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Writing and publishing your book was a long and difficult process. If you’re like 99.998% of all authors, you wish this were the end of it, so you could party and bask in a job well done. But, of course, it’s not the end; rather, it’s simply the end of the first part of a two-part process, the second being marketing.
You may resent or feel despair at this state of things, but letting that terrible emotional paperweight sit on your chest is only going to hold your book and career back and keep you small.
The following 7 reasons marketing is essential for authors will show you the benefit of building a platform and marketing your book—and what will happen if you don’t—and energize you to go forth and get started. The growth, empowerment, and delight at seeing your hard work pay off will truly change your life.
You may have written a fantastic book, but with over 80,000 new titles being published each week in the U.S. and 192 in Canada, your book will wither on the vine almost instantly unless you create hype or visibility that sets it apart from its peers.
A great cover is necessary because people eat with their eyes. Its position in the bookstore is also enormously helpful.
What’s left? Marketing, or in regular English, utilizing a series of known communication methods to get your book in front of readers.
You know how the first time you hear a song, you may not appreciate or even like it, but when you hear it a second then a third time, you start humming along? Or after seeing a neighbor you don’t know out walking their dog a few times, you begin unconsciously registering them as “safe”?
This feeling of familiarity through repeated contacts is called the Mere Exposure Effect. Familiarity is hugely important for getting your book bought, talked about, and shared.
When someone strolls through Barnes and Noble or scrolls around Amazon, any previous contact they had with your book coupled with seeing it on the shelf mathematically enhances their interest. They think, “Oh, I know this one!” and feel a small thrill in picking it up over another title.
This means social media engagement, online interviews, or other outreach you do, on its own or coupled with whatever early buzz your publisher creates, gives your book a leg up every time.
Self-published authors whose books aren’t in stores and don’t have publisher support have a more difficult job: Not one person on the face of the earth will know your book is launched until you start working the floor. In your case, fanning out and getting your face, name, and book in as many places as possible is critical.
Because of the volume of books coming out every week, each one literally has a shelf life. How will yours stand out and have staying power?
Know this: When a book comes onto the scene like it owns the place, that’s less the result of it being better literature, and far more the result of great marketing.
Remaining in the dark about how to market your book while simultaneously wanting it to sell is a recipe for frustration and anxiety (made worse by the nagging idea that you know you should be doing something to help your sales but don’t know what).
I call that the “frustrasection.” Who needs it? You have enough to worry about!
Deep down, you’re aware that once you burst through your block and lean into “Part 2” of your book-publishing experience, you will feel stronger, more in control, and be positioned to make informed decisions about how you want to share your book.
Your dislike of marketing is deeply rooted, so how do you break out of it?
There are tons of resources on author marketing available: you can read a book, take an online course, or spend even a few afternoons doing self-study and internet research.
Every bit of effort will give you a more cohesive picture of marketing and make you feel infinitely more capable. Then, once you start connecting with readers and realize it’s not nearly as bad as you’d imagined, you will find it easier and easier to keep going!
Naturally you wrote your book because you wanted to share your stories and ideas with people who need or want them. But as part of that, you also wrote it to become part of the literary community. The only way you gain access to this elite club of peers is to make your book known and to get people attracted to it, and by extension, to you.
A wonderful positive circle develops when you enter the literary space. Your readers, feeling identified and provided for by your work and meshing with your values and mission for writing, become supporters and fans. They buy your book, share your additional content, and create (free!) buzz amongst themselves. The work they do on your behalf behind the scenes takes on a life of its own and enhances your visibility, credibility, and even your sales.
As for you, because this kind of enthusiasm is so affirming and validating, you feel fueled to do yet more marketing to keep connecting with your ever-growing readership.
Even seasoned authors whose books basically sell themselves do marketing because they see how it engenders enthusiasm and trust, which translates to sales, fan retention, and audience growth. Further, the more they are visible in high-level places (public speaking, interviews, and publishing short works) the more they maintain their status as literary leaders and cultural fixtures.
Where an uninitiated author might ask whether someone like Margaret Atwood, closing in on her late-80s, wouldn’t prefer to stay home with her feet up, you now get it. She continues to give lectures, talks, and interviews because engaging with her public is what has vaulted her to where she is. It fuels her audience, but it likely fuels her as much or more to keep doing it.
This is your future to some degree as well—you only need to stay consistent and present, and your perceived value will continue to rise as a leader in the literary community. (And when you see the first fan tattoo from your book, you’ll know you’ve truly arrived!)
The act of marketing itself is much more akin to connection and communication than “sales,” but the outcome of all the connection and communication you do 100% pans out as sales.
The more you put yourself out there, the more you as an author grow your influence, and the more your books sell. If you’re working with a publisher, as part of your advance and any additional money paid to you for the sale of your book, they will expect you to handle some marketing elements they set up for you as well as those you do on your own.
Sitting down with your publisher to get a clear picture of what they expect you to do will:
a) give you a ready-made list of tasks
b) once you learn the full spectrum of options authors typically undertake as part of their marketing strategy, you can fill in the gaps with other efforts that make sense to you.
Navigating both strands will enable you to capitalize on the efforts of your publisher—if your publisher will be doing anything at all—and further them as well as show you where you can dip into new areas for the greatest traction.
