The Ultimate Guide to Author Marketing

Table of Contents

There are as many different approaches to author marketing as there are to story structure. How you manage your strategy is going to be as unique to you as the novel you’re writing or have written. But there are some relatively universal principles that offer structure to build your marketing around.

This guide discusses marketing techniques and approaches that work especially well for authors, specifically. We cover everything from understanding your ideal reader and building a marketing hub, to email, social media, content creation, partnerships, events, advertising, and launches. Each section is intentionally high level. Think of this as the aerial view from an airplane tour, not turn-by-turn Google Maps directions. Every topic here can (and will) be explored more deeply elsewhere, but you don’t need to master everything at once to make meaningful progress.

There are many starting points open to you, and you don’t have to read cover to cover, so to speak. You have permission to jump around to the sections that most appeal to you and where you are focusing your attention right now. But if you write books and want to find readers who will love them as much as you do, you’re in the right place.

What Is Author Marketing (and What It Is Not)

Author marketing is a catchall phrase that refers to everything an author does to position themselves in front of a potential reader and make a meaningful connection. It involves the entire strategy used to build a platform and brand, develop relationships with readers, and promote and sell books.

Effective book marketing can take many different tracks and in this guide, we’ll consider each of the following:

Email Marketing
Social Media Marketing
Content Marketing
Marketing for Book Launches
Author Events
Paid Advertising for Authors

Everything you’ll learn here can and should be taken at your own pace. We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare, right? Slow and steady progress will always triumph over trying to do everything at once. Learning how to market a book with the goal of generating lifelong sales is an ongoing adventure, not a single book promotion effort. Marketing for authors begins with building your author platform, and continues throughout the life of your author career.

Before we dig into how to market as an author, it’s important that you have a very clear picture of who you are marketing to. You’ll also benefit from having an established marketing hub—a home-base to direct all your marketing efforts toward.

Understand Your Ideal Reader Before You Start Marketing

While it may be easy to assume that all readers are the perfect target audience for all authors, that is absolutely not the case. If you’re nervous about putting a cap on the number of potential readers you can attract, it’s really important to understand that knowing who your ideal reader is does not restrict anyone else in the world from finding and buying and reading and loving your book.

But understanding who the perfect reader for your book is, before you try to start marketing your book, will make it considerably more likely that the people who would be most interested in your story will see it, and immediately understand it’s the right read for them.

Imagine you’ve written the world’s most enticing Romantasy series. If Person A, who exclusively reads British crime procedurals sees an ad for your book and buys it, thinking it’s for them, are they going to care if it’s the best Romantasy book ever written? Probably not. Not only will they have nothing to compare it against, but it isn’t what they enjoy reading. But if Person B, who lives for Romantasy finds your book instead, what do you think will happen?

They’re more likely to read it, rave about it, and review it as highly as those stars allow them to.

Creating a target audience based on the precise type of book you are promoting is the path of least resistance and, when it comes to marketing, that is exactly where you want to start. There is no award for pushing the heaviest bolder up the steepest hill.

If you can appeal to the reader who is most likely to love your book, you can build up a fan base of raving fans who will then help you branch out to tangential, similar audiences.

So how can you figure out who your ideal reader is before you start marketing to them?

Create a Reader Persona or Customer Avatar Sheet
Just as you might create a Character sheet that describes your protagonist’s basic demographics and personality traits, you can create a Reader persona sheet. Details like age, gender, job type, values, goals, and daily activities are useful, but shouldn’t be your most immediate focus. Instead, answer questions like: What do they already love reading? What tropes make them impulsively hit that One-Click Buy Button? What frustrates them about other books in your genre? Write it down and refer to this “persona” every time you create any kind of marketing material. Speak to this person.
Develop your Author Branding
As important as it is to know who you’re going to be marketing your book to, you will also need to deeply understand how you are going to do that consistently. This is your author branding. How you deliver the experience to that reader. The tone of your captions, sales copy, and verbal messages should speak to that reader. The art and graphics you use in your posts and sales pages should capture the attention of that reader. Your bio, branding, and every piece of content you create should signal to your customer avatar that you are the author for them and their tastes.
Niche Down as an Author
If branding is how you present your work, then niching down is where you place your work. Readers–and the algorithms of all the social and sales platforms–need to immediately understand where your book will live on their bookshelf. You need to do more than declare the broad genre of Thriller or Fantasy or even Horromance. You need to call attention to the sub-genres, tropes, character types, and themes that are prevalent in your book. The clearer it is, the easier it will be for word of mouth (and algorithm) to spread.

Your Marketing Hub is Your Author Website

If you’re spending any amount of time or money “marketing,” you need to make sure your efforts are being directed somewhere. A hub, so to speak. Ideally, the place where they have the highest chance of converting a casual viewer to a reader.

Where should you direct your efforts? Where are you most likely to have the best conversion rates?

Many authors simply direct everyone to their Amazon book page.

That’s an option. It can work.

But if you’re planning for long-term success as an author, you want to make sure that the work you’re putting in benefits you the most. Sending traffic to Amazon feeds a beast, but that beast is not your beloved and loyal pet.

Sending traffic to your sales page on Amazon may result in some sales, but then it’s Amazon that gets to keep the customer’s information for re-marketing. Amazon also keeps a hefty percentage of your profit. Amazon can even try to redirect the traffic you so painstakingly sent there to another book that might have higher profit potential for Amazon.

Does this mean you shouldn’t sell on Amazon? Not at all. It means you should use Amazon–and all other marketplaces and platforms–to your benefit.

Put in the effort up front to make sure you do your keyword research, cover design, and book description so that Amazon’s algorithm works for you. That will benefit your book everywhere else you decide to sell it as well because titles, keywords, descriptions, and graphic design are fairly universal.

