You’ve worked hard on your book and you’re ready to let the book-baby out into the world. You made sure it was properly edited, formatted, and looks mighty spiffy!

You go ahead and publish and BOOM after the first week of sales, it tanks right into the toilet and you don’t know why.

Here are some questions to ask yourself. Answer honestly and gain some understanding along the way.

Did you do any marketing BEFORE you published your book?

In this instance we’re not talking about a few social media posts on a weekly basis. Sorry, that doesn’t cut it.

How often do you see other people online flogging their book as they fight for the attention of the reader?

Let’s face it, those posts end up fading into the background as unsolicited trash.

Come buy my book. It’s really, really good and I know you’ll love it.

That type of marketing gets you nowhere. It’s also time consuming and annoying to others.

People don’t want to be constantly sold stuff–especially if that’s the only reason you’re talking to them. It’s a real turnoff.

You need to have some sort of presence PRIOR to publishing your indie book, because once all your friends and relatives have bought a copy, who else cares?

Three things you can do:

1. Have an online presence that allows others outside of your circle to ‘know’ you.
2. This can be done with a blog, a class, or building an audience with shared works prior to publishing.
3. Know WHO your ideal reader is.

Let’s look at each of these.

ONE

Build Awareness of an Online Presence.

• Do you scroll through others peoples posts and comment?
• Do you care?
• If you don’t care, then why should they?
• Your online presence needs to build and be active–not passive. People aren’t going to flock to you simply because you’re there.
• Do you maintain a positive attitude?
• Being negative, bitchy, or otherwise unpleasant attitudes will come back and bite you in the butt. (unless that’s what you’re going for)
• People can also sense fake, so be aware.
• Be who you want others to know. You don’t need to invite anyone to dinner or tell them your secrets.
• Be professional and real.

TWO

Create and Maintain a Presence and Audience

• write a blog about a subject addressed or brought up in your book. This should have started like, yesterday.
• write a blog of … this is me… here I am. Keep the focus close to theme.
• go live on social media. People love reels and real people. This is where it’s really important to know who your readers are.
• build a class, record it,
• do an online class and offer for free. This can be about anything that relates to you.
• do a newsletter
• get involved in the writer community and learn.
• readers/buyers need to feel a certain amount of trust in you

THREE

Know and be Able to Identify Your Ideal Reader?

• start with a checklist
• it’s not all about age, gender, and socio-economics
• who reads what you write? Have you checked out Goodreads?
• there’s no use marketing to a bunch of science fantasy readers if your book is a young adult romance
• where are your readers?
• if you’re selling YA then go to reddit and start sharing.
• BookToc?
• #BookstaGram

As you can see, there’s so much more to getting your books out there. Do some reflection and start your marketing now. Don’t get stuck in a place of not moving forward.

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