Congrats on choosing the path of self-publishing! That's no easy feat. You've got to write, self-publish, and promote. Wherever you are in your indie journey, developing a solid author marketing plan is a must. So here’s your guide on how to create a book marketing plan, made easy-to-digest. Plus, check out our book marketing timeline example at the end. ⬇️
3 Steps for Your Indie Book Marketing Plan
Coming up with a self-publishing marketing plan can feel daunting, especially for newbies. No worries, let’s simplify the process into three main steps:
Develop your strategy: Define your target audience, goals, budget, and other key guidelines.
Choose your tactics: Learn about the various marketing tactics available and select those that best fit your strategy.
Create your timeline: Build a book marketing timeline that aligns with your overall self-publishing plan.
A book marketing strategy is your big-picture view. It sets the stage for choosing the specific tactics you’ll implement. This is important work, so take your time and do it with care. Start by opening a new document and answering these key questions:
Who’s your target audience?
A target audience is the group most likely to be your core readers. It’s important to define this before deciding on any tactics — you don’t want to waste time and resources trying to grab everyone’s attention. Focus on the people most likely to connect with your book.
Ask yourself: Who is most likely to be interested in my book?
Think about what your book offers. What needs does it fulfill for readers? Why should people read it? Once you’ve formed an idea of your ideal readers, jot it down or sketch out a profile. Most importantly, research similar books in your genre and observe the types of readers they attract.
Target audiences typically share traits such as:
Age
Gender
Location
Education
Socioeconomic status
You can get more specific by defining:
Favorite book genres
Favorite authors
Favorite hang-out spots (online and offline)
Try describing your audience in a few sentences. Example: The target audience for my YA fantasy romance novel about vampire love is females aged 13 to 27, mostly students in the U.S. They hang out on TikTok and Instagram and love the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.
With the example above, it makes sense to focus on TikTok and Instagram for social promotions. Your tone of voice would also be youthful and personable (emojis encouraged! 😊)
You can list as many target audiences as you'd like. However, I recommend sticking to one or two core audience types to start. There’s always room to tweak and optimize your book marketing plan throughout your journey.
What’s your unique selling proposition?
Now that you know who you want to reach, why should they pick your book? A unique selling proposition (USP) is what sets your book apart. It could be your plot, characters, writing style, or even your personal credentials.
Ask yourself: What makes my book marketable? What makes me marketable as an author? Do I have unique credentials? Have I won any book awards in the past?
Jot everything down. These points will be useful when creating most, if not all, of your marketing items, such as the book blurb, website copy, book advertising copy, and more.
What are your goals?
A goal gives your marketing plan direction. With clear goals, you can assess whether a tactic supports what you’re trying to achieve.
Examples:
Gain exposure and credibility online as a first-time author.
Land on Amazon’s bestseller list within two months.
Attract local clients by positioning myself as an expert.
.Build a fan base and grow fiction series sales
As you move forward, you can refine your goals:
Do more interviews because they’re converting well.
Focus on collecting more reviews to influence buying decisions.
Boost sales with Facebook ads after previous success.
As I mentioned, you can tweak and optimize your author marketing plan at any point. In fact, it’s a good idea to do so as you figure out what does and doesn’t work. Be flexible and ready to pivot.
What’s your budget?
It’s crucial to set a clear budget and pick tactics that fit it. You can spend as little as $50 a month or much more, depending on your resources. If funds are tight, don't worry. There are plenty of cost-effective ways to market a self-published book. I cover them below, so let’s keep going.
What to measure?
As an authorpreneur, you’re creating not just a writer's marketing plan but a business marketing plan. That means you have to track your performance to make smart business decisions. Most platforms (like Amazon KDP or PublishDrive) offer dashboards for viewing sales by date, location, and more. Use them.
Set up a spreadsheet with columns for tactics, the date you used the tactic, book sales, and sales ranking during that period. Routinely track your activities. You'll start to notice patterns. If a certain tactic doesn’t bring in any results to your ebook marketing strategy, cut it out. On the other hand, if a certain tactic (like podcast interviews) led to significant sales, do more of that.
Get Sales Insights for Your Author Marketing Plan
The ultimate marketing plan includes the numbers. PublishDrive helps you track and analyze performance across stores and countries. Learn more
Once your plan is in place, it's time for the nitty-gritty. Tactics are the specific actions you’ll take. There are a lot of options — don’t try to do everything. Choose the ones that best align with your strategy, audience, and budget.
Here’s a list of the book marketing plan tactics to know. Pay extra attention to the ones marked with a star ✩ – those are the best practices to consider.
List of tactics for your indie book marketing plan
Develop author brand ✩
Author branding is an extension of your strategy that helps blueprint how you conduct yourself across marketing mediums like social media and email. Ask yourself questions like: What aspects of my persona do I want to share? What tone of voice do I want to use when engaging with my readers? What kind of design elements represent my vibe?
Metadata holds information about your book, used across various stores. It includes author, title, subtitle, description, series information, language, categories, keywords, reviews, and price. It influences your discoverability and engagement with readers, directly influencing your sales.