But when you’re busting your butt and your bank account to create and drive digital traffic, make sure you are driving it to a platform you own: your author website.

If you build your website to serve as your marketing hub, you have the ability to track your results, connect personally with everyone who responds to your marketing efforts, and take control of the conversion process that turns a reader from a stranger to a raving fan.

For a more thorough look look at the essential elements of an author website, we’ve created an entire Ultimate Guide dedicated to author websites.

For now, let’s imagine you have an author website ready to act as your hub, and it’s time to start marketing.1. Email Marketing for Authors

Email marketing has the highest potential of any kind of marketing for authors, but it’s a puzzle with multiple pieces you have to line up before it can reach that potential.

The ultimate goal is to own a large list of pre-qualified, perfect readers who look forward to hearing from you, whatever you have to say and whenever you have to say it.

To get to that point, you first need to have an opt-in form to get the reader’s email address on your list, find and attract those readers to a landing page featuring said opt-in form, and then you have to write to them in a way that creates engagement, excitement, and loyalty.

Email Marketing Platforms for Authors

There are many options when it comes to marketing platforms. If you do a bit of research, you’ll probably find plenty of articles telling you which one is the best, perhaps even specifically for authors. The key is to find the platform that is the right one for you, right now.

An email marketing platform must be able to collect email addresses and send emails, which they all do. So on that front, you really can’t go wrong. What you’ll want to keep an eye out for is:

Price per 1000 contacts: some platforms start inexpensive for small lists, but get really pricey the more people you add. Others take the opposite approach. When considering price, do what’s right for your current list and stay organized so if you ever need/want to switch in the future, you can re-home your contacts without too much fuss.
Autoresponder capabilities: if you plan on setting up reader magnets, it’s a great strategy to have a series of emails that go out automatically after each registration. Once that series is over, the contact can move to your main mailing list. Newsletter providers have different capabilities and price points when it comes to autoresponders, so make sure you know what you’re getting.
Segmentation options: you may start with one email list, but if you end up writing multiple series, or in slightly different genres, segmenting your readers so you can tag what series, genre, or content type they’re interested in can really help improve your conversion rates. Your conversion rates are a direct reflection of how well you are speaking to your ideal reader persona.
Forms, pop-ups, and landing pages: you’ll need to collect email addresses, and most programs have a variety of options for you to choose from. A platform with easy to follow instructions in a media that you are most comfortable with is important to be sure you’ll be able to embed or integrate the forms properly on your website.
Analytics: tracking delivery success, open rates, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces will help you develop your email writing strategy and skills. You’ll need a platform that provides these details in a way that is easy for you to find and understand so you can improve your results over time.

The Bookshelf’s team has spoken to hundreds of authors over many years, and the email platform that was referenced most frequently was MailerLite. The low startup costs and ease of use is a winning combination and was a leading factor in our decision to make MailerLite the first integration with The Bookshelf’s website builder.

Reader Magnets for Actual Readers

A reader magnet is something you, the author, offer readers in exchange for their email address. It’s often described as a freebie because it doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it, but it is not free. The cost is an email address.

Authors with high-converting landing pages and large, happy audiences on their email lists understand that an email, for many readers, is more expensive than the dollar amount of a single book. The value is also potentially much higher. So the amount of care and attention devoted to your reader magnets should reflect this cost and value exchange.

You will need to understand your perfect reader to create a perfect reader magnet. One reader might be willing to trade their email address for a first in series book whereas another might be more convinced by exclusive behind-the-scenes world-building secrets that money can’t buy.

Author Email List Building Strategies

Designing and creating an irresistible reader magnet is key to converting viewers to active members of your email list, but before that can happen, you’ll need to direct those viewers to your landing page. Here are just a few ways you can direct traffic to your reader magnet to build your email list:

Social media posts
Content marketing, like blog posts, articles, or audio/visual episodes
Cross-promotion with fellow authors
Author events you participate in
Paid advertisements
The front and/or back matter of your published work

As you continue reading this guide, you’ll realize that all the suggestions for building your email list match all the ways you can build your author marketing strategy. Marketing isn’t always about the immediate conversion to a sale. Building an email list is like playing the long-game, so you can convert to many, many future sales instead.

Writing Author Newsletters

Email marketing doesn’t stop at having an irresistible reader magnet and generating an enormous mailing list. For that list to be of benefit to you, you must first be of benefit to the readers who signed up.

If you only send out emails when you have a new book or product you want your list to buy, the people on your list are going to forget who you are and why you have their email. This will lead to lacklustre results, to say the least.

Your author newsletter is an opportunity for you to hook your readers on you, so that you become an auto-buy author. Not to sound like a broken record, but knowing who your ideal reader is will come in handy here so you know what they want to see in their busy, overflowing email inbox. Here are a few ideas for conversation starters to use in your emails:

Character details
World-building fun facts
Fascinating info on hobbies, jobs, or interests that are prominent in your book
On-brand personal details about you, the author
Current events that resonate with the themes in your book
Location details that make your setting sound enticing
Events your readers might be interested in
Related authors you are cross-promoting with
Updates about your publishing schedule, such as ARC availability, cover reveals, pre-orders, etc

How to Sell Your Book Through Email

Some authors include a way to buy their book in every email, and others only include a buy now button in direct sales emails. Both of these options can work and it may take some experimentation to find out your strengths as an email marketing author and your readers’ preferences.

The goal is to treat your audience with respect. They do not owe you anything–you have to earn it, just like any other paycheck. Spend most of your time providing details your readers will enjoy, and then include an opportunity for them to buy.

The 80/20 rule works well here. If you include sales buttons or links in every email, make sure 80% of your content is entertaining for the reader and only 20% is directing them to buy something.

