Book Promotion Ideas for Authors
You can advertise your book online in different ways. You can make promo videos and upload them on different social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram are some popular choices free buffalo slots download. You can also pay relevant influencers to promote your book online. For example, you can hire a YouTube channel dedicated to books and writing to post reviews of your book. It will help bring your book in front of the target audience and build their confidence when they see someone they trust vouching for it.
Many authors just want to write, and don’t want to market. In fact, most despise this aspect of being an author. And this holds true for writers of children’s books as well. It is, nonetheless, one of the key factors to your book’s success. Without promoting it, it will get lost in the sea of books. A book without marketing and promotion is like a rocket without fuel.
Podcasts are extremely popular these days and are made on all kinds of topics. Several podcasts are dedicated to families and kids as well. Participate in a podcast dedicated to children as an interviewee or a guest speaker. You may have to reach out a couple of times before finding a spot, especially on popular podcasts. You can also send your book for reading on storytime podcasts.
Book Promotion Video Ideas
While the book trailer might be the most common type of book video, it’s not a must. Many non-fiction authors prefer to do an author video that showcases them as an expert or thought leader; author videos also lend themselves to a video series, a webinar, a booktube channel, or other video-driven sales tool where the book’s role is to be more of an extension of the author’s expertise. While book trailers focus on the world and narrative of the book, author videos aim to build the author’s personality and forge a personal connection with the audience. In addition, videos can range from live-action to animation to a collage of images set to music. Budgets are vary from $0 – $10,000. There’s no set formula, so get creative!
In summary, there’s a lot of nitty-gritty that goes into the production phase depending on the scope of your video. For more resources, visit wildboundpr.com/videoresources and download a handout for the production phase.
No wonder publishers and authors are increasingly leveraging video to tap into an exploding audience. But as much as a good book promo video makes that lasting first impression, a bad video is like a bad book cover—it cannot be unseen and can ruin a reader’s expectation of a book before they’ve even had a chance to crack into that first page. To help you avoid this pitfall, here are some key considerations and steps to successfully produce and distribute a book trailer that sells your work:
What’s inherently fascinating, timely, or socially relevant about your book? Perhaps there’s an unusual setting or character? What are the stakes? What is the genre/tone? What’s the core conflict or emotion? Who’s your audience? Is there an element of surprise or reversal that defies your reader’s expectations and compels them to want to know more?
As I mentioned before, there are lots of reasons why video should be an essential tool in an author’s book promotion toolbox. Video generates the most online traffic and engagement, 78% of people watch online video each week, studies show people recall 6 times more info from video than text, and our brains process imagery 60,000 times faster than text. Need I say more? Humans are wired for video. So why not take advantage of that?
Book Promotion Ideas
Unless you’ve been living in a cave like our friend here, you’re probably already on social media — but you may not have calibrated your social media presence with the aim of marketing your book. The key is to pick just one or two of the main platforms and focus your efforts there, rather than spreading yourself too thin over a dozen different apps.
Facebook ads have proven surprisingly effective for authors targeting specific audiences, and they’re also a staple method in digital marketing. While you may prefer to use ads to direct users to your Amazon page (more on that below), you can also use them to capture mailing list leads, as Mark Dawson describes here.
Finally, if you’ve written a series or even just one other book, you can add an excerpt and a link to your new book in the back matter of your existing one(s)! Then consider price-promoting the old book in order to boost it. Because it ends with a note about your new book, you’ll effectively be promoting two books at once.
Book promotion can feel like shouting into the void… unless you have a plan. This isn’t about posting “buy my book!” on social media until your friends mute you. This is about creative, effective ways to build buzz, attract readers, and turn interest into sales.
Let’s start with the foundation: the places you’re sending readers to actually learn about—and buy—your book. These landing pages (also called “funnels” by the marketing folks) work behind the scenes to make your book discoverable and desirable. Check out an in-depth resource here on the Pagewheel blog on each of these and how to easily create them:
The other main benefit of Facebook ads is that the platform lets you “A/B test” your ads to determine if readers respond better to a different blurb, title, or cover image. Even a 10% difference in clicks can make all the difference to your sales — so be sure to test, test, test until you find the optimal visual assets.