Are you the type of author who writes to make a major impact on people’s lives and the wider world?

If your deepest motivation for writing is to have an impact, you need to think about marketing your book in a particular way. 

Typically, book marketing is geared towards authors who want to focus on revenue and other conventional measures of success. But, if your deepest desire is to make a difference, you might want to approach things differently. 

Here are four principles for book marketers looking to make the deepest impact on the world. 

Know who you want to reach

Sometimes, when we write books intending to help people, we end up trying to help too many types of people at the same time. While this comes from a compassionate motivation, if you end up trying to help everyone, you run the risk of helping no-one.

Instead, it’s wise to have a clear idea of the type of person who will benefit most from reading your book.

This is an essential first step for marketing a book that has the best chance of making a real impact. Knowing who you want to help is the foundation for every other marketing decision you make. 

You might have written the book with a clear reader in mind. But what about if you didn’t? It’s still worth taking the time to explore this question. Think about these ideas if you’re not sure how to start:

1. Problems. What problem, or problems, does your book solve? For example, does it teach a specific skill? Does it offer resources for a specific situation? Often, the best way to find the ideal reader for your book is to focus intently on the problem it solves.

2. Relatability. Thinking about the type of person who would relate most to your book is another valuable area of exploration. What kind of background do you have as an author, and  how does it comes across in your writing? Are you writing books for a particular age group? What tone and style of language do you use, and who would relate to it the most? Relatability is one of the best ways to discover who you can impact the most.

3. Uniqueness. What makes your book different from other books out there? Maybe it covers something not found in other books, or is written for an underserved demographic, or takes a new angle on an old problem? When you know what’s different about your book, you are more able to consider who the difference will benefit the most. 

After you know the type of reader you feel your book would help the most, you can align every other decision with this information. 

Understand the impact you want to make 

As well as knowing exactly who you want to help by marketing your book, you should stop and consider the type of impact you want to have. 

Think about the experience you want people to walk away with after reading your work. 

If you’re not sure about the type of impact your book could have, here is some food for thought.

• Entertainment. Entertainment is a valuable aim for fiction authors and nonfiction writers alike. Providing joy through fiction is a great way to impact the world, while nonfiction books are a lot more likely to be absorbed if they are also an exciting read.

• Inspiration. The ability to inspire other people is one of the most precious things about a book. Do you want to offer a book that provides people with a sense of inspiration and motivation in their personal life, based on your own journey? Or do you want to inspire people to care about and take action on a social cause?

• Information. Books are an invaluable place to find deep information that goes beyond the surface-level content a lot of people consume on a day to day basis. Finding a way to offer the best and most helpful information on a topic is one way to make your book as impactful as possible. 

It’s exciting to find the type of impact you want your book to have. There are so many different ways to benefit the world through your book. What type of change do you want to make?

Find the best marketing channels

After you know the type of reader you want to impact, and how you want to help them, it’s time to think about how to reach them.

Every relevant reader you can reach is another life you have a chance of changing. 

So how can you find the most relevant ways to get your book in front of the people it can help the most?

First, it’s important to realize you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Think about books that are similar in some way to your own. Where are their authors going to promote them? If you follow authors within your genre or niche, you can easily see where they are promoting their books. Could you follow in their footsteps?

Second, think about how you can align the impact you want your book to have with the marketing channels you choose. For example, let’s say the major impact you want to have is inspiring the people who read your book. Are there inspirational blogs you could appear on? Is the tone of your marketing material inspirational itself, so that it is more likely to appeal to the right reader?

Finally, don’t be afraid to do things differently and go with your gut feeling. While it’s sensible to invest your time into proven marketing methods and channels, you can combine this with a certain amount of activity that is simply whatever appeals to you. It’s important to retain a sense of fun and possibility so that marketing doesn’t become something boring that you dread. 

Learning the most effective ways to reach your intended readers involves trial and error and is a growth process. If it ever becomes too overwhelming or frustrating, try and stay focused on the big picture. 

All your effort will be worth it when your book makes a real difference in someone’s life. 

Measure the difference your book makes 

It can be easy to lose sight of your original aims in the aftermath of a book launch. You can get caught up in the number of reviews you managed to get, download numbers on various days, and other metrics that might not be directly aligned with impact.

Before you next launch a book that you hope will have a major impact, stop and think about how exactly you will measure that impact.

For example, if you release a work of fiction that you want to bring joy to people’s lives and offer escapism, you might want to look out for certain language in the feedback you receive and the reviews you get. If you offer a book based on your life, are people taking the key lessons from it? This allows you to understand exactly how your book is being received, so you can make sure this is aligned with your intention.

You should also feel free to measure whatever is most meaningful to you. Let’s say your intended impact was to inform people about a social issue close to your heart. The number of people who downloaded and shared a free chapter of your work might be a more meaningful measure of this than the total revenue it produced. 

When it comes to measuring your impact, choose your measurements carefully. Make sure that you are focusing on the things that most directly indicate your book is having the impact you hoped for. 