If you only sell in sales forward emails, aim to have a ratio of 80% entertaining and 20% selling. This might mean for every ten emails you send, you start with eight emails getting your readers excited and committed, and then two in a row that announce your pre-order opening, your book launch, or any other sales focused email you need to send.

If you’re including a soft-sell in every email, that does not mean that you shouldn’t occasionally send dedicated sales emails when you have big news or events that you want to maximize conversion on.

Watch your email analytics closely as you test the water. If you're getting consistent open rates, that means your audience likes what you’re sending. They’re continuing to buy in with every email they read, and they're probably open to more. If your open rates are trending down or you're getting a number of spam complaints with every send, then something isn’t working. Either your reader magnet and list-building efforts are attracting the wrong reader, or what you’re sharing in your newsletter isn’t delivering what you promised readers who signed up for your list.

Selling your book through email is a skill that you build with practice and the only way to get better is to get started.

2. Social Media Marketing for Authors

Social media is often the first type of marketing writers will think of when they decide to start marketing, but it should only be one piece of your overall author content strategy.

Most social media marketing is short form content, typically under 1000 words or less than 2 minutes in video format. It’s usually optimized for mobile viewers, catching readers while they’re browsing their favorite social feed on their phone or tablet.

The barrier to entry is very low. Most people can create a social media post. However, because of that, the barrier to success is much higher, because competition is fierce. Your job, as an author participating in social media marketing, is to create a piece of content that is so attention grabbing, so very captivating, that it will pull attention away from the loudest political posts, the cutest puppy videos, and the most hilarious non-lethal fails. Are you up to the task?

Short-Form Content for Authors

What is short form content for authors? It is audio or visual media under 60 seconds or written content that usually lands between 150 - 500 words, depending on where it’s being posted. Generally, it’s content that authors create for their readers that can be consumed in little snack-sized portions of time. This can be hard for writers. We’re wordy! We’re used to having 50,000 words to tell our stories! But readers don’t always have time, energy, or patience to consume an entire novel. When they’re scrolling TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube shorts, they’re looking for instant gratification. This might be a laugh, a thought-provoking nugget to take through the rest of their day, or any kind of emotional high.

When most authors think about social media marketing, they’re referencing short form media.

Social Media Platforms for Writers

Of all the social media platforms available, most authors are familiar with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. They’ve been around for a while, and most of us use at least one or two of them for personal enjoyment.

They’re mainly used to share photo and/or short form video content, with captions to tell a deeper story and add hashtags to attract views.

If you decide to use any of these platforms as an author, you will first need to understand what your ideal reader would be interested in following. A common approach for a lot of authors is to talk about the process of being a writer, which is endlessly interesting for other writers, but isn’t necessarily what will draw readers to you. Since readers are the ones who will eventually be trading their cash for your books, it’s readers you need to focus on.

What topics, themes, hobbies, interests, character types, book tropes, or other types of conversation can you begin and talk about indefinitely? Think about the type of experience your book will deliver to your readers, and make your social media content miniature versions of that experience. Visual aids like photos or memes in a carousel post or a short video can help you double down on the tone or atmosphere your book evokes.

You may also want to experiment with Threads, Bluesky, or X. For these platforms your much more limited in the length of your post, so they provide great opportunities to drop poetic or thought-provoking lines that will stick with your readers and make them think. You can also add links fairly easily with these platforms, so it’s a great way to get creative with your pitch to sell your reader magnets or even your books, directly.

Underrated Social Media Apps for Authors

There are platforms that don’t get as much attention because they aren’t as commonly used in the personal space and may go unnoticed when you turn your attention to professional marketing goals. Some that come to mind immediately are LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Storygraph and Goodreads. Because they are often overlooked, they can be extremely valuable platforms for authors to stand out in an otherwise extremely crowded marketplace.

LinkedIn is most commonly used by businesses and job seekers, but it can also be a great way to build your author brand and find readers who share your interests and values. It is especially powerful for non-fiction authors. You can also use it to find professionals to help you build your career as an author, such as designers or editors, etc.

Reddit is one of the most active forums on the internet and there are channels for any interest or topic you can dream up. If you have a niche subject matter, controversial themes, or cover hot topics in your books, you can find your audience on Reddit. It’s important that you understand the culture of Reddit before you start posting about your newest release though–Redditors are quick to spot and harass spammers, so when you enter this world, always be sure to make it about your ideal reader, not your pocketbook.

Quora is a platform where people go specifically to ask questions. You can be there to answer them! Sometimes you’ll get lucky and it’s book recommendations in demand, but other times you can build your authority and brand by answering questions that dip into the subject matter of your book.

Storygraph and Goodreads are two platforms generally known to be for readers, not so much authors. You can add your books to the platforms under your author name and readers have the opportunity to share reviews, add your book to their TBR, or recommend your book or author profile within their reader groups. This is not a place for authors to go complain about reader reviews, so if you’re tempted to do that, resist the urge and pass on this platform.

3. Content Marketing for Authors

In contrast to social media marketing, content marketing for authors refers to longer pieces of content. It can also be shared through social media platforms, but the purpose of content marketing is to share a bigger idea, concept, or lesson. Instead of catchy, flash-in-the-pan attention-grabbers, content marketing aims to answer an existing need and retain a reader’s attention.

For the purposes of this article, a YouTube Short would be considered social media marketing, whereas a comprehensive fifteen minute video would be content marketing. An anecdotal story shared to a Facebook group or page would be social media, whereas a deeply thought out article with multiple sub-topics posted to LinkedIn might be content marketing. A short and sweet book review left on Goodreads and shared to your Instagram is social media, whereas an unhinged, 5000 word rave would be content marketing.

