171 - How to Market Your Book While You Write

After sharing how my co-author and I wrote and launched a book in (almost) thirty days, I wanted to have a simpler episode geared toward YOU. Here are some ways to market your book while you write and where to stop wasting your time.

You want to write a book. You want to self-publish (or, as I like to say, publish independently) on Amazon and/or other retailers.

But marketing?

Ick. Overwhelm. No. Help!

If that is YOU, then I want to help make this a little more accessible. Ready for it? Here are some tips for marketing your book WHILE you write.

HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK WHILE YOU WRITE

Many of you might think that you don't want to market while you write. You want to write a book and THEN figure out marketing.

That's not BAD...necessarily. But you want to talk about overwhelm? That is someone who has written a whole book and now thinks, "Oh, I guess I should consider marketing."

Honestly, even if you aren't taking steps to think about marketing actively, you should at least consider marketing in terms of where your book FITS.

What category does it go in? What are the reader expectations for that category? What do the covers look like? How long are the books?

Those are things to consider before or AS you write. I mean, if you want to sell books. If you are just writing a labor of love, then do what you want. But I'm assuming that I'm speaking to people wanting to SELL books. In that case, you should look at the market, even if you aren't marketing.

But here is my very big, very simple advice on marketing while you write:

Write everyday. Do one marketing task daily.

That's it. The end. Simple.

Too simple? Yep. So, let's dive into some things that you can do daily.

DAILY MARKETING TASKS

I'd honestly love to make a freebie for this. I probably will... soon. But not today.

For now, I'm going to refer you to the GIANT post on how to write and launch a book in a month. There are so many action items there.

Overall, I would say that you should focus on things that have lasting power, like building an email list. Create a freebie that relates to the series you're launching, or give away a teaser of a few chapters in exchange for an email address with a site like Bookfunnel, Story Origin, Book Cave, or Prolific Works.

Join author group promos and send paid traffic to that freebie to grow your readership WHILE YOU'RE WRITING. So huge. When you go to launch your book and you have even a few hundred subscribers, that's POWERFUL!

Also see:

• A Simple Book Launch Framework
• How to Start Building Your Email List

THINGS TO STOP DOING TO "MARKET" YOUR BOOK

This is where (if you listen to the audio) I get a little rant-y. Now, hear me: there isn't always ONE way to do things. So, take this with a grain of salt. BUT GENERALLY SPEAKING, these things will not help you sell more books. Period.

Wasting Time on Social Media

Realize that if you think that building your Facebook likes or Twitter followers is going to sell books, you're probably wrong. Email sells more books. Focus on email lists, not follower counts.

Facebook is amazing for groups and collaborations and newsletter swaps with other authors, but many authors go into FB groups for a genre and then just drop links to their books. Any group that is filled with authors dropping links to books with no likes or comments is a WASTE OF TIME. Look for actual reader groups with actual readers and see what their rules are for self-promo. Or just listen and learn what readers in your genre like.

Designing Your Own Book Cover

I once designed my own book cover. In the time it took me to create a cover (and I'm okay at stuff), I could have paid someone $15 on Fiverr to do it better and saved myself hours. Unless you're GREAT at book cover design (not just graphics) you'll waste time and money and lose sales because your book cover won't hold up against other books in your genre. Stop it.

Blogging

Blogging isn't dead. But it's shifted. People don't read blogs like online diaries anymore. Authors didn't get this memo. They either write blogs that are diary-esque (which really only appeal to hardcore fans) or they write blog posts that are not to the right audience. An example of the second one is a fiction writer blogging about writing tips. That attracts other authors and writers, not the people who'll read your romance novels.

If you want to drive sales on your blog, you'll have to actually take the time to create a content strategy based around things your readers are already searching for. You'll us...