5 Ways To Promote Your Self-Published Novel

Deciding whether or not self-publishing is right for you is a tough decision. While we have all heard stories of self-published authors doing incredibly well for themselves, and becoming incredibly successful as a result, however this sadly only happens to a lucky few.

The good news is when you do self-publish your novel, you can do lots of things to increase your chances of getting noticed, create some buzz about your book, and of course, achieve the ultimate goal of increasing the number of people who buy it. Here are 5 tips that will help you market your book and yourself, help you to spread the word about your book, and hopefully increase sales.

Freebie launch

While this may seem counter-intuitive, selling your book for free on Amazon can be a great way of getting it noticed. While of course you want to make money on your book, if you aren’t a well known author and your book isn’t backed up by loads of customer reviews, then people may be unwilling to spend their hard earned cash on it. Post it for free for a few days to see if you can get people to give it a try. You need to opt in to KDP select on Amazon to take advantage of this, but people are always up for freebies and it is a great way to put it out there. If it does well you could get to the top of Amazon lists, and be listed on other books pages as ‘customers who bought this also bought’ this will again bring more attention to your book, and even after the promotion is over will direct people to your sellers page.

2. Get Reviews

Word of mouth is a wonderful thing and can make a huge difference to how well your book will do. When you first launch your book, get friends and family to read it and leave positive reviews. Of course trying to push for reviews is risky, as bad ones can be detrimental. However if you go out there and promote your book to your target audience, hopefully they should be mainly positive. You can also contact influential bloggers to ask them if they would like to review your book, or find book groups and offer it to them for free if they would be willing to review it at the end.

3. Use social media

Social media is a great way to promote your new novel. Again you can try and contact influencers or rack your brains for any useful contacts you might have and see if they will tweet about your book and add in a link so people who see it know where to buy it. If you are willing to invest some money into promotion then why not create a sponsored ad campaign for your book? This means thousands of people you otherwise wouldn’t have access to could see it. Remember to think carefully about what you want to say though, an ad will only work well if it grabs people’s attention.

4. Go local

Having a new book is impressive, and you should shout about it. If you are hoping to promote it why not try and get some interest from a local paper, or contact your local radio station and see if they would like to interview you? If they accept prepare yourself well and make sure you come across as honest, open and friendly. This obviously works particularly well if you have written about the place in which you live! Setting up a mini book tour around the bookshops, libraries or any arty cafe’s/ bars in your area to talk about your book, offer signed copies and do a Q & A can also get people talking.

5. Get an author website

Remember you are a business, and a brand. You should have your own professional looking website which explains what you are and what you do. Try to promote your website any way you can, include links to your book and if you have time to write a lively and interesting author blog, all the better.

When you start to think about how to promote your self-published novel you will hopefully realise that the possibilities are endless. Exhaust all avenues and just keep on trying, you never know when you might get a sudden breakthrough!

Bethany Cadman -contributor

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