Author Blogs

In most cases, author blogs are the most commonly associated with content marketing. This could include your personal blog on your author website, but it can also include articles and posts shared through sites like Medium or Substack, and it can be either non-fiction or fiction. I can also be long form video content, as previously mentioned, or audio content, like a podcast.

The Benefits of Repurposing Content

When you commit the time and energy it takes to create long-form content, you want to make sure it does as much work for you as possible. Repurposing could look like any of the following:

Taking shorts quotes and sharing them to social media platforms
Using written content as a script or inspiration for video or audio content, or
Taking the transcript of video or audio long-form content and publishing it was written content
Using a long piece of content as a hub to direct shorter content toward for more information
Taking images, graphs, stats or other visual elements and sharing them to social platforms

Any of these actions allow you to stay relevant and active without requiring entirely new content every time you post.

Equally important, if you keep your long-form content on your author website, every time you repurpose a piece of it you can include a link back to the “full” content. Get them hooked on your repurposed content, enthralled by your long-form content, and they’re already in the right spot to find and buy your books if they want even more.

Evergreen Content for Authors

Evergreen content is anything that doesn't have an expiration date. If it will stay relevant over time, it is evergreen. For authors, this might be miniature encyclopedias on a universe you created for a series that is complete, unchanging, and theoretically going to be selling indefinitely. It might be character information sheets, reading or book-club discussion guides, or any other type of content that won’t need to be updated. This is a great place to invest a bit of extra time because you can continue to use it for years to come.

4. Cross Promotion and Author Partnerships

In many industries, having a related business offering a product similar to yours would be considered competition. To authors, it’s an opportunity for collaboration.

Voracious readers power through books much faster than most writers can produce them, so it’s unrealistic to assume even your most perfect reader will commit to reading only your books forevermore. Unless you already have a lengthy backlist, the more likely scenario will leave readers waiting at least several months before your next book is published and ready for them.

If you develop relationships with your author peers who write in a similar genre to you, you can cross-promote each other's books. This is great for readers–they discover new authors they’re probably going to love. And it’s great for authors–they’re exposed to new, pre-qualified audiences of readers when they need them and they’re respectfully taking care of their readers' needs and desires, even when they’re between publication dates.

Eliminate the fear of competition from our mind. The best results will come from developing partnerships with authors who are most in line with your target market. If you share a genre, consistently write the same tropes, and/or flaunt the same type of relationship drama, character flaws, or world-building, you will also likely share the same target audience.

This type of marketing isn’t just about making sales on your launch date, it’s about building a list of niche readers who trust you and your taste in books. Collaborating with authors can take a variety of forms: newsletter swaps, group promotions, or even partnering up to release anthologies, bundles, or epic reader magnets.

Author Newsletter Swaps

Once you’ve done your research to find authors who have audiences similar to the one you are curating for yourself, you can organize newsletter swaps with those authors. A simple newsletter swap typically involves telling your list about another author they may enjoy, and that author will, in return, tell their list about you.

Ideally, you would both/all have reader magnets set up–free “first in series”, sample chapters, or novellas work great for this type of promotion–and will be able to collect email addresses so qualified readers end up on each other’s lists.

You can also set up swaps to promote group sales events, or agree to each promote each other at the time of a pre-order or launch, as needed for each author involved. This might take some coordination and trust, but can be extremely effective, particularly during your book launch promotions.

These types of swaps work best when you’ve honestly connected with the author(s) you’re swapping with, read each other’s work, and truly believe that the quality and content are on par with your own. It will not help you build trust with your readers if you recommend an author who writes in genres, spice-levels, or themes that are contradictory to your books.

Curated Author Group Promos

Services and platforms like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin have communities of authors who can coordinate with each other for group promotions. Each promo will have its own rules and requirements, but they offer incredible benefits for both new and established authors to expand their readership. Depending on the promotion type you join, it may be devoted to building your reader mailing list, or directing readers to a sales page. Be sure you have put the time in to develop a strong strategy to convert any traffic that might come in, and always hold up your end of the bargain.

Collaboration is not for your benefit alone–it requires every participant to be an enthusiastic and respectful advocate for each other.

Anthologies, Bundles, and Collaborative Reader Magnets

The more you get to know your author peers, the more opportunities you’ll discover to be involved in group collaborative efforts that benefit everyone who participates.

Anthologies are collections of short stories, often based around a common genre, theme, or topic. For example, a group of ten authors might all write unique “90s nostalgia” short stories. This could be in a variety of genres, or they may all be 90s rom-coms. The responsibility of marketing this anthology would be shared across contributing authors, increasing the potential reach overall and introducing the audiences of individuals to each author. If a reader really loves the third story, they can search out that author, and so on.

Bundles are similar, but will often involve full books. Digital copies are easier and more cost efficient to deliver, but print-on-demand services like BookVault are now offering physical box set options for printing and shipping.

Collaborative reader magnets might be an anthology or bundle, but instead of selling the material for money, it would be available at the cost of email addresses. There are logistics and trust involved, but each participating author would promote a single file or web page that includes reader magnets from each author involved, and readers would be able to join the lists of authors they’re most interested in.

5. Author Events

Author events can be intimidating for authors who’ve never participated in them before, but they can also be extraordinary sources of book sales and, perhaps even more importantly, author-reader relationship development.

If you’re picturing yourself standing at the head of a large room, hundreds of chairs sitting empty with only a smattering of attendees drinking stale coffee and looking bored, your discomfort around the idea of author events is understandable. Some authors have had experiences like this, and it’s very disheartening.

But there are many alternate versions to this particular reality that have much more enjoyable results.

First and foremost, thanks to the internet, you have plenty of opportunities to participate in virtual book events from the comfort of your own home. But in person events can also benefit from online marketing efforts to improve attendance and even pre-sell tickets to help set and manage your expectations. With proper planning, instead of a disappointingly unsold out venue, you can participate in an event that works not only with your personality, but also with your genre and target audience.

