Marketing & Promotion Archives

Don’t Know How to Market Your Book? Start in Your Own Backyard

When I hear professional publicists offer advice to authors, one theme that comes up again and again is: start where you are.

What’s More Important: Author Websites or Social Media?

Social media is widely considered necessary by authors and publishers for book marketing. But is it as important as an optimized author website?

MailChimp Alternatives for Authors

Is MailChimp the best choice for your email newsletter? Here’s a breakdown of the pros & cons of the three biggest email service providers that authors use.

How Time Zone Differences Affect Your Book Marketing

Do you know what time it is in Mumbai, India? Knowing time differences in the countries where you sell books is key to social media engagement, and ultimately sales.

Using Amazon Ads to Sell a YA Novel: A Detailed Analysis

While Amazon sponsored ads haven’t been a marketing miracle, I also haven’t lost that much money—and copies of my YA novel have sold at a steady pace.

Reader Analytics from Jellybooks: Crunching the Numbers to Improve Book Marketing and Sales

Reader analytics measures the strength of reader engagement with a book. This data helps publishers more effectively market and promote books to readers.

biographies of ordinary people by nicole dieker

Self-Publishing a Debut Literary Novel: The Actions, The Costs, The Results

A self-published author breaks down her expenses and resulting sales after promoting on social media and email, paying for reviews, advertising, and more.

The Marketing Rule You Can’t Forget

When I work on a project—with clients, but particularly with my own writing—I start by acknowledging a blunt but important truth: Nobody cares about what I have made.

The Difference Between a Press Release and a Pitch (You Need Both)

The two biggest mistakes in book publicity pitches: they are too long in length, and not pointed or provocative enough.

5 Steps to Kick Your Marketing FOMO to the Curb

Marketing FOMO is more debilitating than distracting—and if you suffer from marketing FOMO, your marketing tasks will never be done.

How Do Books Become Bestsellers? (Can Authors Increase Those Chances?)

Is a book’s success all luck, even if ‘luck’ includes hitting the right subject matter at the right time, or is it marketing—and can an indie author in any way compete with a publisher?

Author Marketing Collectives: An Increasingly Important Component of Book Promotion

Authors need help with digital book marketing—the kind of help that traditional publishers rarely provide. Co-ops and collectives can help fill that gap.

How to Pitch the Media (Without Even Sending Your Book)

When you’re wooing the media, what you’re really trying to do is to intrigue them. To whet their appetites. Sometimes the best way to do that flows from remembering that less is often more.

Are You Clear About Your Writer Persona? Going Public by Design

As writers, we don’t always know how much of ourselves to share with the public. But it behooves us to create and curate an author persona—the public face for our work.

How to Optimize Your Amazon Author Central Pages (Don’t Forget the International Pages)

Every author, regardless of when or what they’ve published, has an Author Central page. But many authors have not claimed theirs—which is a big mistake.

Stop Focusing on Follower Count: 5 Better Approaches for Improving Social Media Use

When I ask most clients what their goals are in hiring me, I usually get some version of “to get more followers and sell more books.” I encourage them to think both bigger and more deeply about social media.

Using Online Education as a Pre-Publication Marketing Tool

In my latest column for Publishers Weekly, I discuss the potential of online education for book marketing, particularly prior to publication.

Case Study: Using NetGalley and Goodreads for Book Marketing and Publicity

Sarah Miniaci at Smith Publicity and Kristina Radke at NetGalley review the marketing and publicity strategies that can help increase your book’s discoverability, word-of-mouth, and reviews, using NetGalley and Goodreads in particular.

Is Amazon Exclusivity Right for You?

There are advantages to selling ebooks only through Amazon, and makes most sense for authors who are just starting out or who are relatively unknown.

Book Marketing Resources for Authors: The Best of 2016

Every year, I share hundreds (even thousands) of articles and reports on book marketing. Here, I look back on the best of what I found in 2016.

The Best Literary Fiction Blogs & Websites

A list of the best blogs and websites focused on literary fiction and culture

A Self-Published Poet’s Path to Her First Book Deal

How a self-publishing poet achieved visibility for her book—and landed a book deal with traditional publisher Andrews McMeel.

3 Things Your Traditional Publisher Is Unlikely to Do

The No. 1 disappointment of published authors is the lack of marketing support from their publisher. Here’s how to prepare for what will—and won’t—happen.

How to Network Effectively (Even If You Hate Networking): Start Close to Home

If you want to sell books and have people read them, you have to meet other people and tell them about it. Learn the best networking strategies for people who hate networking.

How to Use Reddit to Market Your Books (Carefully)

Reddit is an online community where you can get your book in front of hundreds of thousands of readers for free. That is, if you have the right strategy.

How to Run Short-Term Social Media Campaigns

A short-term marketing campaign is a series of strategies designed to reach a goal in a defined period of time, and include projects such as book launches. A short-term campaign has four definite phases: planning, pre-launch, launch, and follow-through.

9 Tips to Building the Book Cover Design You Always Wanted

Book cover designer Joshua Jadon offers nine tips for creating a visually intriguing book cover.

Thinking of Running a Facebook Ad? Proceed with Caution

Author Martha Conway discusses optimizing Facebook ad settings to ensure a realistic click-through rate, and her overall results with Facebook ads.

What Writers Too Often Overlook: Having a Call to Action

Just about every writer would love to have more readers—more readers of their books, their blog, their articles, or whatever creative work they’re producing. But few writers have given much thought to having a call to action that’s associated with their work.

Are You a Push Marketer or a Pull Marketer?

If you want to be successful at selling today, you need to quit pushing your needs (please buy my book) and messages at potential readers and concentrate on figuring out how to pull them in by putting their needs above yours. Give them something valuable.