Are You REALLY Promoting Your Book?

Are you really promoting your self-published book?

Or does it just look and feel like you are promoting your book?

• If you are only telling people you wrote a book, but you are not telling them what the book is about, you are not really promoting your book.

• If you only show us the cover of the book but do not educate us about the content and core message, you are not really promoting your book.

• If you only post Amazon links to social media but do not discuss the book and what we can learn from it, you are not really promoting your book.

These things can be a part of book promotion. Still, alone, they do nothing to generate enough interest in people to want to buy the book, and that is what book promotion is:

A culmination of your activities and strategies to create awareness and generate interest in your book.

This includes but is not limited to:

Advertising: Paid Ads (or just ads in general), digital or print material, website or landing page, etc.

Publicity: Interviews, book reviews, media coverage, guest blog posts, podcasts, etc.

Social Media: Building engagement with readers through entertainment and educational content using any of the many social media platforms. Blogging can also fall under this and is a powerful tool for community.

Events: Conferences, Author Talks, Book Signings, Book Fairs

The purpose is to create enough buzz to interest readers to purchase the book.

• Anytime you share a review from someone who reads your book, you ARE promoting your book.

• Anytime you create content (graphics, excerpts, videos, etc) that educates or entertains people about your book’s message (nonfiction), characters, or plot (fiction), you ARE promoting your book.

• Anytime you talk about the book on a podcast or in an interview, you ARE promoting your book.

• Anytime you share your journey and what it was like writing the book, you ARE promoting it.

• Anytime you write on a topic that is relatable to the things we can find in your book, believe it or not, you ARE also promoting the book.

We can do many things that look like book promotion on the surface but are ineffective in raising awareness among our readers about the book’s topic and why it’s important to them.

But I hope this post gets you thinking about deeper ways to connect with your audience!

If this has helped you, let me know!

Click here for more Indie Author Basics to encourage you through the Self-Publishing / Indie Author Process!