Try a cozy mystery reading in a cozy corner of your local library. A curated Q&A or workshop in a rented space that caters might be the perfect setting for launching a memoir or non-fiction book. Maybe you can make a special guest appearance for a boozy book club meeting to gossip over all the steamy scenes best discussed behind closed doors. Schools and radio stations love a local “celebrity” interview or panel discussion and as a published author, you will be a local celebrity.

Not to mention the unlimited variety of virtual video or audio events specially designed for connecting authors with readers. In this post-Covid world, author events can be anything you want them to be: free or paid, low-key or utterly unhinged, in person or online, small and intimate or thousands of spectators. Readers love meeting authors and if you’re not participating in events, you’re living under a glass ceiling of your own creation.

Let’s demystify the art of engaging with your readers in real time.

Meet the Author Events

Before you decide whether or not this is a good idea for you, go to Google and type in “author events near me,” and see what pops up. You can even at a date, year, or your city. Chances are, your local library and bookstore(s) at the very least will have some event in the nearish future. Free library events are incredibly popular with local audiences, and author signing events can pull a great crowd with a little bit of advance publicity.

Of course, the bigger the city you live in, the more events you’re likely to find, and the more readers will be excited to attend, but regardless of where you are, there are readers nearby who’d love to meet a local author.

Be prepared not just with books to sell, but also with fun talking points and plenty of energy to engage with the audience.

Online Author Events

Online events for authors can be either a solo or group adventure. If you have a large audience already, you can probably host an online event like a pre-launch reading, launch party, or post-launch “ask me anything” (AMA).

You can also get together with some of your pre-qualified author peers to create a genre centered virtual book tour, or other type of author-reader event. If being in front of a camera makes you nervous, The Bookshelf has a low-pressure Author Spotlight Program to help you dip your toes into the world of online exposure. You’ll be presented with a reader focused question to answer about your book in 2 - 3 minutes or less, with a few other opportunities to practice your hook and author bio. We even have resources to help you master your talking points. If you’d like to give it a try, check out our free Author Spotlight Program.

6. Paid Advertising for Authors

Paid advertising is the last type of marketing for authors that we’re tackling and this positioning is on purpose. There are many authors who rely solely on paid advertisements and see success, but if you are not an expert in ad creation and targeting, if you haven’t perfectly identified your target market, and if your book is not already selling well within its niche, paying for advertising can be extremely risky.

Organic marketing like social media, content marketing, and many author events are undeniably time consuming, but not necessarily a heavy financial investment. Paid advertising may seem like the faster strategy, but the setup, testing and tracking, and refinements not only take your time but also have a steep learning curve, and a hefty price-tag.

There is a place for paid advertising though, and when you get the timing right, it can be like adding fuel to a wildfire of incoming sales.

As you might expect, paid advertising means paying to have an ad placed in front of a specific audience of viewers. The more you’re able to target the viewers to match your ideal reader, the better your conversion rate is likely to be, which means the higher your return on investment will be.

But there’s more to it than just targeting the right viewer. You also have to have the right advertisement for them to see, and the right sales page for them to land on. This means you’ll have to hone your copywriting skills and be absolutely certain all the elements on your sales page are working together to make your book impossible to resist.

One of the biggest benefits of taking the time to develop an on-going organic marketing plan is that your conversions will naturally improve along the way. With practice and experimentation, you’ll learn over time precisely who is most likely to stay riveted to your content and what content they are most engaged with. Organic marketing might be slower, but when a reader gets to your buy now button, they’re already warmed up and ready to read.

Paid advertising often sends cold traffic to your offer–this could be the very first time they’ve ever heard of you or your book. They’re not warmed up and familiar with your content, so everything they see on your sales page must either be extraordinarily convincing, or tap into their impulse buy reactions.

If you maximize your organic efforts and generate the first wave of sales, you’ll have a stronger foundation to send the fresh, paid traffic to. Ideally, you’ll also have a record of sales and reviews to further entice mass market buy-in.

We recommend using paid advertising as an amplification tool, rather than a starting point or single strategy. If your book is already selling, posting an Amazon or Facebook ad, or participating in a promotion through Bookbub or other similar service can help sell more.

Book Promotion Services

There are services that have spent many years and copious amounts of money curating massive lists of avid readers, segmenting them into highly targeted mailing lists. Authors can partner with them to promote a book to this audience of readers.

This can be expensive, but there are services appropriate for newer authors or those who don’t have a giant marketing budget to dip into. The more in demand services can book up well in advance, so if you want to add book promotion services to your author marketing plan, you may want to start the process as early as you can, being absolutely certain your book will be ready by the promotion date.

Some of the most popular include:

Bookbub
Freebooksy
The Fussy Librarian
Bargain Booksy
BookGorilla
BookSends
BookDoggy

There are more you can find with a simple Google search, but be sure to read reviews and do some research before you commit to any.

As you research, you’ll probably also come across PR and/or Publicity Services. There are legit companies who have the experience and reach to really help an author, but there are also a lot of scams and unprofessional companies out there. Please be sure to do a lot of research, read as many reviews as you can, and even check out sites like WriterBeware to see if there are any red flags already raised.

Book Advertising

Ads are very popular and, if you know what you’re doing, can be very efficient. Most social and sales platforms will have advertising programs.

Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram are all social platforms that allow you to buy ad space and their algorithms can put your ad in front of users their system knows meets the criteria you set: age, demographics, interests, and so much more.

Sales platforms like Amazon also provide opportunities to create sponsored product placements, as do search engines like Google. These types of ads also rely on algorithms, but are more keyword based. In addition to knowing who your ideal reader is, you’ll also need to have a good idea what your ideal reader searches for when they’re shopping or looking for information.

