40 Ideas to Market Your Book
To market an ebook yourself can seem like a daunting task, what with ebooks coming out of the woodwork here and there making you feel like you’re just a drop in the ocean. But here’s the thing, you need to shake off the negativity and work around this obstacle. What you need to start thinking of is how to shine in the midst of all those ebooks out there and get yourself a little bit of the spotlight.
To help you do that, we’ve compiled a list of ways you can make headway in the marketing ebooks game. This list includes ideas that can span the entirety of your ebook writing and publishing process so that you can build a name for yourself and start your journey the right way.
So here’s a monumental list of 40 ways to market an ebook to your target audience!
Build the Hype Beforehand
Will you go through all publication stages and only then start thinking about marketing?
No.
That’s not how a marketing expert thinks. They start building hype way before the product hits the market. You can start promoting yourself as an author while you’re working on the ebook.
There’s no such thing as starting too early. Get active on social media and give hints about the ebook that’s about to become available. Invite your audience to talk about related topics and take their comments into consideration. If they agree, you may even include some of the comments in the ebook and provide an elaborate response that all readers can see.
Here are a few practical ideas on how to build the hype:
-
Host Competitions for Cover Art
Have you noticed that most ebooks have cheesy covers? You don’t want that. You want yours to be great. But why pay an artist when you can hold a competition and build hype at the same time?
-
Advertise Using the Cover Art
Don’t wait for the ebook to be released so you can introduce your audience to its appearance. Start using the cover to market your ebook. Use PicMonkey or another photo editing software to turn the cover into a Facebook cover photo, Instagram photo, and a visual suitable for Pinterest. Share it all over social media!
-
Play around with YouTube Teasers
People spend more time on YouTube than on Netflix and Facebook video combined. If you’re into numbers, that would count for billion hours a day. You get a chance to be part of that community, so why miss it? You can create an animated video to promote your ebook. Promote it via social media! If it’s good, it will gain traction and it will start attracting more views.
-
Create a Website
Everything starts with a great website. There, you’ll promote your ebook and yourself as a writer. Before the visitors leave the website, a pop-up will invite them to subscribe to the email list. From there on, they will start receiving valuable content and promotional offers related to your ebooks.
A countdown timer would be a great addition! It will build some hype and make your audience eager to finally reach the day of the release. Your website can also be the place where you’ll host creative competitions for your audience. Clearly, the ebook will be the prize.
-
Publish Polls on Social Media
Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow you to ask for the opinion of your audience through polls. If, for example, you’re working on an ebook on pizza, you can get stats about the most popular types of pizza through polls. You can also ask your audience to choose between two or more options for the cover by answering a poll.
Start a Personal Branding Campaign
You’re not just selling an ebook. You’re selling yourself as an author, too.
Through the personal branding process, you’ll show your uniqueness and you’ll spread the word around. You’ll build a base of followers, who will subscribe to your email list and engage with your social media posts. Most of all, you’ll communicate with your readers and you’ll learn throughout that process.
It’s not easy to build a personal brand from scratch, but you have to work on that without wasting your time.
First, identify the purpose of your personal branding campaign. You want to establish yourself as an industry expert and inform people about the ebook that they are able to buy from you. That mission should guide all personal branding steps.
Promote yourself! You need to have the marketing mindset if you’re willing to sell your ebook. Here’s how to do that:
-
Be Neurotic about Updating Your Blog
It’s the space that hosts your unique voice. Don’t make time your excuse. If George R.R. Martin has time for blogging, so do you!
-
Write Guest Blog Posts
It may be difficult for you to attract the audience towards your blog if you’re still not an influencer. That’s why you need to rely on link building practices. You’ll write guest posts for popular blogs, and you’ll include a link to your own blog in the bio section.
-
Personal Social Media Toot Your Horn
Of course, you can create social media profiles specifically dedicated to the ebook and your activities as an author. But don’t let them dilute your personality. Remember: you want people to get to know you as a person. That’s how you gain authority as an author. Keep your personal pages active and show your wit, wisdom, humor, and everything else you’ve got.
-
Get Active on Quora
Quora is a valuable platform for anyone who wants to make a connection with their target audience and prove their expertise. Check out the questions from your niche and answer them. You may recommend your ebook along the way if it fits in the context of your answer.
-
Get active on Linked-in Groups
Can you fit your ebook into any industry? If, for example, you wrote an ebook about marketing, start joining LinkedIn groups for marketing experts. Join the conversation! You may share a link to your eBook and even ask for their feedback, so you can improve it.
-
Get Active on Goodreads
This is the place where you can engage in bookish conversations. People will immediately notice your talent for writing through the reviews you submit, so you’ll have their interest when you offer your own ebook.
Make sure to complete your profile, and become very active with your reviews. When your ebook becomes available for purchase, feature it on Goodreads and ask some of your friends to provide their reviews. That’s a great head start that gets the interest of the reading community.
-
Give Talks
First, start acting locally. Are there any events that could feature you as a speaker? Research the events in your industry and become part of them!
