The Basics of Book Marketing

Time and time again, I run into people who are absolutely convinced that they can earn six figures solely through word of mouth and grassroots efforts.

No.

That’s not how any of this works.

The Free to Play Days Are Over.

Once upon a time, in the hay day of indie publication, authors could do this. Those days are gone. Over. Extinct. (I wish they weren’t.) Behind every successful career is an even more successful marketing program of some sort. Influencers are approached (and paid.) Advertisements are put onto places like Bookbub, Amazon, and Facebook. Authors gang up together and run swaps. Authors put together group promotions designed to share their audiences.

Marketing is a complicated beast, and success does not magically spring forth out of the ground.

This opinion angers people. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have blocked me solely because I said, “Sorry, that’s not how this works.” Nobody likes being told that their precious artistic child is very unlikely to succeed unless investments are made.

If you want to find grassroots success, turn away now. This entire category just isn’t for you. I’ve never had grassroots success, and I never will have grassroots success. Every bit of fiscal fortune I’ve enjoyed was built from the foundation of smart advertising and relentless advertising.

These are just my opinions!

This post exists to teach the foundational basics of how I advertise my books. People are going to disagree with me. That’s fine. They aren’t running my career. I know what works for me and what doesn’t. I’m actually going to include some things that generally don’t work for me but have worked for others. They’re valid, they’re just not valid for me.

So, let’s get to it.

Please note that the below are basic overviews of each service. The services I use often will either be reviewed or I will be writing a comprehensive education piece on later. This is just to give you an idea of what the service is and my general thoughts on them.

The Nitty Gritty of Advertising Services.

• Facebook
• Bookbub
• Amazon
• Google Ads
• Book Tours (Xpresso Book Tours)
• Netgalley
• Professional Reviewer Networks (Booklife, Kirkus)
• Goodreads
• Twitter
• BookTok
• Newsletter Exchanges, Swaps, Promotions
• Bluesky

There are more marketing methods than what are listed above, but these are the ones that I’ve personally either used, decided against using but work for others, or otherwise have some familiarity with. The above links lead to the landing page of the marketing service if there is one available, otherwise, it just leads to the site in question. In the case of services that have many options, I either didn’t link to anything or I linked to one I use and recommend or has a good reputation in the industry at the time this post was written.

Facebook

However much I hate to say it, this is one of my favorite vendors. I get how this ecosystem works. I can make ads draw a lot of attention and engagement to my books. Those ads lead to sales and long-term readers. I can turn on an ad and let it go for several months before turning it off for a while and letting the audience cool down. I can adjust my ads and roll a new set out to see how it works.

I dislike some of the changes they’ve made recently, but this platform has always had excellent returns for me.

However, you need to use a lot of common sense, you need to be patient, and you need to have established goals. You need to know how much profit you want to make and work the ads to fall into those margins.

I prefer to make a little profit but get hardcore leads that result in a great deal more profit later. I don’t mind loss leading as long as my overall profit is good. (Sell-through, etc.)

Facebook can do it all. Facebook’s reliability has gone down as of late, though. The days of throwing $5 and making $100 are over. (And they haven’t been around for quite a while.) Yes, there used to be a time where Facebook was godly. People have become far more picky about the ads. They’ve also become far more frustrated about them.

If you have an excellent product and great ads with strong pictures supporting your book, facebook can work. But if you’re not willing to take some risks, you’re not going to get the rewards.

Yes, book marketing is a pay to play environment now. I find $10 a day is the entry level for facebook’s algorithms to be kind to you.

Bookbub

This is one of my preferred advertisers. Their system allows me to cultivate a “self-target” that I can retarget later. Essentially, anyone who showed interest in my books are put into an advertising pool that I can target. When I release a new book, I set up an ad, target that pool, and profit.

And when I say profit, I mean profit. I can spend $500 on one of these campaigns and make $5,000 just because it’s a pool of people who want to buy my books. It takes a lot of time and investment to build that self-target, but that self-target is marketing gold for me.

Most of my profits come from that self-target, and I burn money over a bonfire building that self-target. This is the playground of experimentation… and usually I win.

But I usually win only because I work hard to build campaigns that attract the right type of people.

That, right there, is the heart and soul of book advertising.

Amazon

I have blown a lot of money on the Amazon advertising network. Initially, it worked. But then it stopped working, and once you’re into a contract, it’s almost impossible to get out of the contract. The self-served stuff can kind of work, but honestly? I just can’t recommend this system as a general rule.

I have two very small ads that make me profit, but the amount of work involved with the amount of profit is just not worth the time investment, so I check on those two ads to make certain they still make profit and otherwise invest my time and money elsewhere.

There are people who have made their millions using their curated services, but I did not make millions. I barely scraped in a profit, and that counts my sell-through.

I simply don’t recommend this. Perhaps it works better for those who are in Kindle Unlimited, but I’m not one of those people.

All that said, I usually will run an ad for a new release during its release week to boost my algorithms and grab cheap leads… but it rarely performs nearly as well as either facebook or bookbub for me.

Google Ads

Before I became an author, I used google ads extensively to promote stuff for the company I worked for. It’s complicated, I’d rather not, and I can’t really recommend it. That said, I know some authors who do use it and see good results, but it’s just not something I’m willing to do at this point in time.

The knowledge is there, but my desire to do that level of fiddly advertising is not.

“It’s complicated.”