Sites like Pinterest and YouTube also offer advertising opportunities, and they’re a unique blend of social media and search, because the people using these sites are both participating in the community aspect and actively exploring for information.

Wherever you decide to pay to play, it’s important to understand the intricacies of that platform and the readers who are using it.

Book Launch Marketing Strategy

Launching your next book could be as simple as putting it for sale on Amazon and wishing upon all your favorite stars that it will get noticed, start trending, and be the next blockbuster of a best seller. Unfortunately, that is a very unlikely chain of events. However, if you have a strong book launch marketing strategy in place, there is no reason your book can’t be a smashing success.

The most effective book launch plans begin well before your publish date, use everything you’ve learned about author marketing, and last long after your release week. The right strategy will tease, seduce, and build anticipation weeks if not months before your book is for sale. By offering plenty of opportunities for your potential readers to engage with you and your content before and during your launch, you’ll also set your book up for long-lasting discovery and develop a devoted readership that continues to consume your backlist as long as you continue to write and publish.

Your book launch plan should be about visibility, reach, and creating curiosity. If you have the bandwidth, you can use multiple channels–long and short form content, author events, paid advertising and, of course, email marketing. But you can also have a successful book launch by focusing on just one or a few marketing outlets. The key is to give yourself enough time to develop real relationships with your potential readers so when it’s time to ask for the sale, they’re way ahead of you demanding to know how you want to take their money.

You do not have to have a huge audience to have a successful book launch. It does help to have an engaged, qualified audience though. You don’t have to spend a fortune on paid ads, but investing your time is critical.

If you develop a marketing plan that takes into consideration your pre-launch timeline, book publicity, and your future backlist marketing, you will be giving your book the foundation it needs to have a long life in the spotlight. You’ll also be creating a repeatable system for yourself that can be used and improved with every subsequent book you launch.

Ideally, you’ll have an author website before you begin, so you have a central hub to direct all your sales efforts toward and an irresistible reader magnet ready to collect email addresses for your launch outreach.

Book Pre Launch Marketing

Part of your pre-launch marketing strategy will include foundational publishing tasks like final edits, having your book formatted for printing and eBook, having your cover professionally designed, and having your audiobook narrated, if applicable. You can start building up hype by teasing little details through your social media, like a book cover reveal, hilarious edit that almost made the print run, or a 30 second clip of the audio recording.

You can also create a web page to start collecting pre-orders, if that’s part of your strategy.

By this point, you’ll be beyond beta readers, but you can make use of ARC readers–Advance Reader Copy readers. You put out the call for your ideal reader, send them a copy, usually an eBook version, of the pre-published manuscript, and ask that they consider leaving an honest review on the day of the launch to boost activity around you book in the early days of your launch.

Check the guidelines of any platform where you’ll be asking ARC readers to review and be sure to follow the rules. For example, Amazon’s guidelines state you are allowed to:
Review free books (advanced reader copies) from authors or publishers. However, they can't require a review in exchange for free books or try to influence your opinion.

You may also want to reach out to relevant podcasts, review websites, and YouTube channels who interview authors, and pitch yourself as a guest.

Your pre-launch book marketing strategy is everything that happens before the day of your launch, and it can set you up for great success, but the work doesn’t stop here.

Book Publicity

The week of your book launch, as much publicity as you can manage will be worth it. If you’re planning on running paid advertisements, this is the time to do it. Spending extra time on social media and emailing your list are the foundational activities for your publicity, but you can go further.

A launch team, also known as a street team, is a group of trusted reader fans who are excited to support you by sharing with their audiences, not just “buy now” posts, but also celebrating top reviews, ogling over character art, and gushing over receiving their pre-orders.

If you were able to secure any interviews in your pre-launch stage, this week would be ideal to schedule them, if it can be arranged with the hosts.

There are PR and Publicity firms who can help you, but you don’t need them. You can print book launch posters and ask your local libraries and bookstores to share them with their customers. You can take the digital versions and share them over all your socials.

You can use platforms like BookBrush or even Canva to create book trailers and share those as video shorts. Go live on your favorite social platform to engage in conversation with readers.

Giveaways through platforms like Goodreads are always exciting ways to encourage conversation and viral sharing at a very low cost to you, with high perceived rewards for readers.

Be excited, very excited about your launch week, and get creative in your publicity efforts.

Backlist Marketing

Marketing your backlist means continuing to promote books you’ve published that are past their launch week or month. Whether you have a single published book that you keep on talking about, or if you have a list of books you promo strategically, you will always want to continue marketing books to maintain their momentum and sales.

This could look like:

Running sales or special offers
Bundling with new books as they come out
Sharing new artwork or reviews
Tracking and updating metadata like your keywords, categories, and book descriptions
Creating and releasing new marketing campaigns

Essentially, everything you do to promote your books for a launch can continue to be marketing tools past your launch, but you’ll have the immeasurable benefit of practice and results.Tracking Your Author Marketing Metrics

There is a great divide amongst the people who love numbers and those who don’t. Spreadsheets and sorting data by columns, analyzing growth and visualizing it through a chart, making decisions based on graphs that show history and project the future. None of that is necessary, but if it sounds fun for you, it’s optional.

Tracking your author marketing metrics requires you, at a minimum, to take note of what type of action you’ve completed, and a follow-up note about what kind of results you saw. Keep doing this over time and you’ll begin to see trends in what works best and what isn’t having the results you want.