Robust book sales aren’t only validating in the “They like me, they really like me!” sense; they also indicate whether you have a future—or whether your book is destined to become a lamp.
Traditionally Published Authors
If you’re traditionally published, your publisher expects you to do marketing because it’s part of your job. You’re basically singing for your supper. Poor sales however don’t only harm you in the now—they can damage your chance at future earnings, or a future as an author at all.
Here’s a kicky fact: Some publishers consider digital forms of your book as published in perpetuity, meaning if you have an ebook in circulation, you will not be free to publish the work again elsewhere in any form.
That means all your years of artistic struggle, investment of time, energy, and capital, and deep passion may end up in the “discount” bin. Once those copies are gone, your book may cease to exist.
Self-Published Authors
If you’re self-published, not selling enough copies means you may not recoup your investment for the editing, interior formatting, book cover art, ISBN, and other costs you incurred to get the book out the door.
Plus, you believed in your project enough to toil for months-to-years to write and publish it, and frankly for it to not do well is deeply dispiriting.
While every book sold is a reason to celebrate, book sales unto themselves probably* aren’t going to let you quit your day job.
*Though some clever self-published folks and big-name authors have managed!
If you’re traditionally published, you may not see a dollar until you hit a certain sales threshold or get pennies per copy. Self-published authors earn far more per book, but given how much you had to invest to publish, that amount is still a small drop in a larger well.
Where your book will have the greatest income potential is being used as a “hook” to capture your audience and engage them with additional book-related and book-adjacent content. That nurturing process is what turns book buyers into fans. With each subsequent publication, you will already have that much more of a reader base (also called your “platform”) to sustain a long-term career.
Marketing is also very much based on the Law of Attraction meaning the more you do it, the more opportunities come your way. Once you’re moving and shaking publicly, you will be invited to do speaking engagements, media appearances, partnerships, teaching opportunities, guest writing, and consulting.
These are excellent for growing your visibility yet further because you’re now getting in front of others’ built-in audience, cementing your reputation with exponentially more people, and bringing in some nice income. Book sales can add up, but these other opportunities are much more lucrative—both financially and for your career.
The song of the typical author is, “Can’t I just hire someone to do my marketing for me?”
Nope! While you can hire freelancers or a marketing firm to undertake aspects of marketing for you and a publicist to handle the bigger-fish media around your book’s launch, these third parties are meant to work with you not for you. Levelling too much expectation on them and failing to understand the limits of their scope of work can result in significant expense, lost opportunities, and squashed expectations.
In Jane Friedman’s blog, author Kirsten Bell wrote a cautionary tale about how she spent many thousands of dollars on a publicist without understanding what she was paying for and ended up not getting what she wanted. What had she wanted? Someone to “do it for her.” But that’s not a thing, and Bell had to learn that the hard (and expensive) way.
When you spend even a bit of time on the front end arming yourself with insights as to how marketing works and what it entails, whether you use that knowledge to undertake some marketing yourself or simply to be able to collaborate with marketing professionals, you will be far more equipped than throwing a bunch of money at people and crossing your fingers that you get what you want.
You were the driving force of your book’s inception and development—it’s your baby book, after all! Yet letting your book launch without at least having a hand in your marketing means you’re blindly handing over your most valuable commodities (your book and your public-facing persona) to others.
Letting algorithms, bookstores, and publishers take over will only succeed in presenting a fractured front. They don’t know your book the way you do, and they certainly don’t know you or the version of “you” you would like to present to the public.
As for anyone you hire, without clear direction and a cohesive author brand upon which to position their services, they’re stuck having to invent some version of you and your project, which will never be accurate or feel authentic.
Audiences don’t respond well to inconsistent messaging because they don’t have that cohesive “thing” you stand for to hang their hat on.
At the very least, you need to create an author brand. This is not only an extremely valuable exercise for understanding how you want to position yourself publicly, but it also enables you to control your narrative- even if others help you facilitate it.
If or when you undertake some marketing yourself, your author brand guide will be your chief emotional and logistical support document as it will serve as the foundation and guide for everything you do.
Nothing zaps a person’s energy and verve more than being stuck at an intersection of ignorance and expectation. Taking some time and care to enter into this second part of your book’s life will alleviate you enormously, give you control, and ensure you are able to make clear choices about what you do and how you do it.
You hold all the power here; rather than keep pushing off marketing because you don’t like it (or because you anticipate you won’t like it) or dabble in this, that, or the other without a clear understanding of the bigger picture, instead, you can shake it off, grab a friend or a cold drink, and together confront your reservations and concerns, and dive in. Even a gentle starter plan will help you feel a lot better.
(Use ours! It’s free, easy, and takes only 10 minutes to get you moving in a great direction). Click HERE to get started.
There’s no guarantee that anything you do will work, but there is a guarantee that if you do nothing, nothing will happen at all. Not knowing what you’re doing but being saddled with guilt is a preventable state. Knowledge is everything, and in that, you’ll see which activities you like and that will shift the author marketing you do into a far more empowered gear.
Our short, comprehensive online course, Brand “You”: Marketing for Authors (Who Would Rather Do Anything But) is the user-friendly and actionable anecdote to your reticence around marketing.
In only 5 modules, you will get a clear grasp of what author marketing is, useful tools, and a plan to help you start marketing right away—in ways that work for you.
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