Your book description is one of the first elements people come across when browsing for books. You want to pull people in by adding the strongest and most emotional hooks in the very first few sentences.
Your cover design is also one of the first elements people see. If you can, hire a professional designer. Your cover should fit industry standards, look professional, and be enticing.
In self-publishing, selling books happens online. That means you have to engage people online. A dedicated online hub like an author website helps people learn more about you. A professional site also helps with your credibility.
If a website doesn’t fit your budget, set up a free page on blog platforms like Medium or Tumblr. Blogging can help boost your author brand.
Set up email strategy ✩
Trending marketing tactics may come and go, but your mailing list will always remain one of your most powerful marketing tools! Email is a direct way to engage and nurture your readers. To get started with email, you need to create an email plan. Maybe you’d like to send out monthly newsletters about your writing progress. Or perhaps you’d like to send out occasional emails about your book sales. If you have an author website, you can use it to collect email addresses.
Social media is where everyone is at. And the potential to get discovered in these digital spaces is huge. Set up at least one dedicated account on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.
You’re most likely going to sell on Amazon, the mecca of online books. Be sure to create your author page on Amazon to give readers a space to learn more about you. Consider setting up an author page on Facebook and Goodreads too.
This is an author’s #1 priority – truly! Here’s the rule of e-commerce: people won’t buy when there are zero reviews. Make sure you’re collecting book reviews as a part of your author marketing plan.
An endorsement is a short blurb or testimonial from someone who influences your target audience. You can place it on your book’s front or back cover, author pages, social media bios, and more.
A press release is a professional announcement about your book launch. Use it for interviews with media outlets, speaking engagements, and website traffic.
Always start with a pre-order period! Stores like Amazon count sales on the first day of release. That means you can use your pre-order period to collect sales and bump up your sales count come launch day. This increases the chances of landing on bestseller lists, exposure you don’t want to miss.
Research and build a list of virtual and in-person book events. Networking helps you meet new readers and industry people. Network online, too, by joining forums like Reddit’s group for writers.
Use reader magnet
A reader magnet is anything you give away in exchange for your reader’s contact information (this is where your email list comes in handy!) Example: offer a free chapter of your book for an email address back. Now you can add a new contact to your mailing list to upsell your book down the funnel.
Research and reach out to podcasts, YouTubers, bloggers, radio stations, and beyond. Use a press release to send out important information about you and your book.
Apply for book awards
Research and build a list of book awards to apply to. This is a great way to gain credibility. With any book awards you do achieve, place them across marketing mediums like your website or Amazon author page.
Run free/discounted price campaigns ✩
After launching your book, plan a special sales period where you list your book for free or at a discounted price. PublishDrive analyzed over 800 sales campaigns. The main result: indies made 10x more sales. These work.
Buy promotional spots
If you do run a sales campaign, advertise the heck out of it. Buy a spot on promotional sites specifically curated for readers looking for free or discounted books. Freebooksy has over 368,000 users looking for free book deals. Bargain Booksy has over 277,000 users looking for titles priced $3.99 and lower.
Run Amazon ads
Amazon captures the majority of the digital book market. It takes a bit of research to get familiar with advertising on Amazon. The cool thing is you can start with a budget as low as $5 a day. Create an advertising campaign timeline to keep track of your ads and see what works for you.
Facebook is another giant space to advertise in. I mean, it’s the #1 social platform in the world. Run Facebook ads to promote your book launch, pre-order period, sales campaign, and more.
BookBub is a favorite for many indie authors. It offers authors and book marketers a platform to tailor their campaigns and reach custom audiences of readers.
Last but not least, distribute your book in every format (ebook, print, audio), store, and country possible. This is about maximizing your reach, therefore, your revenue streams.
Note: keep in mind that each book format will most likely reach a different target audience, so plan accordingly. For example, your ebook marketing plan may rely more on digital tactics while your print plan may focus more on in-person promotions.
After choosing your tactics based on your target audience, budget, and overall goals, the last step involves putting everything together in a cohesive timeline. Take a look at the book marketing plan example below. It’s split up into three main phases:
Planning: Draft your book launch marketing plan, get familiar with the tactics you want to implement, and set up everything you need to promote your book. Your work should align with your publishing timeline.
Pre-order: Create buzz during your pre-order period until the official launch of your book. Use this period to finalize your metadata and other marketing materials.
Post-release: After launching your book, marketing should be an ongoing effort. Fill your calendar with weekly to monthly activities.
Book marketing timeline example
When you’ve decided on your book timeline, schedule tasks and deadlines into your daily calendar. Follow through on your assignments. Don’t forget to carve out the time needed to track and measure your results. You’ve got this, dear authorpreneur!
Now you know how to write a marketing plan for a book. What’s next? ⬇️
Boost Your Sales With PublishDrive
Along with publishing and distribution, PublishDrive also provides you with the promotion tools to support your book marketing plan:
Don’t forget to maximize your sales by distributing in as many stores and countries as possible. Sell in thousands of bookstores with a click of a button.
Every holiday season is a busy one for authors, with most book sales happening…
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