- Book marketing is a process not an event.
You don't line everything up for a single day,
watch the fireworks and then call it a day.
You need consistent efforts to keep books moving.
If you've hit post-launch
and are wondering what you can do
to keep those books sales coming in,
then this video is absolutely for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey, I'm Julie the Book Broad with booklaunches.com,
your fabulous professional self publishing team.
You've worked really hard to write a hashtag no boring book,
but don't think you get to relax just yet.
A strong book launch is important,
but you need to continue promoting your book
for the entire year and beyond
to achieve big results post-launch.
Here are eight ideas for you to consider
to keep that launch day love going on past day one.
Number one, throw a virtual or live launch party,
or reviewer celebration,
or one month anniversary of your book launch,
or a party for the heck of it.
Your book is out, it's time to party.
After all your hard work,
you deserve to celebrate your book,
your readers, your reviewers, your supporters
and your book buyers.
Your local library is a great venue for a party.
They love supporting local authors and even better,
they probably won't charge you for their event space
and they almost always will buy a copy of your book
or maybe two for their shelves.
Design and print some posters to hang up
along with any other permitted decor that you might like.
You can even print flyers to post in stores, restaurants,
or other places throughout your community.
Use your email newsletter or social media
to invite your friends, family
and community to join you there.
See if your venue allows food or drinks
and then let your guests enjoy treats
while you treat them to a reading,
a talk or even a workshop.
Bring along some copies of your book too,
so attendees can buy their copy and have you sign it.
These days, you may feel it's better or safer
to do the virtual route,
but that doesn't mean your party
has to be any less spectacular.
Book Launchers author, Michael Dominguez,
threw a huge virtual book launch party for his book,
"Armchair Real Estate Millionaire".
Not only did he share more about the book,
answer questions with live Q&A
and give attendees a free party favor as a thank you,
he even had magicians in the Zoom Room
to perform magic tricks.
Ultimately, do what works for you
and what you find fun and enjoyable,
it's your party after all.
Idea two, run a contest or a giveaway.
Readers love giveaways.
Whether you offer a contest
or a giveaway through a site like Goodreads
or simply through your social media,
it's an opportunity for you
to get your book into the hands of interested readers
and increase your books exposure.
If you're going to the social media route,
give entrance rules to like and share your posts
in order to be entered to win your book.
Entrance into the Goodreads giveaway
will mark your book as something they want to read,
which then notifies their followers of the book,
helping to raise awareness of your book
by boosting its search metrics.
Once you pick a winner,
prompt them to a review of your book.
For those who didn't win,
remind them that they can buy a copy of their own
or even offer them a sample chapter
as a thank you for entering.
Idea three, contact two people a day for 30 days
to get book reviews.
The most important thing you can do for your book success
on launch day and beyond is getting Amazon reviews.
The more reviews you get, the higher the views on your book
and the higher the views,
the more potential to convert into sales.
By the way, have you posted your review
for "Self‑Publish & Succeed" yet?
The greatest gift you can give an author, aka me,
is a book review on Amazon.
So hit pause, go ahead and post it, even if it's short
and then shoot me an email to let me know that you did it.
I always say thanks
and then make sure you're invited to my parties.
The best method to get reviews is simple,
just do what I did, ask.
Book reviews are the best sales tool.
So don't stop asking for them in post-launch.
Number four, participate in a newsletter swap
with another author.
I've said it once and I'll say it twice
and I'll keep on saying it,
the single most important book marketing tool
is an email newsletter list
and if you know a fellow author in your genre
with a newsletter similar to yours,
you can double the power
of the magical email subscriber list.
In a swap, you pair up with another author
and agree to include the link to each other's book
in your next newsletter.
It's also a good idea to include the book's cover images
along with blurbs and a mini author bio as well,
so that readers can learn more about you and the book.
I've done this with Dale,
with Self-Publishing with Dale, Dale Roberts.
He promoted my book, I promoted his.
Swaps are simple type of mutual marketing
that can really pay off.