Book Tours

I have a love-hate relationship with book tours. I do them sometimes; it can really boost your search engine results for your name and book brand. However, it isn’t necessarily going to convert to sales. A lot of the sites book tours used are hobbies with minimal traffic. Now, all that said, there are readers behind these tours, and there are readers who check out the blogs.

Your mileage will vary. When I do use book tours, I hire Xpresso Book Tours. I absolutely love the organizer to pieces. She’s a delight to work with, and she has always delivered what was promised.

Netgalley

If you are looking to get the highest number of influencer reviews as possible to launch out a book, Netgalley is the way to go. Do I use netgalley? No. There are reasons for that, and they all boil down to personal preference. I don’t do advanced reviewer copies at all. I’ve had many problems with ARCs, piracy, and failed launches compared to not bothering. I reliably make more money not doing ARCs. Why?

The people who take the ARCs are the same people who would have just bought the book. And that is a lot of money to help me keep writing more books.

Your mileage will vary.

Professional Reviewer Networks

When I want editorial reviews on my books, I hit up professional reviewer networks. The three I use are Kirkus Reviews (my least favorite of the lot), Booklife, and Readers’ Favorite. In terms of usable snippet quotes, Readers’ Favorite reliably has the best. Booklife comes in second.

Kirkus is biased against self-publishing, and it really shows in their reviews. Sometimes, they toss a bone to independents, but I’ve found they’re among the most expensive for the least useful editorial reviews.

They just aren’t good at the spin, and if it’s independently published, you just have a higher mountain to climb. As such, I would recommend either Booklife or Readers’ Favorite. And Booklife can get you in the door with Publisher’s Weekly. (Apply to have a PW review when you submit your Booklife paid review. Sometimes they bite. Sometimes they do not. But PW is some serious street cred, and they’re really good at finding the good points of a book even when it wasn’t totally to their taste, unlike Kirkus Reviews.

As always, your mileage will vary.

Goodreads

For the most part, I’ve never done much with goodreads. It’s a valid tool for authors, but I find the place to be a little too toxic for my liking. Are there nice people on goodreads? Absolutely. However, I feel like the “literary critics” like to gather there, and the last thing I want or need in my life is a bunch of critics telling me they could write my book better than I can. (They can go write their own books better than I can write books, and I wish them all the fiscal luck and prosperity in the world.)

You can do giveaways and such on goodreads to promote your titles, but I’ll admit, I haven’t done such in approximately a decade. I simply have no idea if it’s worth the while.

But working the goodreads circuits, forums/discussion groups, and reader groups is absolutely a viable slow growth grassroots method. I just have neither the time nor inclination to do any form of slow grassroots method.

Twitter

Ew, twitter. Can it work for some people? Absolutely. Am I one of those people? Absolutely not. This is valid, but I wish those trying to make sense of twitter, aka “X”, a great deal of luck. You will need it.

Not worth the pay to play entrance fees in my opinion… nor is it worth the headache.

This is a big X from me. Just cross that one off your list, in my opinion.

BookTok

BookTok is the writing/book portion of the popular social network, TikTok.

I’m not a fan of videos. I can’t watch most without anxiety, and I don’t enjoy being recorded. In short, BookTok is not a network I use. Sure, I could hire someone to manage a BookTok for me, but I prefer to personally engage with my readers unless I’m doing paid ads or book tours.

Viable? Yes. For me? Not particularly. Maybe one day I’ll take the dive, but I don’t write the super popular genres, so it would probably be an expensive failure.

That’s okay. I only have so many spoons to deal with so many baskets, and this is a basket I generally have opted to skip. Can you be successful from BookTok? Absolutely.

Is BookTok a primary source of drama and stress for many?

Also absolutely.

(Sorry, BookTok folks. I’m sure a whole lot of you are fabulous.)

Newsletter Exchanges, Swaps, Promotions

This is one of the best grassroots methods of growing your fanbase, although I will admit that it’s a perilous journey.

I no longer operate a standard newsletter list. I found that the expense, amount of work, and energy required to operate, maintain, and clean the lists to be overly complicated without as much reward for investment compared to doing things the ‘easy’ way.

I allow signups for people to follow my blog, which wordpress in turn manages for me. Every rare blue moon, someone struggles with unsubscribing, and I handle that. (It’s usually no more than three times a year.) They get the pertinent news about my books, and they’re the first to hear about a new release, assuming places like Bookbub didn’t beat me to the chase.

There are a lot of pitfalls to operating a newsletter, but that is something to discuss on a different day. If you need a place to start, though, this is a good one.

Bluesky

Bluesky is a fledgling social media network. It’s similar to twitter… before twitter became stupid. Will it be useful for promoting books? We shall see in time. But it is a viable platform for all it is new.

But why is marketing necessary?

I can hear the protests now. I hear them every time I mention how marketing is a requirement if you want to succeed at publication.

People won’t buy a book if they don’t know it’s there. And the only way to truly get your books in front of hungry readers is to advertise it.

Every example I have ever heard of involving a runaway bestseller involved one of three things: an influencer posting a review, a vendor plugging the title, or a viral post advertising the book slamming the wilds.

All of these involved money and marketing in some fashion or another.

I do not know of a single author with significant fiscal success who has done so through grassroot / free methods.

This is, of course, just my opinion… but if you want “author” to be your day job, you need to do all the little things that companies use to keep their brand afloat. And that involves advertising.

Good luck, and may you find all the success your heart desires!