How to Market a Book?

7/14/2014

Yes, our team is on our way to writing a book! The book writing process is definitely exciting, but just like any other project, we, the Impact with Wings team, have to come up with SMART goals and a marketing strategy.

Marketing a book is foreign to many marketers, especially those who are not in the publishing industry or who have not written a book. Fret not, with some research, I have collected stats and best practices that would be beneficial to anyone who wants to promote a book in this modern age of technology. We are also hoping to apply these to our own book pre and post launch.

Options for Bestseller: (Note that these are just guidelines)
Level 1. Amazon Top 5/10 Bestseller
There have been many stats circulating online, but on average in order to appear on Amazon’s bestseller radar, 500-1,000 sales must occur. If 1,000 sales of your book are made within the first few days following its release, then you are on your way to making it part of Amazon’s Top 100 list. So, what does this mean?  It means that you have to focus all of your marketing into generating sales on your launch day.

Level 2. Wall Street Best Seller List: 3000 books in the first week

Level 3. New York Times Best Seller: 9,000 copies sold in the first week

Of course, getting on any bestseller list is an author’s goal/dream, but there are many factors to consider in order to successfully launch a book:
1. Being at the right place at the right time – Some people call this luck, but I just call it right timing for a need to be satisfied in the market.
2. Incredible writing 
3. A killer book marketing strategy that goes beyond regular friends and family buying the book and posting on social media.  
4. Having enough money to buy your way to the top – There are consulting companies which will help authors do this.

I’ve collated some marketing tactics beyond the typical social media sharing from different sites.
- Use Tweet Adder and Triberr to increase exposure. Triberr is like a club where Twitter users get together to retweet each other’s posts to increase exposure.
- Identify blogs that you can comment on and put a link about your book and reach out to as potential reviewers of the book.
- Submit book to top review sites, such as authormarketingclub.com.
- Create a book trailer
- Find an Amazon kindle category, which is less competitive – more chances to become bestseller
- Create Facebook page – run free chapters, promos, recent developments, etc.
- Create author account on Goodreads
- Create author website and blog- no brainer on this one
- Announce on Meet our Authors forum on Amazon

So there you have it. I hope you find these tips helpful. By any means, I’m no expert in book marketing so I’d love to hear what other authors/publishers have done – successfully or not. And please help us reach the bestseller list by subscribing to this blog to keep you posted on the timeframe of our upcoming book launch.

Sources:
http://www.bookpromotionhub.com/6103/how-many-books-do-you-need-to-sell-to-become-a-bestseller/




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