What constitutes results can vary, but the most obvious would include:

Increased sales activity, including KU page reads, if you’re enrolled in the program
A flurry of reviews, ideally positive reviews (if you’re seeing an increase in negative reviews, that could mean you’re marketing to the wrong readers)
An uptick in your social media or content marketing views or engagement
Email open rates that are on the rise
A growing email list
Incoming website traffic

If you’re doing any kind of paid advertising, tracking your metrics can help prevent you from wasting your money. The more closely you pay attention to what you’re doing and how it’s working, the less you’ll be throwing metaphorical spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. This is called your Return on Investment (ROI) and it demands your attention.

You’ll also notice the type of marketing you gravitate toward. With any luck, it’ll match the type of marketing that gets you the best results. If not, you may need to change your focus. This is necessary if you want to protect your time and make sure that all your hard work and efforts are paying off.

Even if you're not a numbers person, keeping track of a few key metrics and having the courage to adjust your strategy when the data tells you to can have a significant impact on your author career.

Author Marketing Strategy: Planning for the Long-Term

If you’re planning a long, profitable career as an author—even if you’re still working a day job and not quite there yet—you need a long-term plan. Your marketing strategy can’t be an inconsistent series of energetic, unfocused bursts if you want consistent, sustainable income. You’ll need a process and a system that allows you to exert a reasonable, manageable measure of energy toward your marketing routinely, as part of your “job” as an author.

Think of your marketing strategy like world-building. Instead of info-dumping everything in huge, sporadic chunks, make it your goal to sprinkle important information out amongst the larger, more entertaining [never-ending] story.

A marketing strategy that is sustainable will find the sweet spot for creating quality (interesting) content in quantities that allow for consistent frequency without consuming your focus and energy 24/7. Start slow and build up as your metrics start to provide you with usable information and you get more practice and gain momentum.

An author marketing strategy is not a book launch strategy. It is a plan that begins when you decide to write a book and only ends when/if you no longer wish to sell another book. Paid advertising may bring short-term, immediate results, but a marketing strategy is meant to bring long-term consistent results. It is not fast and furious. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. But if you stay committed, it will build cumulative results over time.

Common Author Marketing Mistakes (And How To Avoid Them)

Those who live to write don’t necessarily have a background in marketing and it’s not uncommon to struggle trying to manage everything expected of an author. There are a handful of common mistakes authors make that are simple to avoid, if not precisely easy.

If you understand why some book marketing fails, you can strategically not launch yourself into the same common publishing pitfalls. If you critically think about all the information shared in this article and other related posts, you will have a really strong foundation for doing what has proven to work for many authors.

Recognizing the following mistakes may contextualize the information in a more lasting way, so here are some of the most common author marketing mistakes, and some clear ways to avoid them.

Not targeting your ideal reader

The very first thing actionable piece of information discussed in this article was understanding your ideal reader before you start marketing. Unfortunately, many authors decide this crucial step feels too limiting, or too obvious, or too something else that justifies ignoring this step.

You may think that your book is so universal it should and will appeal to everyone. In reality, the only things that appeal to everyone are the things no-one notices. Like breathing air. Anything that makes a person take a special interest is, by definition, a special interest. Not universal.

If you vague your marketing down too much, it’ll be much too easy to scroll past.

If you have a very specific audience of readers in mind for your book, everything you do with your marketing should appeal to them specifically.

Not targeting your ideal reader in all your marketing efforts is a mistake that will result in lukewarm responses. Clearly and undeniably positioning your book as the special interest of your ideal reader can lead to a cult-like following. It may be a smaller following than “everyone on earth,” but you’ll be much more memorable to them and they will be much more likely to lavish their attention (and money) on your books.

Neglecting the Packaging: title, cover, book description

There is a great Instagram post by @yahdon, a senior editor working at an imprint of one of the Big Five publishing houses, that talks about the importance of appealing to not just the “reader” who actually reads your book, but also the “reader” who buys your book. They are not always the same person. Some people buy books for the vibes, for gifts, or for décor. Some of those people also read the books they bought, but not all of them do.

To be a successful author, you need to sell books. To be a successful author you also need to write fantastic books that readers will review and rave about. The latter is craft. The former is marketing. You cannot pretend people don’t judge books based on their covers (and titles and descriptions or “flap copy”). They do. And if you want to sell books, you must give the packaging a great deal of thought.

Getting the packaging right is just as much an art form as getting the storytelling right. The cover and copy are the first introduction to your book that a reader/buyer has. If it is not compelling, they’ll move on and never find out how life-changing your story might be.

Neglecting the packaging of your book is a mistake that will cost you sales. Take the time to research—and ideally hire experts to help you design the packaging of your book to convert views to purchases.

Selling without building relationships

Selling your book to one person, one time is great. But making that sale can take just as much time, energy, and/or money as it would take to sell your book to many people, many times. The difference comes with the relationships you build with your audience.

One of the key factors to making a sale is trust. A person must trust that the value they’re going to receive (your book) is worth the cost they’re going to pay. A single paid advertisement may be extremely compelling and result in a single impulse purchase. But impulse purchases are easy to forget and difficult to repeat.

If, instead, you have an on-going conversation with one of your ideal readers, they’re going to remember you. A “conversation” might be a TikTok or Instagram account that they keep returning to because they’re hooked by the short-form content you’re creating. It might be the conversations they have with their friends every time you drop a new YouTube video or blog post.

When your content becomes a staple—or even a commonly used condiment—in their daily scrolling habits, they’ll remember you. So when you have a book to sell, they’ll buy it. Tell their friends about it. Read it to see what all the fuss is about and review it. Then they’ll anxiously wait out the months or years it takes you to release the next book and, in the meantime, you’ll continue to be a staple/condiment in their life.

Selling without building relationships is a mistake because selling one book at a time is exhausting and expensive. Building author-reader relationships through an author marketing strategy that plans for long-term results can be fun, addicting, and has a much higher potential for sustainable sales.

