#1. Make a professional website.
Think of your website as an online brochure for your writing. If your brochure looks unprofessional, who will want to buy a book from you?
I recommend designSEO.ca, a company that does both website design and search engine optimization. Their specialty is search engine friendly website design. However any professional website designer could certainly do the job for you. Your primary goal is to make your site look professional so that potential buyers are not turned off by a website that looks like an amateur made it.
Hot Tip 1 - Before contacting a website designer, figure out what content you want to be on your website first. Write out the whole website like you are making a brochure before you contact the website designer. This allows the website designer to give you a more accurate quote for how much it will cost to create your website.
Hot Tip 2 - If your goal is to be able to update your website yourself you may wish to either learn HTML or choose a platform that allows you to create/design the website yourself and be able to update your website easily. Otherwise if you are regularly updating your website it will get expensive to be paying your designer $30 per hour each time you do a small update.
A fellow author recommended the bookmarks. I have seen other authors who use business cards, but bookmarks can work just as well as a business card in terms of containing the same information, but in a different shape. The benefit of this kind of "swag" is that people are less likely to throw out a bookmark than a business card (but business cards are easier to carry in your wallet/purse). Once people have the bookmark/business card they are also more likely to look up your work and make a purchase.
Having business cards/bookmarks allows you to interact face-to-face with potential fans. There might even be a surprise factor when they think you are giving them a business card and then they realize it is a bookmark. This creates a more memorable experience and every time they look at the bookmark they will be reminded of the time they met you, shook your hand, and they might be curious enough to buy your book.
Hot Tip - Hiring a graphic designer to make your business cards / bookmarks makes them look even more professional. More expensive, yes, but also more likely to win over potential buyers of your books.
#3. Make a professional Amazon Author page.
How to Setup Amazon Author Central and Your Author Page
https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-author-central-page/
If you are self-publishing and promoting your work on Amazon, this is pretty much a necessity. However many self-published authors forget to actually make their author page, so make a note to actually do this and also use it.
Hot Tip - Make a paperback version of your books on Amazon. Amazon isn't just for ebooks any more. You can now make and sell paperback and hardcover versions too. Many people prefer to read a physical book so having physical copies of your books for sale means you are effectively doubling or tripling your available audience of buyers.
#4. Claim your Author Profile on Goodreads.
How to Claim your Author Profile on Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/program
Claiming your profile on Goodreads is a good way to get more ratings and reviews of your work. Amazon only allows people who are in good standing who have purchased over $50 worth of things off Amazon to post reviews. Furthermore, Amazon tracks your Facebook friends so that your friends cannot post reviews on Amazon, thus Goodreads is an excellent alternative for reviews as anyone can post reviews on there.
Hot Tip - Invite your friends who are big into reading fantasy to join Goodreads. They might even read your books and leave some nice reviews. This will help to get the ball rolling.
#5. Fatten your eBooks.
Fatten your ebooks with extra pages by including Author's Notes, About the Author, Books by Author, List of Social Media, etc. You should also include things like:
- Maps of your fantasy world.
- Illustrations, if any.
- A dedication.
- A thank you note to anyone who helped during the writing / editing process.
- Table of Contents.
Further more, the fattening of your book is very handy for marketing reasons. It allows you to include a list of other books you wrote, which encourages readers to go out and buy your other books. Likewise having sections for About the Author, Author's Notes, a List of Social Media accounts and other topics can also be very beneficial to get readers to buy your other books, follow you on social media, etc.
#6. YouTube Readings and Promos.
Pick a chapter or two from your book and read it on YouTube. You could do this live (and don't care whether you make any mistakes while reading) or you can more carefully narrate the book and edit out any mistakes you make. Depends which method you think will work best.
You can also make videos to announce promotional sales / free books, timing them with Amazon's KDP Select program.
Got something to say to your fans? Make a personal video.
Hot Tip - Why pay for a social influencer when you could become a social influencer? Promote your own work and don't rely on others to do it for you. This way when people do promote your work on YouTube they are doing it for free.
#7. Twitter and Instagram.
You can use Twitter and Instagram in much the same way as you use YouTube, uploading videos (usually shorter videos), but you can also post short updates on Twitter about your writing if you want to, interact with fans, and interact with other authors.
eg. I follow several authors I find to be of interest on Twitter and I am always pleased when fellow authors respond.
#8. Facebook Page and Facebook Groups...
So you can waste a lot of time on Facebook and accomplish nothing if you are not careful. You have been warned. I regulate my time on there.
You should absolutely have a Facebook page, where you can post the same videos and information you post on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.
However Facebook also has a lot of groups you can join about fantasy books where you can potentially promote your books and get sales / reviews of your work.
Joining groups for Fantasy Authors won't bring in the sales, as these people are more interested in selling their own books, but that is a good place to meet similar authors who you could collaborate with on anthologies if that is something you are interested in. Those groups are also a good place to discuss the writing process and ideas.
The one group I am going to recommend is joining Fantasy Authors & Marketing, a group specifically geared towards authors both sharing their work and also sharing marketing techniques. In fact I am going to be posting this blog post on there shortly.
