A little over a week ago, Joanna Penn interviewed John Kremer on book marketing for 2022 and beyond. Here are a few of the points I made during that interview:
Your goal is to stay out there long enough that the people that need you or want you or hope to find you actually do find you.
A lot of us end up writing a book because we actually need the information in the book. Or we're looking for a really interesting novel that will entertain us. So we write it.
The key thing in marketing books that you need to still do is connect with people that can help you. Connect with the distributors, the editors, the producers of TV shows, the bloggers, the podcasters, and so on.
I recommend that you connect with people through email. That's something that even us shy introverts can do. You start by checking out their social media. Start commenting on what they're writing about, what they're doing. You try to make some sort of connection.
The reality is that that magic process doesn't work unless you make it happen. So, you do have to persist. You have to connect. If you don't connect the first time, you try again. You really have to be a little bit obnoxious, and patient!
The minute you connect with one person, the magic can start to happen. There is actually some magic that, if you connect with one top influencer, and they write about your book, chances are that other influencers follow that influencer, and they go, ‘Okay. If he's going to interview him on his podcast, I want him on my podcast.' And that kind of thing happens, and they start to reach out to you.
You're not really passive marketing when you're advertising on Amazon, which I think almost every author should do, especially an unknown author, because it's one way to get people to notice you.
Hire professionals to help you if you can't or don't want to do it yourself?
The neat thing about advertising on something like Amazon, or Facebook, or Google or wherever you might want to advertise, is that most online marketing, you can set a budget, even a small budget, $10 a week or $25 a week, and at least test the market and see if by advertising you make book sales, or you make connections, or in some way, it helps you move along in your goal to become a bestselling author.
It's about also staying out there long enough that people notice what you do, or they eventually look for what you do.
it's about also staying out there long enough that people notice what you do, or they eventually look for what you do.
Once you create a podcast and you set up the syndication, all you have to do is create more episodes, because the syndication will take place automatically. And that's one of the really, really neat things about doing a podcast.
Audio is hot, and the neat thing is that with a podcast, you can also do a video version of your podcast, and put it up on YouTube and Vimeo, and a key source right now is Rumble.
How do we know when we need to give up one way of marketing and find another one? When it's not producing results is one of the best ways to know. If you're not selling books any longer through that particular platform or whatever you're doing, nobody's discovering you, nobody's emailing you, things like that, then you know that, ‘Okay. What I'm doing now isn't working.'
If you know how to pin, if you know what to pin, you can get a lot of traffic through Pinterest.
I think all authors should be connecting with other authors, and doing some sort of co-op marketing where you help each other.
I think a podcast tour could work. In other words, you connect with 5 or 10 key podcasts, people who are podcasting in your area, and I would probably approach those podcasters by first saying, ‘I'd like to interview you,' which is what I did with you, and then you said, ‘Well, I want to interview you.'
The neat thing is that Substack, besides that email capability, and the paid version, which is like a membership site, they also offer podcasting. So you can do your podcasting on Substack, for free. No charge, and it's up and running, and you can syndicate it.
Note: I said that Andy Weir podcasted his book, The Martian, but he actually blogged about it, one short episode at a time. You can read more about Weir here: https://bookmarketingbestsellers.com/how-to-create-a-bestselling-novel-and-movie.
The most successful authors don't make all their money just from book sales.
Part of my content that I do in some of my websites has nothing to do with marketing or books in general. It's just a way of attracting people to my website, so they can discover, because I believe almost everybody has a book inside them. So the world is my audience for how to market a book.
The key thing is, if you're going to do marketing, do at least one thing a day.
If you do one thing a day, whether it's send out an email, do a podcast episode, get interviewed by somebody else, over time, that's 365 action items a year.
For the entire transcript of this podcast, see: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2022/02/07/book-marketing-tips-for-the-long-term
Joanna Penn is the author of Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting and Voice Technologies.
Book Marketing Tips: For the Long Term