logo
logo
Sign in

How to promote an e-book and find your reader?

avatar
Alicia Ortego
How to promote an e-book and find your reader?

The competition among writers is very high, and the reader most often chooses a book or an author who he knows at least something about.


Unfortunately, some writers believe that if they write a good book, it will sell itself. This is only partly true. For a book to sell itself, readers need to know about it. And this requires promotion.


Start promoting the book before it is published


Warming up interest in a book that has not yet been published is laborious, but it pays off with interest. If by the time of publication you have a certain group of interested people who want to read your book, it will be enough for you to simply tell readers where to find it, that is, share a link to a free online catalog.


How to find readers if the book hasn't been written yet


  • Tell about your future book on your social media pages

Even if you haven't published a book yet, you can tell your friends about your passion or idea. Share stories that inspired you, tell us how you started writing, why this particular topic is important to you, and so on.


  • Share quotes by choosing beautiful themed illustrations

Such posts usually get a lot of likes and reposts, and you can gauge the interest in what you write by the reaction of your friends.


  • Post an excerpt in the thematic community

There are many communities for writers where you can submit your text for publication for free. After publication, follow the comments, communicate with those who appreciated your book or shared the post with friends and subscribers.


  • Take advantage of free social media features

Use appropriate thematic hashtags, ask your friends to like or repost (many social networks highly appreciate publications that have a reaction in the first couple of hours after posting), post screenshots of new publications in stories (stories), broadcast live with readers ( for example, reading excerpts from a book)… The possibilities depend only on your imagination.


  • Take a cue from major publishers
...80% of bestsellers are owned by the top five publishers, with significant advertising and marketing funds.

Bestseller Code, Matthew Jokers, Jody Archer


It seems to the aspiring writer that publishing with a publisher automatically guarantees that the publisher will invest a large amount in the promotion of his particular book. This is not always the case. Of the many new books, the publisher chooses only a few on which he really stakes in terms of promotion and allocates a budget, often a very modest one.


The rest of the books get into stores without promotion and often remain unnoticed lying on the shelves, and whether the circulation will sell out or not depends on the author himself.


What publishers do to promote books:

  • Use online advertising

In the era of Internet marketing, 2-5 thousand rubles and a few hours of your free time are enough to create an advertising campaign to select the target audience or thematic communities for paid publications about your book. When choosing a target audience, rely on what you already know about your readers - maybe they are fans of certain genres in literature, or maybe they are interested in the book because they see themselves as the main characters. By analyzing those who have already read your book, you can find new readers who will be interested in the same thing.


  • Create your own book club

If you started talking about your work in advance, as we recommended above, then by the time of publication you will already have a certain group of readers interested in your book. Choose a few people, send them the whole book, and then ask them for their opinion: what they liked the most, why they would recommend reading your book, and what “aftertaste” was left from reading. Share such reviews on social networks, use excerpts in the annotation of the book, so that new potential readers can immediately be interested in your book.

Take a look at the Superpower Book Club where "Kindness is My Superpower" book is the greatest hit these days.


This is exactly what publishers do by sending books to popular bloggers a couple of weeks before the book goes on sale. So the blogger gets exclusive material, and the publisher gets the blogger's audience. If you manage to attract bloggers to your club, this will ensure greater success for your book. Feel free to write about yourself!


  • Make a gift to readers

To encourage purchases, publishers hold book giveaways on social media. This is how several tens, and sometimes hundreds of people fight for a book novelty, who, by making a repost, tell their friends about the new book, expanding the audience of those who learn about the work.


“But I have an e-book!” — you may say. It's not a problem. You can play something related to your story.


— If you draw, then the collection of illustrations will be a great gift.

- You can give postcards with views of the city in which the book takes place.

- If you have only writing talent, you can compose a story for the winner in which your reader will become one of the heroes of your story.


Do not limit your imagination!

It is always nice to receive gifts, and if this gift is somehow connected with your story, which the reader liked, then he will carefully keep the souvenir from the author. And who knows, maybe in 20, 30 or 100 years this gift will become the lot of the world famous Sotheby’s auction!

collect
0
avatar
Alicia Ortego
guide
Zupyak is the world’s largest content marketing community, with over 400 000 members and 3 million articles. Explore and get your content discovered.
Read more