What are the essential aspects of an author marketing plan, and are you doing your book justice?
It’s great to get caught up in the excitement of self-publishing and releasing your first book, but have you thought about an author marketing plan and what comes next?
Regardless of whether you’re self-publishing, using a hybrid publisher, or traditionally publishing, a lot of the marketing is going to be up to you. It’s easily one of the hardest parts of the self-publishing journey. First, you get your book published, and then it’s just one of the millions of other books available, and you need to find a way to ensure your book stands out from the crowd.
That’s where an author’s marketing plan comes into effect. Before we talk more about your author marketing plan, if you need any assistance with marketing, social media, or setting up your author social media and marketing plan, don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us directly.
Our friendly and professional Canadian marketing team is standing by to help you! If you’re interested in author social media, then don’t forget to read our article 6 Social Media Post Ideas for Authors! It’s full of some great author social media post ideas.
What Are the Essential Elements of An Author Marketing Plan?
Right now, you may be asking, ‘What is an author marketing plan?’ and don’t worry if you don’t know. We’ll break it down for you now and explain it.
Your author marketing plan is an organized schedule of how you plan to market and sell your books after they go live.
Once your book goes live, the real work starts, regardless of what genre you’re publishing in. Unfortunately, it’s very rare for a book to get published and for copies to start flying off the shelf unless you’re already a very established and well-known author.
As hard as marketing is, with the right plan in place, the process can be a whole lot smoother.
What Elements Should Your Author Marketing Plan Include?
1. Plan Ahead, Don’t Wait!
The first important thing to consider is that planning shouldn’t start when your book is published. Your marketing plan should already be finished and in place before the book goes live. However, just because you don’t have the book ready doesn’t mean you can’t start putting your marketing plan into place ahead of time.
Before your book is available, you should be building an audience of readers enthusiastically waiting for your book to be released. Some things you can do pre-release include:
- Show, Don’t Tell – Showing your audience the behind-the-scenes of your book writing and production process, including writing, editing, cover design, illustrations, and inspiration.
- Involve Your Audience – Get the audience involved with decisions like titles, cover design, and illustrations.
The sooner you build your audience and anticipation, the better it will be when release day finally rolls around.
2. Focus On Launch Day
Launch day is the biggest day of your book’s life and also one of the most essential parts of your marketing plan. This is the day you and your readers have been waiting for!
Some of the activities you can focus on during launch day include:
- Launch parties, both in-person and virtual.
- Author interviews.
- Countdowns.
- Giveaways.
- Blog tours.
- Social media takeovers.
If you can funnel a lot of your book sales into one day, then the chances of your book ranking well in its category and even making the bestsellers list are much higher.
3. Marketing, Marketing, and More Marketing!
It’s important to remember that marketing for your book should never stop. Sure, there’s a peak on your launch day, but after that, your marketing plan needs to continue chugging along and pushing your book if you want your book to remain relevant. Bottom of Form
Too often, new authors get all pumped up about their books, see a spike in sales, and then relax, thinking the hard work is done only for their book to start slipping down the ranks into obscurity slowly.
Any chance or opportunity you have to promote your book, reach out and take it with both hands! These opportunities won’t last forever.
The Essentials of An Author Marketing Plan – Conclusion
You don’t have to go from zero marketing to hundreds of posts overnight. In fact, pacing yourself to post on social media consistently is better than going in dribs and drabs.
If you need any assistance with marketing, social media, or setting up your author social media and marketing plan, don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us directly.
Our professional Canadian marketing team is standing by to help you with your author marketing plan.
At Indie Publishing Group, we’re proud to assist Canadian and North American authors in self-publishing their work. If you are in the process of writing a book and need any assistance with paperback or ebook formatting, cover design, professional editing, or uploading to self-publishing sites such as Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark, please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us.
Our experienced and professional self-publishing team is standing by to assist you with your self-publishing dreams.
Do you have any additional ebook formatting questions? Don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us directly! One of our friendly and professional team members will get back to you ASAP!
