Authors looking for book marketing services often wonder where they should spend their money. Should you hire someone to create ads for you? Work with a book marketing services website? Hire an influence? Knowing what might work best for your book is complex, because each book, series and author is different.
We wanted to dig down into some of the potential book marketing services to get the word out and whether we think they’re effective for promoting sweet and inspirational romance novels.
Different Types of Book Marketing Services
Whether you hire a publicist to handle all aspects of author branding or you take bits and pieces of what others do, there are a number of things you should be doing to get the word out about your books. Although there are many offline things you can do, as well, for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on digital advertising.
Social Media Marketing
One of the most powerful ways to connect with readers is through social media. However, there are a cacophony of author voices all vying to be heard. Even if you drill down and join groups pertaining to your specific subgenre, you may be overlooked as author after author posts their new releases and promotions.
While I’ve also spent my time trying to make this work, I’m starting to realize it is a waste of time and energy. The majority of readers seem to tune these posts out, and who can blame them. They join a group to connect with authors only to be inundated with what is essentially ad after ad. They have no reason to pay attention to any of it.
You’ll do better if you collect a target audience of readers and speak to them directly or offer something unique. Here at Word Museum, we do try to come up with some unusual promotions a few times a year and get our authors and readers involved. In the past, the unique nature of each promotion has driven engagement between readers and authors.
You can DIY your own reading group and build it over time with specific types of posts. We do a bit of consultation with our clients so they have ideas on what they can DIY and then also participate in our unique promotional opportunities.
Newsletters
Digital marketing experts are of two different minds. Some say newsletters are dead. This isn’t my personal experience at all, but perhaps it depends on your target audience. For me, when I send out a note to my newsletter subscribers, it is to a very cultivated and targeted group of readers. My book sales almost always bump and more importantly they engage with me by sending emails and chatting.
There are a few ways to use newsletters to your book marketing advantage. First, you can cultivate your own list as I mentioned above. I draw people in with a lead magnet, a free novella from one of my popular series. However, I always follow up by letting them know I hope they enjoy the book but if they’d like to unsubscribe here is how to do so.
Why would I do that when I just worked so hard to get them to join the mailing list? Each email costs me money because it can throw me into a bigger package based on number of subscribers I have. Also, I don’t really want to waste their time or mine. If they only want the free book from whoever, that’s fine. I’m okay with it and I hope they enjoy the gift. However, if they truly wanted the free book because they want to get to know me and my books better, they are my people. I want them to stay.
I offer various benefits for sticking with me. Free short stories from time to time, sneak peaks into upcoming releases and contests throughout the year. I also share info on what I’m reading and authors I like to give them more reading material.
Don’t be scared to newsletter swap with like-minded authors. Your readers are likely voracious. Even if you are the most prolific writer on the planet, you can never keep up with their appetite for good books.
Our Word Museum authors do get to push a message to our mailing list we’ve cultivated since 1997. The list is constantly changing and morphing as readers come and go but it is another way to get your work in front of people.
Digital Book Tours
I’ve tried digital book tours a couple of times. I even paid someone to organize it for me. I think it is a good thing to do to gain a few readers here and there and possibly reach audiences you’ve never reached before. However, I wouldn’t describe it as an extremely effective use of your time. Instead, it is a slow SEO build.
If you want to start driving traffic to your website, it’s crucial to build some high-quality and relevant backlinks. Online book tours can do that for you. If you’re extremely limited on time, this isn’t the promotional avenue for you as you’ll need to come up with material for each stop on your tour and interact with people as they comment and post.
You can also let others be guests on your site, which will drive at least some of their readers your way but benefit them when your readers check out their books. It’s a win-win scenario in most cases.
You can DIY your own tour by contacting sites you’d like to appear on and keeping things organized in a spreadsheet. Again, very time consuming. You can also pay someone to get your placements and then you just write the material, which does save some time.
On a scale of 1 to 10 of being effective, I rank book tours as a book marketing approach as around 4 or 5. It is a slow build. It can help but it won’t move the needle much on your book sales.
Ads
There are full courses on how to place ads on Amazon, Facebook and elsewhere. I have found these courses extremely ineffective, and some of them are quite pricey. You can take off the cost on your taxes, but still, who wants to spent upwards of $1,000 with zero results?
I’ve taken what I can from free and paid courses and learned that each of my clients and myself are all different. What works for one author will not work for the next. Our personalities, books and promotional styles all vary.
People are tired of the same styles and messaging. Think about what is unique about you as a writer and formulate your adds around your unique value proposition.
Influencer Marketing
The more I work in marketing, the more I love influencers for getting the word out. Does every single influencer campaign go viral? Absolutely not. Do you reach new people with each person who shouts out your name or books? Absolutely yes.
The key to good book marketing services when it comes to influencers is finding the right fit. One thing we are working on for our authors is expanding our reader lists.
You can also team up with another author in your niche and shout out each other’s books. Just make sure it is equal on both sides and you’ll both benefit. Remember, readers are voracious absorbers of literature. You can never keep up on your own with their demand for books. Team up with another and you’ll both benefit.
Content Book Marketing Services
Another way to get the word out and benefit from backlinks is by writing articles, similar to this one and linking to your author page. This is a service we offer here at Word Museum, because clearly there is an entire method to finding the right sites, requesting permission to post, placing the link so it isn’t spammy and making sure the SEO will attract readers.
If you are on a tight budget and just can’t afford it, focus on adding high-quality blog posts to your site and sharing them on social media.
DIY or Paid Book Marketing Services?
If you aren’t yet making money on your books, you should probably wait to spend money on book marketing services. Until you have a few readers regularly purchases your titles, it might be best to DIY promotions. We are happy to chat and offer you a free consultation about whether Word Museum is a right fit for your promotional needs for your sweet or Christian romances. If you write another genre that is clean, please refer to Promo Warriors for a more individualized package.
