Marketing Your Book
Publishing your book is not the finish line. A published book that no one can find does not sell, and the difference between the books that find readers and the ones that vanish is rarely the writing. It is whether anyone did the unglamorous work of putting the book in front of the people most likely to want it, and kept doing it after launch week.
These guides cover that work in the order it actually happens. Start with the first one even if you are close to publication, because it deals with the three things that decide whether any promotion pays for itself, and sending readers to a listing that does not convert is the most expensive mistake in publishing.
Getting the fundamentals right
Before any promotion, three things have to be true: the cover has to tell the right reader what kind of book this is, the description has to raise a question they want answered, and the metadata has to put you in front of people who were not looking for you. This guide covers all three and the reader research that comes before them.
Planning the launch
A launch is a season rather than a day, and most of what determines whether a book keeps selling happens in the sixty days after publication rather than the week of it. This guide is a countdown you can work backward from any date, with the reasoning attached so it survives contact with a schedule that slips.
Getting reviews
Reviews are the one part of a listing you cannot write, which is why they persuade. They are also the area where the most dangerous advice circulates, because several widely recommended shortcuts will get a listing removed.
Tools for this stage
Three of our free tools do the fiddly parts of this work now. The keyword planner checks all seven retailer keyword slots against your own title and against the terms stores ignore or reject. The title and blurb workshop builds a description section by section and counts it against each store's limits. The author bio builder writes the same bio at the three lengths a retailer, a festival programme and a press kit each want. When you would rather have the whole thing handled, our book marketing services start with the listing and work outward.
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The next stage
Once readers are finding the book, the questions turn to money and rights: how royalties are actually paid, what you signed, and who is entitled to what. That is the business of being an author, the fifth stage of the library. You can also browse the full author resources library for guides on every stage.
A published book nobody can find does not sell
Metadata, launch, reviews and promotion, handled by people who do it every week, while you write the next one.