You may even become a TEDx speaker, so you’ll reach a larger audience. People love TED!
-
Record Podcasts
It’s time for research again! What are the most popular podcasts in your niche? Contact the hosts and arrange an interview. They already have an audience that you can reach. Maybe you can even turn your ebook into an audiobook and share snippets of your story somewhere.
-
Give Webinars
Let’s say you wrote an ebook about pizza. It means you’ve done a lot of research on the history and current trends related to pizza. You know a lot about this topic and you could teach people about it. Many pizza chefs would be thrilled to upgrade their skills and knowledge by attending your webinar.
-
Host Twitter Chats
Twitter is a relaxed environment. The conversations are just like a chat that occurs naturally. Why don’t you host such a chat? You may choose a specific hashtag and invite people to join the fun.
-
Work on Your Personal Website
It will make you look more professional. It will feature your headshot, so people will recognize you as a person. The website will inform the audience about your expertise, so they will know that if they buy your ebook, they are going to get reliable information.
When someone is interested in your ebook but they see your name for the first time, they will want to know more about you. When they google your name, you’ll control their impressions if the results lead directly to your personal website.
Promote the Ebook with the Ebook Itself
If the ebook is good enough for people to read, then it’s good enough to promote itself. You’re wondering how you can use the ebook content for the promotion? That’s easy!
-
Chapter Teasers
Share the introduction for free. It’s enough to trigger people’s interest. Your intro leads the reader to the main point, so they will definitely want to proceed further.
-
App teasers
Are you releasing your ebook as an Android or iOS app? That’s great! People can download the app for free and access samples. If they want to get the entire content, they will be glad to pay for it. The teasers already show the value they will get from this investment.
-
iPod Teasers
Did you know that nearly one in five Americans listen to audiobooks nowadays? You can benefit from this trend! You can release captivating audio recordings of sections of your ebook for free. If you can get a popular radio host, actor, or TV personality to read these excerpts, you’ll be on your way to a successful promotion. Here’s Why and How to Convert Your Book to an Audiobook.
-
Host Competitions for Free Ebook Giveaways
The rules will be really simple. You’ll just ask a question and choose the best answer. You may also ask the contest participants to tag a friend in the comments, and you’ll provide two ebooks for each winner. The winners will already have a positive attitude towards the ebook when they start reading it. They got it as a present, after all. Most of them will be happy to leave their feedback on your page.
-
Give Promotions and Discounts
The promotion will be huge if you allow people to download the ebook for free during the first 24 hour hours after the release. With this method, you provide access for many readers. You may rest assured that they will spread the word around.
Get Others Talking about Your Ebook
The best kind of marketing doesn’t come from you and your marketing team. It comes from the audience itself. That’s why it’s important to get people talking about your work.
-
Reach Out to Influencers
If you wrote a piece of fiction, you may reach out to book bloggers. If you have a specific niche for your ebook, you’ll reach out to influencers from that niche. The pizza theme will be perfect for food bloggers who are famous on Instagram.
Influencer marketing works in a very simple way. You’ll propose an offer for the influencer. You’ll provide them with free access to your ebook and you’ll arrange the details around the promotion. You can’t buy the influencer’s opinion. They are allowed to be honest with the audience and recommend your ebook only if they think it’s good. But don’t worry; your ebook is good. Right?
-
Request Free Reviews
Do you have an email list? Yes! It’s important to animate the recipients. Send a simple email asking: “Did you read the ebook? How did you like it?” You’re a writer, so you can surely think of a creative way to ask for the opinions of your readers.
-
Pay for Reviews
If you connect with the most influential bloggers from your niche, you can pay to get reviewed at their websites.
Get Active on Social Media
That’s where you’ll find and target your audience!
Facebook, as the most active social media channel, has 2.23 billion users! Take a moment to process that information; it’s huge! Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, and other platforms don’t have as many users, but they are equally important to target your audience. You can include at least one social media platform in addition to Facebook.
On social media, you can become an active member of groups and discussion. You can share links to your website and blog, and you can engage your audience with interesting posts. It’s an essential aspect of ebook promotion.
-
Facebook
Share posts that announce the launch of your ebook. Share teasers, excerpts, and links to your blog. Encourage the audience to comment, like, and share! It’s important to connect with them, so take your time to answer their questions and like their comments.
Facebook makes it difficult for promotional campaigns to get seen without payment. So you might consider investing in paid advertising on this platform. You’ll set a fixed budget, so you don’t have to spend too much. This method will boost the visibility of your Facebook posts. The best part is that you’ll reach a very targeted audience.
-
Twitter
Get people talking! Start a hashtag related to the theme of your ebook and create some buzz around it. Start polls to include your audience into the decision-making process around the launch of your eBook. Share quotes in the form of tweets.
There are plenty of things to do on Twitter. Just be yourself and keep your activity there as relaxed as possible. No one likes forced humor.
-
Instagram
Instagram is all about the visuals! You may share some visuals from your ebook, but you can also get creative. Take photos that are related to the ebook’s content. In the description, you may share quotes. You may also describe the point of your ebook and recommend it. You may share some feedback from real readers, too.
