bookstores who is willing to promote your work through their sales channels. In other words, if you self publish, you don't get bookstore placement (except maybe from your local independent bookstore if you chat up the owner).

There is also reviews in prominent publications, Oprah's book club, and the major literary prizes. But a self-published book is not likely to get within a country mile of any of those. The major publishing houses own the pipelines to those places. You would need to already be a major self-publishing success story to even have a chance of being looked at by any of these.

When it comes to seeding your word of mouth campaign on social media, I don't think the necessarily costs you anything more than time, but my impression is that you are more likely to succeed in pitching your book to your already established social media following than you are to build a following around the book itself, at least until the book itself, or you as an author, already have an established reputation.

In short, if you want to be successful self publishing, I think you have to be prepared to do a lot of hand selling. And, of course, you have to write an exceptionally good book.

Answer 2

Mark has covered your question admirably and I agree with everything he has said. I would offer only a few minor additions.

If you want to write a successful book, you need to look at marketing before everything else. You need to consider how you can market your writing before you decide on what audience you are targeting, what genre(s) you will embrace, and long before even the earliest sketches of who your characters are or what their world looks like. If you define success in terms of reader counts and financial compensation, you need to put marketing first.

But as Mark has explained, marketing doesn't usually work for books. We, as general market readers, don't turn to conventional advertising mediums for advice on what to read next. Most of us don't even consider who is currently on the NYTimes Best Sellers list, except for when it is shoved in our face by a book jacket or bookstore display. Entertainment literature is just one of those products which cannot be supported effectively by conventional advertising.

Except when it can...

I used to run a small writing group and one day an unpublished author brought in her work in progress, a tell-all for the private yachting community. She was a chef who had built a career signing on to various yacht crews, producing wonderful food while cruising to the most beautiful ports in the world. Along the way, she had picked up hundreds of anecdotes and humorous stories which she was assembling into a semi-fictionalized set of linked short stories. The writing was crisp and joyful and the stories never failed to cheer. But more importantly in context of this question, her work in progress was marketable!

The private yachting community is full of people who draw major parts of their self-image and identity from their link to boating. They are a group set apart from all others; a group which is served by multiple magazines, hundreds of websites, forums and boating supply stores. Unlike most general market readers, yacht owners will take reading recommendations from their community media, especially if it promises to be full of people like them, doing the things they love to do.

This rare book came, not only with a built in audience, but with a variety of methods for reaching them... methods which would respond to marketing dollars.

This is what I mean by marketing having to be your first consideration. I encountered hundreds of skillfully crafted and joy-to-read works in progress during my time with that writing group. Excellence in story-craft is not as rare as the proud among us might wish. But as far as I know, none of those artfully worded works ever developed a major following once published. They were great, but they didn't stand out in terms of marketability. The ideas at their cores didn't come with a built in accessible audience. ...so conventional advertising couldn't help them.

Books sell by word of mouth. Finding a method to reach your first thousand mouths is more important than your dashing hero, your vile villain or your beautiful prose. Nothing you can do as an author is more important toward the success of your book, than what you can do as a marketing strategist. You must answer the question, "How am I going to sell this?" before you even start considering what "this" is going to grow up to be.

Some final thoughts...

• Your marketing concept needs to be a vital part of your story. It cannot be inserted in after the fun part of the writing is done.

• A built-in audience is not the only marketing strategy to consider but it is a good one. Set your story among a group that is usually disrespected in modern fiction (Conservative-Christians, Survivalists, Politicians) and treat them with respect and dignity in your prose. Then by applying your marketing dollars to their trade-journals and forums, you may win their readership.

• Be genuine! Even though we write fiction doesn't mean we have to lie all the time.

Answer 3

From experience: If you self-publish, you have to take on all of the jobs the publisher usually does. Before you do that, you should assess your ability to do those jobs, your knowledge of how to do them AND your motivation to do them. My self-published book sold briskly when I was aggressively selling it by hand, and booking speaking engagements around it. But I rapidly reached my personal limit with doing that job.

There's also a steep learning curve on much of this work. A lot of people think they can take out some ads and spend their way into a best-seller. But when is the last time you read a book based on an ad? You have to be able to distance yourself from the book and put yourself in the book buyer's shoes. How did you find your last great book? Because of a good review in the New York Times? Because it was placed front and center at Barnes & Nobles? Because your brother recommended it? Can you ensure any one of those promotional opportunities for your book? If not, then you yourself wouldn't buy it. And distribution itself is a full-time career, not a hobby.

As I've mentioned repeatedly on this SE: Successful self-publishers (who do exist!) are very good and tireless salespeople. The quality of the book is actually secondary to the salesmanship. What works, typically, are speaking engagements, hand-selling, networking, and a well-targeted niche audience. As long as you are committed to selling each copy of your book personally, you can basically sell as many as you want.

Answer 4

Covering off two points in your question separately.