Ignoring potential fans

Being shy, introverted, or awkward is not an excuse to opt-out of interacting with your potential fans. Suffering from imposter syndrome is something you’re going to have to work around or get over. Not having the time, or energy, or interest to engage with the people who might one day hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for your book is unacceptable.

Ignoring potential fans is a mistake that can cost your reputation as an author and impact your sales. Engaging with potential fans, even if it makes you uncomfortable, humanizes you and makes you someone they can relate to. It makes you more memorable. And when a reader is shopping for a new book you want to be remembered!

DISCLAIMER: if you have a physical, mental, or emotional disability that makes it impossible for you to interact with potential fans, and you’re still marketing in ways that you are able to accomplish consistently, it can be a good idea to mention your limitations so your audience understands and isn’t left to come to their own, less charitably-minded conclusions.

All or Nothing approaches

There are two common types of all or nothing mindsets when it comes to marketing:

1. I must do absolutely everything, and do it all perfectly, or it’s not worth doing anything at all

2. I have the time and energy to do everything all at once right now, but then I’m going to disappear for months on end into the oubliette.

Neither of these approaches resemble a strategy, and they’re not likely to generate anything more than the occasional burst or dribble of results.

An all-or-nothing approach to author marketing is an exhausting mistake that will leave you disenchanted with all things marketing and more likely to quit entirely. Instead, building a strategy of consistency, even if each action you take is very small, can compound into a surprisingly manageable marketing plan that builds with equal consistency.

Failing to track your results

If you do not keep track of what you are doing and what kind of effect it is having, you will never know if you’re improving or wasting your time.

For example, let’s imagine you dedicate one hour per day to your marketing strategy, and you divide that hour between creating new Instagram posts, commenting and sharing Instagram posts, making connections with fellow authors in your space, and writing flash fiction to share on your blog. You could do that for a full year and at the end of the year if you aren’t tracking your results, you won’t know if that hour a day led to more sales, followers, or email address. You won’t know if you should quite writing the flash fiction and double down on Instagram commenting, or vice versa.

Failing to track your results is a common author mistake because of the misbelief that all marketing must be good marketing. While it may be better than nothing, if you are going to invest your time and/or money, you should be making sure that you invest it in the areas that are going to have the best return on investment for you. Tracking your results allows you to maximize what works and improve upon or ditch what is not helping you.

Quitting

The biggest mistake any author can make is to quit. If you are committed to finding your own unique definition of success as an author, you cannot quit. You cannot quit writing, you cannot quit marketing. Quitting is the only guarantee of failing. Quitting is the only absolute way to ensure you will not succeed.

As long as you write and try to market yourself as an author, success is always possible.

So don’t quit, please and thank you.

The Bookshelf Community

The Bookshelf is primarily a tech company devoted to helping authors build their author websites with as little stress and difficulty as possible. We believe that your website is not only your marketing hub, but it can also be your sales hub and we’ll be introducing easy-to-use direct sales technology in the near future as well.

But you can build the most effective author website ever created, and if you don’t have anyone looking at it, your effort won’t get the appreciation it deserves. That is why we are also devoted to helping authors figure out their marketing strategy.

Our Content

This guide and all the related posts on the topic are one part of that equation. Learning is a critical step on the road to doing and excelling. We have a programming team solely focused on the tech side of things, and we also have a team devoted to creating content for authors.

We’re curating articles, guides, videos, workshops, and more that will provide authors with the information they need to write and publish their books, design and build their websites and direct sales stores, and market themselves as a brand and their book as the next best addition to bookshelves around the world.

In addition to our educational content, we also have community features to help you grow faster, more strategically, and surrounded by your author peers.

Readership Growth Program

Our Readership Growth Program is a free community for authors who are looking for guidance, inspiration, and cheerleading for their social media. It’s currently primarily focused on Instagram, but it will expand to other networks in time, as demand demands.

The Bookshelf Events

The Bookshelf team participates in as many author-centric events as possible, and we’re always excited to be invited to virtual summits, podcasts, and other collaborations. Because we have seen the value first hand, we are committed to paying that forward to the authors who surround us.

Participating in online events can be intimidating, so we’ve launched an Author Spotlight program that invites you to dabble. Dip your toes into the experience. We’ve created a series of reader forward questions and you have the opportunity to answer one of them. We want you to start with one to reduce the anxiety around putting yourself in front of the video camera. Once you’ve answered the fun question about your book, you can tell the audience a little about you and where to buy your book, if they’re interested.

If you’re feeling confident, there are even optional bonus questions you can jump into. It’s free to submit and there are no special requirements. We have resources to help you make the most of this opportunity and we’ll share with our audience, doing our best to put you in front of as many readers as we can.

For authors who are looking for something bigger and more involved, we’re in the planning stages of genre-targeted virtual book tours. For more information and to get yourself on a waitlist, you can check out The Bookshelf’s Book Tours.

We are also in development of an Academy style program for authors who want to learn from experts in all arenas of book publishing, from formatting and design, to sales and marketing, and even topics like audiobooks, international marketplaces, and the business systems required to scale toward unlimited success.

To stay up to date with all our community opportunities and events, bookmark our author Community landing page.

The Bookshelf’s Socials

We can be everywhere, all the time, but we are doing our best to stay active and engaged in a few strategical social platforms. You can search for @thebookshelfauthors and find us on:

Drop by, follow if it feels right, and please say “hello!”

Written By Monique Danielle

Monique Danielle is the Chief Marketing Officer at The Bookshelf, where she leads marketing and brand strategy, partnerships, and audience growth initiatives across the platform. She also oversees educational programming and community-driven initiatives including The Bookshelf Academy and Book Tours. With a background in both marketing and publishing, Monique brings a practical, author-first perspective to selling more books.