If you are a writer and you have just finished your book and you are ready to publish it, you may think you have the hardest bit out of the way.

If you are a writer you should be good at writing, however, being a good writer unfortunately might not make you the best marketer, and this is where a lot of authors stumble.

If you have poured a lot of effort into your writing, it is only natural that you will want it to be appreciated by as many people as possible, but this is not going to happen if people do not know about your book, are not appealed to your book, or do not have access to your book.

This is why you need to make sure the audience you are looking for is informed about your book, knows that it will appeal to them, and have easy access to it. However, knowing this is a lot harder than being able to pull it off.

This is where this article comes in. Promoting your book will take effort and planning, and the skills needed might not come naturally to you, so you will want to dedicate some time to ensuring you are doing everything you can to hone your skills.

There are plenty of different steps you can take when it comes to marketing your book, however, we recommend you do not put all your eggs in one basket, and instead try at least a couple different approaches, and see what works best for you.

So, now you know how important marketing your book is, let’s look at some of the best methods you can try to let people know about your book.

While trying as many of these as possible is more likely to get results, we recommend focusing on just a few to ensure that you do not burn yourself out.

Use Your Own Website Or Blog

This will help the most if you want your book to show up at the top of people’s search engine. If you are pumping out content on your own website, you can have complete control over how you are portraying information, and how to promote your book.

You want the content on your website or blog to be related to what you are writing about. This is because if you are successful enough at running your blog, you should be able to amass a following, but if this following is not the right audience for your book, then unfortunately your effort may have been wasted.

So, if you have the right audience for your book, then you can use them to help build hype for your book. This is giving you a community who are interested in your content, so capitalize on this and do everything you can to build hype before the book releases.

Increase Your Online Presence

This is partially related to the previous point, but you will want to make sure that your name is out there, and that people are hearing what you have to say.

This could come in the form of posting articles on websites that are popular, or contributing to online discussions on topics related to your book.

You want people to be able to recognize your name so when your book is released, there is an attachment there and they are more willing to give your book a chance when it comes to their decision to buy or not.

Utilize Social Media

While this may seem like an obvious choice, having a good social media presence will make sure that your audience has every option they need to contact you and see what you are promoting.

You want to ensure that you have most of the major bases covered and that you have at least a couple main social media profiles that you are dedicated to keeping updated.

If you do not naturally enjoy social media, this can be uncomfortable, but it serves as a great method to help your audience learn about you and the book you are selling.

Look At What Similar Books In The Genre Are Doing

If you see another book that is similar to yours, and is self-published, getting the success which you want for yours, look into the strategies that are being done to promote it.

While completely copying the author is of course not a great idea, getting inspiration from marketing strategies is completely fine.

There is maybe an audience which you could have completely overlooked, or an aspect of your market that you had not noticed. All of this could help your book break through.

Get Your Book Reviewed

A great free way to promote your book is by getting influential figures to talk about this, and the best way to do this is offer the book for reviews.

The best way to do this is to reach out to creators who you know are open to this kind of promotion, and someone who you know has reached the audience you are trying to influence.

If you do this correctly and get a review posted, this will bring a lot of attention to your book, and you will also get some good feedback from a respected figure as well!

Get A Professional Cover Design

One thing that can immediately put off a potential reader is an unattractive cover design, so if this is something that you might be dealing with, it is best to hire a professional to give your book a better looking cover.

Even a nice looking book cover, if it looks homemade, it will make a potential reader think that this is reflective of the quality of the writing, so instead switch to a cover that you know will attract the right audience!

Summary

Hopefully this list has given you inspiration on how to market your self-published book. Some of these may or may not be effective depending on your audience, so do as much research on your audience as possible.