Book marketing is something that many writers today are not very well suited for. Naturally, as writers, we would rather concentrate on sharpening our writing skills and cranking out a best-seller.
Unfortunately, until that best-seller gets here, we must do other things to get the ball rolling. And one of those other things is marketing our books.
Two Book Marketing methods that are underutilized
When it comes to book marketing, the key is to find marketing methods that work. And then when we find those few methods that bring some profits, we should concentrate our marketing efforts and dollars exclusively on those.
With that said, let us consider the following two ways of marketing your books that many authors either will not do or have overlooked. They do come with some learning, some work, and a little money, but once you’ve set them up, they will serve you well.
Sell to readers you already have
The basis behind this is to market your books to the satisfied customers you have already earned. Everybody that reads a good book immediately looks for more books written by the same author. Here’s a chance to take advantage of this fact.
Your goal is to get them on an email list. When you’ve collected a few thousand names on that list, imagine being able to notify them when you’ve released a new book. You could get several hundred sales right out of the gate. More importantly, they’ll begin leaving great reviews and think of how Amazon will promote your book – based on these early sales.
Now – here’s the catch. You must provide a way for your readers to sign up for your email list. They can do so by filling in an opt-in box online somewhere. There are two places to provide ways to do this:
Your author website. I hope you’ve set up an author website or blog already. If not, you must do so right away. There are too many advantages to having one.
Provide a link to your current books. Right after readers have finished your book, let them see a way to get notified about the release of your future books.
Setting up an email list requires an autoresponder service like Aweber, Getresponse, or MailChimp – among several others. They will charge you a small monthly fee and provide instructions on how to set up everything. It’s a bit of a learning curve, and the cost usually goes up as your list gets more significant, but an enormous list also means more earnings.
You’ll also need to offer readers an incentive in exchange for their email addresses. Many authors offer a free story or even a book in return for signing up.
Write short fiction for marketing your books
Another method you can use to market more books is writing short-fiction, or flash-fiction, as some like to call it.
This works by writing a group of short stories or a novella and offering them in a 20,000 to 30,000 word online book. In the last pages of this short online book, you will post excerpts and links to the current books you are selling.
Now you will want to offer this book for free in every place imaginable online. Post it throughout your social media communities, post it on book publishing sites, and so forth.
If your stories are well received, you could probably sell them on Amazon for a small price. Many readers love short fiction in their preferred genre.
Using this short fiction method also works great with email lists – if you decided on using the previous method we discussed earlier.
Final thoughts
I hope you give these book marketing methods some serious consideration. If you do, then understand it will take some time for these systems to build up momentum. You will need a lot of patience.
However, they will become a solid passive income stream for many years after they reach critical mass.