You'll strengthen your author network
while reaching more readers for free.
We have more great content coming out on how to do this,
so make sure you've subscribed to the channel
and turn those notifications on,
so you catch all of that great stuff when it comes.
Now, tip five is be interviewed on a podcast.
Podcasts are one of the best ways
to expose new audiences to you and your work.
They spread awareness and let you show off
where you're an expert in your industry.
But here's the thing,
podcasts themselves very rarely lead directly
to a boost in book sales.
They're valuable for another reason.
Appearing on a podcast gives you the opportunity
to give listeners a call to action
that may lead to something better.
When you're on those podcasts,
focus on getting listeners to sign up for your lead magnet
more than buy your book, because when they do that,
you'll get email subscribers
that you can connect directly with and build a relationship
and of course, that relationship can lead to book sales,
but it can also lead to new clients for your business,
more opportunities for speaking engagements
or just great connections for the future.
Keep in mind, hosts often have a backlog of interviews saved
and could be months away
from getting you scheduled and posted.
So if you wanna be featured on podcasts post-launch,
start pitching them pre-launch.
Idea six, publish an article
or an excerpt of your book on someone else's platform.
Kind of like a newsletter swap or a podcast interview,
publishing a guest article
is a potentially profitable approach
for linking back to your own site
and promoting your book to a wider audience.
Are there some big blogs
or platforms within your industry that you visit?
Next time you're there, head to the bottom of the page
and see if they have a link for guest bloggers
or guest articles or submissions.
Some sites have a query process,
others will ask for a proposal
and some might make it easy
and allow you to directly send them an article
or an excerpt right away.
Before you do, make sure you read the fine print
'cause some sites set terms
that they will be the copyright owner
of any submitted content that they post.
They also sometimes want you to avoid duplicate content
that has been posted anywhere else.
If you do include an excerpt from your book,
you'll wanna discuss and research republishing rights first
so that you head into this crystal clear.
Number seven, post a blog for three consecutive weeks.
If you already have a blog up and running on your website,
now is a great time to get consistent
with your content posting.
When your book launches
and you start getting coverage and exposure,
people learning about you and your book
will go searching to see what material
you've got out there in the world and what you can offer
and as we're in post-launch,
these are probably event organizers,
podcast hosts, potential media interviews
and book buyers checking you out
to see if they wanna have a further relationship with you.
Now, if you're not sure where to start
with content for your blog posts, guess what?
You've got a whole book to choose from
and there's nothing wrong
with recycling content from your book into blog posts
and then recycling the blog post
into social media content and more.
Number eight, run Amazon ads.
Amazon ads help promote your book
through keyword-based targeting.
When someone searches
for a certain keyword related to your book,
ideally, your Amazon ad will appear in the search results.
This is called an impression
and it means the ad for your book
has been put in front of a potential buyer.
If someone clicks on your book, this is known as a click.
If someone buys the book
once they've clicked on it from the ad, that's a sale.
Amazon ads run on a pay per click model,
so you pay when someone clicks on your ad
and Amazon has it set up as an auction approach.
As you set up the keywords connected with your book,
you also set up bid prices
for how much you're willing to pay
for someone to click on your ad.
You can approve a maximum daily budget
of how much you're willing to spend on bids per day
and you can go even as low as $5 a day.
Once up and running,
your ads are showing up as sponsored products
at the top of the search results page
and on product display pages of related books.
Amazon ads can take days or even weeks, sometimes a month
to get into a groove of getting your book
in front of the right audiences,
but getting started a few months in post-launch
can really be a profitable advantage for your book sales.
Book sales success takes more than eight things.
So post your best idea below or even your worst
'cause commenting makes us friends
and I like to spend time with my friends.
So if you're looking for more ways
to power into your post-launch,
check out this video right here
on how to create great sound bites
for interviews and podcasts or head over here
and watch this video on running your Amazon ads.
Either way, let's be friends and hang out a little more.
I'll see you there.
(upbeat music)