Firstly, the distribution - I chose to go with Type & Tell, which is a self-pub spin off from the Bonnier Group. The UK country manager (Jon Watt) knows his stuff, so everything from typesetting to blurb to initial PR was done when thinking of the final product. Distribution is a pain in the neck; I was the COO of a successful niche publishing company for several years, and working with Ingram and Gardeners to get the right quantity printed and into retail bookshops is enough to send the average person running. Therefore, I outsourced to T&T so that I could focus on the writing and the selling.

I'm now CEO of an established e-commerce company, so I feel relatively confident in my ability to reach my audience. I'll add a few caveats to my advice, though - firstly, my book might be rubbish and people demand refunds in droves; secondly, this is the first time I've done this for this specific product range; finally, being in the UK means that we don't have access to Amazon Marketing Services (AMS), which would be a game changer for us.

The channels that I use to sell must be as close to free as possible. Everything must be cost per action (CPA) or at worst cost per click (CPC). Key platforms are obviously Google and Facebook, with outsourced agents selling for me in different regions on CPA of $0.50 per book sold. If I make ~$0.80 per book sold (I make more, but tax, unforeseen costs, etc), then it's scalable.

Billboards, TV, magazines, etc are good for established brands (Just Eat vs Deliveroo), but for us new guys on a book by book unit sale, find something measurable and risk-light. Get a free website on Wix, etc and make sure that your social handles are claimed, even if you don't use them yet.

Also, don't forget to collect emails via a call to action (CTA) at the back of every book. That allows you to connect to people for free next time. Read Mark Dawson's interviews, listen to some of the numerous podcasts covering this subject.

Answer 5

I can only speak as a reader, but... Publish your books online, one chapter at a time, at regular intervals. This is how Brandon Sanderson and E. William Brown got me to buy their books - you publish one book for free, then the first few chapters of the next book, and ask people to pay for the rest.

I recommend using online forums for this, such as spacebattles, fictionpress, etc - there are a lot of these sites. Hit as many as you can, there plenty of people who will read whatever shows up in the 'last updated' list, and publishing regularly will get you a lot of exposure.

Some advice, drawn from my experience as a long-time reader and lurker on such forums:

• Publish chapters at least 2 days apart (otherwise readers get overwhelmed and stop following), but no more than a week (or they lose interest).
• Try and keep chapters to around 5000 words. Smaller than 3000, and it's too short to retain interest; longer than 10000, and people will not have time to finish it. Remember that when you're reading on a webpage, it's not easy to bookmark halfway through a chapter, so it needs to be short enough that people can read it in one sitting.
• Finally, make sure that any authors notes you attach to each chapter, are no more than half the length of the chapter itself. If you want to write commentary, post it separately, so as not to break the flow of the book.

Answer 6

Another answer begins with this:

The fact that you have never seen an ad for a book should tell you something. Advertising doesn't sell books. If advertizing sold books, you would see lots of advertisements for books, because publishers would do what works.

This is incorrect. The truth is that books are advertised and that publishers pay for these ads. Large newspapers and certain print magazines (such as women's magazines) often feature ads for books. There are advertisements for books on television (although rarely) and on billboards (often).

Publishing houses have a PR department whose job it is to get reviews and media coverage for their books. I worked as an apprentice PR agent in a large German publishing house. I used to write letters to TV stations to get books covered in TV shows, send copies of books to newspapers to get them covered outside of reviews in articles on certain topics (especially with non-fiction books). We organized reading tours for our authors and other public appearances (in TV, radio, and at events).

Part of advertising for books also involves to get other authors to read and recommend the book, so that you can print these recommendations in or on your book and in advertising (e.g. on the books page at Amazon). Books are also sent to bloggers and readers (in exchange for Amazon reviews).

The most important part in advertising your book is getting it into physical book stores. Large publishing houses employ people who travel from book store to book store and negotiate display space for books in exchange for a discount on the book price. In online book stores such as Amazon, you pay to have your book displayed prominently on their site and to make sure that it is near the top when users search for something.

I probably forgot something, but that is essentially how promoting a book works.

Answer 7

This is a great question and I thought this thread could use an update for 2021 and 2022. You're right that when it comes to self-publishing there are a huge amount of options, especially here in the UK. It is worth noting that this is written from my standpoint in the UK but I am sure most of these points will apply globally.

I want to start by saying that I would be hesitant about taking out a loan to cover the promotion of your book. Before I took a loan to cover the marketing element of self-publishing I would first recommend testing a variety of strategies which you could then supercharge with money and a loan when comfortable.

1. Instagram is a phenomenal tool. Not as good as it once was but if you move with the platform and create what they are after then you can gain lots of viral traction. Reels and videos are hot at the moment. I would create those and see where you go from there. You could always then pay to promote if you find they lead to sales.
2. YouTube. I think YouTube is one of the few great organic platforms that remains. Unlike a lot of the other social platforms when I find we constantly have to pay for promotion or any form of virality. You will have to get creative. It is a great way to build a rapport with your audience and potential readers.
3. Reviews and features. These are just as important now as they ever have been. Nothing has changed. Pitch people relevant to your book and audience.
4. Most of these strategies don't cost anything. Really what you need is a relationship with your writers and your audience.