Episode 29: Book Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Today on the show Jodi breaks down five of the most common book marketing mistakes she sees author-entrepreneurs make. If you can avoid these mistakes, you’ll have a leg up in the book marketing game.
Mistake #1: Starting too late
The cliche is true: It’s never too early to start marketing your book. Even before the book is finalized, you have material to share: the title, the fact that you’re writing a book, your launch date, the cover, early reviews, and more. If you wait until your book is published to start marketing, you’ve waited too long.
Mistake #2: Not focusing your efforts
Just as you don’t market your business to everyone out there, it makes no sense to market your book to everyone. Hopefully before you ever started writing you identified your ideal readers. Focus your marketing efforts on those people, wherever they are.
Mistake #3: Blowing off Amazon
Uploading your book to Amazon and crossing your fingers isn’t a smart rule of thumb. Take advantage of what they offer as far as categories and keywords, and utilize your Author Central page, as a complement to your marketing efforts.
Mistake #4: Not planning for all phases of the book launch
Having a launch party is fun and a great idea, but book marketing is much more than a party on pub day. You need to think strategically and have activities for all phases of your book launch: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch. Pre-launch, you’re doing activities like sharing the book cover on social media, sending book updates to your email list, and building buzz. During the launch phase itself, you’re using your launch cheerleaders to help spread the word that the book is available. After the book has been available for a while, you’re in post-launch and your tasks include things like sharing positive reviews/testimonials with your audience and offering a holiday or anniversary discount or bonus.
Mistake #5: Needing more reviews
Book reviews don’t affect your rankings, but they CAN affect your sales and visibility. Book reviews are essentially the online version of word-of-mouth.
Listen here or on your favorite podcast player, and let me know what you think!