5 Book Marketing Strategies I recommend to non-fiction authors

When I work with clients 1:1, they get a completely bespoke marketing plan that’s tailored to their specific book, the timeline they’re on, and their personal strengths, capacity and overall business goals.

However, the following five marketing strategies will usually make their way into their plan in one form or another, because they combine together to grow your audience, find your true fans, build your authority and create game-changing new partnerships.

Everyone’s situation is a little different, but usually I would also suggest that the first of these tactics is the very most useful for almost everyone, and that #2 is usually the next-most-useful, and so on in declining order of importance.

Obviously, if your own business already has a thriving community of superfans (maybe in a very engaged membership group) then you might want to prioritize #3 over #2, or otherwise adjust the order of priority according to your own situation.

Overall, these are the tactics that I believe are actually likely to move the needle in terms of book sales (which is, after all, the main point of all the marketing efforts you’re making).

And, along the way, they’ll help you to get to know your customers and their problems better, grow your audience, increase your visibility and authority and create new relationships with your peers, leading to all kinds of new opportunities for you and your business beyond book sales.

All of these marketing tactics are things you can talk about in your Book Proposal, if you’re planning to go down the traditional publishing route. And, if you’re self-publishing, understanding the best ways to market your book is, if possible, even more important.

The 5 best ways to promote your book:

1. Bake word-of-mouth success in from the beginning of your writing process by involving beta-readers who can go on to become your superfans, first reviewers and part of your ‘street team’ (street teams are groups of volunteers who agree to actively promote your book, often in return for various perks or prizes).

2. Create a wider community of readers and involve them in the writing and publication journey - via your newsletter, social media, even live events. You may want to go big on this idea and create a summit or community project that relates to your book topic, in order to bring a seed community together. These people may not go on to be quite as involved in promoting your book as your street team, but they’re very likely to pre-order and/or review your book or mention it on social media etc.

3. Build partnerships that can lead to endorsements and joint promotions. These partnerships should be with people who have an audience which may contain your eventual readers. Endorsements can be surprisingly important when it comes to getting a book deal, so don’t skip this step when planning your marketing and outreach activities - and bear in mind that it’s a ‘two for one’ - you get to build your audience at the same time as cultivating a relationship that may lead to an endorsement.

4. Build your authority and visibility via PR, whether that’s podcast guesting, guest posting, or traditional media/press interviews and features. This tactic has an overlap with #3 - for instance, sometimes your partnerships with people may start with guesting on their podcast. On other occasions though, you may not go on to build any form of longer term partnership, but something like a podcast appearance can still be very helpful when it comes to building your profile (and generating backlinks that are very significant for boosting your SEO via increasing your Domain Authority).

5. Amplify your other marketing efforts with SEO and/or advertising (spending on Amazon ads around launch time may be really helpful to boost your other activities). I would never recommend relying on either SEO or ads as your sole, or even your main, marketing tactics, but they are excellent when used to amplify more organic efforts.

You may notice that this plan is not particularly heavy on social media, and advertising is optional.

This is because the best marketing is long term, creating evergreen assets (such as an article being published in a prestigious outlet) that have a compound effect over time. By contrast, pouring time and money into social media or ads rarely has such long term benefits. It provides a short term boost while you’re putting time/money into doing it, but that boost doesn’t last.

I also prefer to focus on building real relationships with real people - your beta-readers and your wider community, alongside other authors, event organizers or business-owners with whom you can develop partnerships and business friendships. Again, the time and energy you put into building relationships will have long term benefits both for your business and your book.

Find out more about how we can work together to create a powerful marketing strategy for your book here.