Self Publishing – Selling Your Work

Now that you have a book, you want to sell it, right?

CreateSpace does some limited marketing even if you don’t pay for the marketing package. I remember how happy I was when I had just bought some Joel Rosenberg books and got an email saying “If you liked Joel Rosenberg, you might like The Dice Of Fate by Rohvannyn Shaw!” That was truly awesome.  Recently I randomly found an ad for my new comedy book on a Hubpages post about customer service!  Not sure who put the ad there, Amazon or the writer, but so far it’s found me about ten customers.  If you put your work out there, it’s entirely possible that others might find it and decide to promote it.  There’s a lot you can do to improve those chances.

Basic Marketing Steps:

Announce on your social media.  That one’s pretty easy to guess.

Create a website or put a new page on your website for your book/s.

Fill out your author page on Amazon, or your profile on Lulu.

Join Goodreads, get an author page, fill it out.

Blog about it if you have a blog.

If you join Goodreads, check out the author communities. Often you will find people willing to host author interviews or feature new books on their blogs.

Do a promotion – CreateSpace lets you make coupons and do giveaways.

Don’t stress over reviews too much, but if you can get them, great.

You can do a Goodreads Giveaway too, they are pretty helpful. They only cost the price of whatever book you are giving away, plus postage.

Make little placards and leave them up places where readers gather. Bulletin boards at coffee shops, libraries, bookstores, etc. I make mine when I see those promotions for penny prints at Snapfish, Shutterfly, or similar photo sites.

Buy a few books and sell them on Ebay or Etsy. You might be surprised at who wants one, and it helps put them in front of more people.

Go to craft fairs or holiday bazaars with some copies. There aren’t many authors at craft fairs, so you will have less competition.

Note about blogging:  If you have a big following, it can be perfectly fine to say “hey, I have a new book, come check it out!”  But if you’re still trying to attract new readers or you’re starting out, try to think of some really interesting angle to write about.  Offer a chapter of your book, write an article about something you learned while writing it, something like that.  Give people a reason to click into your blog and then let them know the book is available within that posting.  Let them see why they should put down money to read more of your work.  It really helps!
There are a thousand other ideas out there, some of them quite creative, but I think you get the idea. Notice that most of these ideas are cheap or free!

Check out my page “self publishing” for the other parts to this series, and more.