You can also add quotes over the images, so people won’t have to read the description to realize what your page is all about. Check out how The Angry Therapist is doing it.
-
LinkedIn
Did you know that you can write LinkedIn posts and articles? It’s just like guest posting, but LinkedIn is your medium in this case.
-
YouTube
First of all, you need your channel. You’ll use it for personal branding and for the promotion of your work. Film several videos of yourself talking about things related to your ebook’s topic. Invite influencers to interview them. You may even ask them what they thought about your book.
YouTube is also a great place for paid promotion. It will show your ad to people watching relatable videos.
-
Pinterest
Can you turn part of the ebook ’s content into an infographic? That would be great for Pinterest promotion!
-
Google+
At first sight, it seems like Google+ is lagging behind other social media platforms, but it’s not. It’s much more than a simple social media network. It’s about sharing interests and connecting with people who have similar interests to yours. That’s what makes it perfect for ebook promotion.
Complete your profile and start making connections. Share information about the launch of your ebook, as well as excerpts from various chapters. Don’t forget to use relevant hashtags; Google+ loves them!
-
Get Active on All of Them
Yes; it’s possible. Don’t worry; you won’t spend the entire day scrolling through social media feeds. You may use a tool like Brand24 to check out all relevant content from a single feed. You’ll get notifications for all mentions, so you’ll observe the activity of your audience in a very simple way.
Build a Community
When you develop a community around your name and ebook, you build a strong foundation for the success of all future projects you launch. This will probably be the hardest part of your marketing campaign, simply because it requires a great deal of devotion.
-
Start Conversations
On LinkedIn, you can start conversations in relevant groups. It’s just like a forum, where people get together to discuss different things. Reddit and Quora are also great places for you to do the same thing.
The point is to make a connection with people whose interests encompass your ebook’s theme.
-
Start an Online Book Club
When you host an active online book club, you’ll be able to include your own book when it gets published.
This is an easy thing to do: just start a Facebook group committed to your book club and invite your friends to join. Spread the word across all channels. You may organize a giveaway, so you’ll attract more members to the club. Then, share a schedule and make sure to encourage productive and civilized discussions.
You know how book clubs work. They are based on activity, so make sure to commit yourself to the project. When the time for your own ebook comes, you’ll have a direct audience to read and discuss it.
-
Engage in Email Marketing
Take a look at your inbox. You keep receiving promotional emails, right? Some of them go straight to the trash folder; you don’t even bother checking them out. But from time to time, promotional emails get your attention. You want to see what the offer is. If you subscribed to someone’s emailing list, you expect to see great content in your inbox and you’re happy when that happens.
It’s a wonder why so many ebook writers avoid making a commitment to an email marketing campaign when it can provide so many benefits.
First and foremost, your private email list gives you a direct communication channel that connects you with your readers. Don’t worry; they won’t see you as a spammer as long as you provide high-quality content a few times per month.
Go Old School
Sometimes the old methods get results, too. When you’ve exhausted all the different online options, consider getting out there yourself. It may seem time-consuming with little return for investment. But the most valuable part of meeting your readers face to face isn’t simply publicity. You need to get in touch with your readers and get a feel for what they like and what they don’t. Get out there and meet people.
-
Give Library Talks
Libraries tend to have strong reading communities. If you get in touch with your local library to arrange a promotion, the institution will spread the word for you. Then, you’ll meet people interested in what you have to offer and you’ll only need to present the ebook to them.
It’s a good idea to print out some materials or show sections of the ebook through a projection, so these potential readers will get an idea of what it’s about. Give them all a discount code!
-
Give Bookstore Talks
It’s the same method as with library talks, but the setting is different. Bookstores are more relaxed and informal when compared to libraries. That’s a good thing!
-
Give Talks at Schools and Universities
This is something you can do after you publish the ebook and you create some buzz around it. Local schools would love to have you as a speaker, who can inspire the students to work towards their dreams.
-
Give Talks at Related Organizations
Did you write an ebook about pizza? You can give a talk at a seminar for chefs. Did you write an ebook about SEO? You may arrange talks at all kinds of businesses that would want to amplify their audience reach.
Just connect the theme of your content with a type of organization. Then, start sending emails to HR departments, so you can arrange the talk.
-
How about Some Marketing Paraphernalia?
You don’t have to go too bold about it. Just get t-shirts, mugs, and notebooks with relevant prints. Add some pens and lighters in the mix. This promotional material is great for spicing up your talks at libraries, bookstores, schools, and organizations.
Conclusion
Are you ready for some marketing? You should be! Hopefully, the ideas above will help you to promote your ebook as it deserves. Don’t forget to also Avoid These 5 Book Marketing Pitfalls. And if you’d like some help with your book promotion, you can always use one of the well-known book promotion websites, such as Goodkindles.
And If you have more ideas on how to market an ebook, share them with us. We love to hear from you.
Read these posts.
Sell Books on WordPress with the WooCommerce Plugin
Writers’ Retreats You Don’t Want to Miss
