How To Market Your Book After You’ve Written It

From: Writers Write
In this post, we’re looking at how to market your book after you’ve written it.

Last time, we talked about ways to market your book before you start writing it. Now we’re going to look at some ways to market your book after you’ve typed ‘The End’. The more research you do, the more ways you’ll discover. You will save huge amounts of time if you do this before you start writing.

5 Ways To Market Your Books After You’ve Written It

1. Build Your Post-writing, Pre-publishing & Street Teams

Your beta-readers will also form part of this new team. You’ll need an editor, a proofreader, a cover designer, and book formatter. Yes, Amazon does provide software with which you can create your own covers and formatting. But…do you want your books to look professional and do you want to be serious competition for other authors. Or not?

The biggest lesson a new author needs to learn is humility. Your editor and your proofreader are not there to take control. They are there to make your book better. Learn from them. Read their emails, and before responding, step away, think about what they said for at least three days.

If you are not a trained graphic designer, knowing how to use a graphics program is irrelevant. A professional graphic designer can help your book sell better. The same applies to book formatters.
Your street team are people you can rely on to talk about your book on their social media platforms and to share your book posts.
Best advice: Find an editor, a proofreader, and a cover designer who knows your genre well.

2. Learn All You Can About Amazon & Other Platforms

Amazon has a number of tutorials on their site for authors, from how the site works to how to market your books on the site. Look at best-selling authors’ book pages. Study how they lay out their pages. You can attract more buyers simply by laying out your Amazon page better. Most platforms should have similar tutorials.

Best Advice: Keep learning. Never assume you know it all.

3. Social Media Accounts, Newsletters, & Blogs

Your books need their own social media pages such as Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok, to name a few. On these pages you talk about your books, about writing, etc. Use them to build hype about the book and to get pre-orders.

Don’t post personal stuff, political rants etc. on these pages. In fact, once you become a published author try to avoid these kinds of posts on your personal page as well.

Newsletters are a good way to attract new readers and keep existing readers interested and looking forward to the new books.
Blogs, if you’re talking about books and the craft or writing – and you know what you’re writing about – will give you street-cred. For authors who also have day-time jobs, running an active social media, a newsletter, and blogs can be hard work. But authors that do, often sell more books.
Best advice: Set up your social media before you publish as you can use it to build the hype and expectation for your books! Whatever you do, don’t complain about your publisher, editor, or proofreader on your social media!

4. Blurbs, and Synopses

The best thing to do is to write your synopsis first. Synopses are needed when pitching to traditional publishers. And each publisher will ask for a synopsis of a different length. Even if you’re not chasing a traditional publisher create synopses of different lengths anyway. It’s excellent writing practise and will help when you come to writing your blurb.

When one pitches to broadcast television organisations such as National Geographic, you have to provide a 30-word synopsis a.k.a your elevator pitch, a 300-word synopsis, a 1000-word synopsis. The actual number may have changed since I last pitched, but the principal will be the same. If you can catch the commissioning editor’s attention in 30 words, they will read the 300 words, and so on. Work hard at having your synopses perfect in every way.

The blurb is the text on the back of your book and on your Amazon book page. Never assume the first draft of your blurb is the best one. It can often be harder to write than the book. And more frustrating. Look at what the best-selling authors in your genre say on the back of their books? Study this, make notes, follow the patterns. They work for a reason. Have your beta readers give you feedback on the blurb.
Best advice: Do this…

Before you start writing the book – it will help you clarify the story you want to write.
Halfway through the writing – it will help you see if you are on the right track or if the new track is a better one.
After you’ve finished writing the book – you will see how well you know your book. It often shows up plot holes, characters you’ve forgotten, and sub-plots you haven’t tied up.

5. Reviews

Reviews can be the hardest thing to obtain. People may love your book and promise to put up a review, and they really want to, but life gets in the way. Reminding them is fine. but be careful to not nag. And if possible, thank them once they do!
There are sites that, for a fee, will send your book to their followers for reviews. But you can’t buy 5 Star reviews. Amazon will block you. But you can pay for honest reviews. The best reviews to try and get are editorial reviews.

The Last Word

I hope this post helps you and gives you some ideas about marketing your book once you’ve typed ‘The End’.

by Elaine Dodge. Elaine is the author of The Harcourts of Canada series. Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.