#9. Get a Discord account.
So Discord was originally used (and still is used) by gamers as a forum to discuss video games, but it is increasingly also being used by people wishing to discuss movies, TV shows and books.
Having a Discord account allows you to communicate directly with people who read fantasy books and mention your book in the process. I don't recommend using it for blatant marketing, but rather as a way to engage with fans of the fantasy genre.
Discord also allows you to stream video, which means you could do live readings of a chapter of your book.
Discord is increasingly popular, which is why it made this list. However if you aren't really into conversing with potential fans then maybe Discord is not for you.
Hot Tip - Try not to offend people when talking to fans. No better way to get a negative review than to annoy people.
#10. Search Engine Optimize your Book Title.
There are many ways you can use SEO to promote your book, but depending on your book's title it might be wise to do what is known as a Google Bomb.
A Google Bomb is when you use SEO techniques to promote a specific phrase, often a common saying. Take for example "Or Die Trying". (This is purely an example, if there is actually a book by that name that is pure coincidence.)
So you create lots of links using that specific phrase which goes to your book listing (either on your website or on Amazon), which may or may not contain that phrase as well. It is certainly easier if your book title is the phrase in question, but it doesn't have to be. It could simply be a phrase used in the description, or it could be part of the tagline or logline.
If your Google Bomb is successful, whenever someone types in the phrase in question the very first result at the top of the search will be your book. The goal here is to get volume, more people seeing your book equals more people who may be tempted to buy and read your book.
Even if your book title is not a popular phrase you should still spend some time promoting the book in links / SEO so that when people do eventually type in your book title that they can find your book easily.
Hot Tip - While you are at it you should Google Bomb your own name (or your pseudonym if you are using a different name when publishing) so that when people do a search for the name they can find your website easily. If you use multiple pseudonyms you should have them all go to your main website.
#11. Pay-Per-Click Pros and Cons
Okay, so you need to experiment with Pay-Per-Click / PPC advertising before you learn how it works. I cannot summarize it fully in a few paragraphs in any adequate means. The point here is that you don't want to waste your money advertising your book if it is not selling, thus experimentation is key.
Furthermore there is a pricing issue to consider. If you are selling your book for $2.99 each then you are going to have a hard time making a profit. You might be spending anywhere from 5 cents to 20 cents per click, and because Amazon takes 30% of each sale you only make $2.09 per sale and Amazon takes the other 90 cents. It might take you 10 or more clicks just to get 1 sale, thus costing you $2 or more just to make 9 cents. You could even lose money doing this.
What might potentially work is when you are selling a longer book, a trilogy or a set of books for $9.99. Suddenly your profit margin has shifted. For every book sold you make $6.99 and Amazon takes $3. If it costs you $2.50 to get one sale, suddenly advertising via PPC does actually make more sense as you make $4.49 off every sale.
If you can get that cost down further to less than $1 by paying perhaps 5 cents per click then your profit margin just went up.
The other issue with PPC is branding. Sometimes it isn't about getting people to click on your advertisement. Sometimes it is more important to build brand name recognition, but this usually isn't something you should worry about until you are more successful and can afford to focus on branding.
Hot Tip - If paying for clicks in an effort to get sales is not working or seems like a silly method to you, then don't do it. Nobody is forcing you to. Also even if it does work for the first while, it may eventually stop working due to saturation levels. You may need to only to do this during the initial book launch and then phase it out after 3 months or so.
#12. Make a Blog.
So I have had Nerdovore as a blog since 2011, but I only recently started to use it to promote my writing. Usually I use it for talking about Game of Thrones, Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy cartography/map-making, "nerd food", and all sorts of nerdy topics. In the past 8 years this blog has gone from a hobby to a profitable hobby. I make money off the advertising on the side, so that is a nice bonus.
I also use this blog to promote my other website, Cardio Trek, which hosts my personal training / sports training / archery business. Archery students come from all over the world (eg. South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the USA) just to study archery here in Toronto under me. So that is working out for me financially. I cannot complain.
So it makes sense that I should also use Nerdovore to promote my writing, which in my case often means talking about the writing process with respect to fantasy writing and rarely even mentioning my own work. I suppose I should talk about my own work more often, but lately I have been more interested in blogging on subjects related to sub-genres, book lengths, where I get inspiration from, etc.
Note - You don't need a blog. It isn't a necessity. Some authors use their Facebook pages as a blog. eg. Tomi Adeyemi's Facebook page is essentially a blog and she has a tonne of followers.
However blogs do have several advantages over Facebook pages and other social media platforms in that you can control the visuals and control what the visitor sees. It is very easy for someone visiting a Facebook page to browse away to different topics, click on advertising, etc. But if they are on your blog then the only advertising they see should be yours, usually for your books or your swag you are selling. (Or in my case I have my books, my archery lessons, or my Google advertising.)
Hot Tip - Having a blog is also a great way to post samples of your chapters, short stories, or even shorter examples of your work such as poetry or fables.
Happy Writing and Marketing!