Do you feel overwhelmed when you think about marketing fiction?

If you do, that’s totally understandable. It can feel like there’s a neverending amount of information to take in and process. On top of that, it’s difficult to know exactly what will move the needle for your book in particular.

To help make fiction marketing just a little more digestible, we’ve gathered seven quick and easy tips for you to understand and take action on. 

If you’re ready to cut to the chase and check out seven ideas that work, read on!

It’s never too early to think about book marketing

One of the pitfalls of publishing a fiction book is getting too wrapped up in the creative process of your story and leaving your marketing plan to the last minute. 

Although it might seem a bit strange at first, the best time to start thinking about marketing your book is before you even finish writing it. 

That’s because marketing fiction fundamentally involves understanding what your ideal readers want and figuring out how to give it to them. 

If you stop and think about reader expectations before you start writing your book, you might find some of your creative decisions are made with marketing in mind.

Just to be clear, this isn’t advocating for compromising your artistic integrity or creative vision to please readers.

Instead, it’s about finding a natural fit between what your readers want to read and what you want to write.

Understand the fundamentals of marketing

Before you drill down into the specific tactics and ideas you will use to get your fiction book in front of the right readers, it’s worth taking a step back.

Having a strategic, big-picture view of marketing as a whole is a good idea before you get too stuck into the details.

Some useful fundamentals to focus on include understanding your readers, understanding your competition, considering the price point that will make sense for your book, and having an idea of how your activities fit into your broader objectives.

Thankfully, there are plenty of superb free resources online to learn marketing in a format and level of depth that suits your needs. 

Look for inspiration within your genre

While there are core fundamentals that apply to most genres of fiction marketing, it’s worth taking the time to see what’s going on in your genre in particular.

For example, if you are writing science fiction, check out how some of the books you admire are being promoted. What kind of visuals are they using? What kind of language? Which places are they being promoted in?

This is especially important if you are writing in a new genre for the first time. If you’ve previously written fiction for adults but are now focusing on children’s books, you might need to take some time to see how the two styles are marketed differently. 

Make notes and save examples of genre-specific fiction marketing you find inspirational. Consider if they could work well for your book if you put your own unique spin on them. 

Work out your marketing budget

Crunching the numbers of your fiction marketing budget might be far less fun than writing a novel, but it’s something you can’t afford to ignore. 

Unlike some other publishing costs, marketing costs can fluctuate wildly. It’s possible to market a book effectively for free, but it’s also possible to spend thousands. You need to know which approach is viable for you.

The budget you devise depends on many factors, including the activities you will be carrying out yourself VS those you will be outsourcing to others.

When you are getting your budget down in black and white, always ask yourself if any intended marketing expenditure is likely to be recouped through extra sales. 

Avoid throwing money at vanity activities which might seem glamorous or give you an ego boost but are unlikely to further your fundamental aims for your book. 

Make a timeline for your intended activities 

You might be blessed with the type of mind that is equally suited to creative pursuits like fiction writing and logical activities like budgeting and planning. However, many authors are not in that position!

Marketing can soon become overwhelming and hard to keep track of if you don’t plan it out properly. 

It’s worth getting a very clear written or visual timeline for your intended marketing plan. Know exactly which activities need to happen by which date. Understand if there is the potential for delays at any stage of the process, and what you will do should any delays occur. 

Some writers prefer to have this timeline laid out physically, such as on a large whiteboard they can keep an eye on. Others prefer a digital solution, like Google Calendar or a project planning app like Trello.

No matter which option you choose, make sure you have a written timeline so that your marketing plan happens according to schedule. 

Study up on any important tactics you don’t fully understand 

While it’s impossible to become an expert in every area of book marketing, it’s worth having a solid grasp of the tactics that you will most often use to promote your fiction.

When it comes to learning an aspect of fiction marketing, you have plenty of options. There are a lot of quality blog posts out there that allow you to learn almost any aspect of fiction marketing for free. You also have the option of investing in paid courses, either to learn a specific skill in particular or self-publishing in general. 

As wonderful as it is to acquire new fiction marketing knowledge, you need to strike a careful balance between learning and taking action. There’s always something new you could be learning, but it’s often a better use of your time to put into practice what you’ve already learned. 

Track and assess your results 

There’s a famous marketing quote that says “half the money I spend on advertising works, the only problem is I don’t know which half.” 

That may have been true in the old days, but with digital marketing, it’s easier than ever before to track results and determine which activities are moving you closer to your objectives. 

For example, if you’re advertising on Facebook to get downloads of a free fiction chapter, how many downloads are you getting? Does the number make sense for what you’re spending?

Similarly, if you’re using book promotion sites to encourage people to download a free copy of your book, which sites are producing the best results? If you’re designing custom visual content for your book, which is performing the best?

When you track your activities and outcomes and know what works and what doesn’t, you put yourself in a position where you know exactly which activities to scale up or down in the future. 

Is there no end to the things you need to learn to be a successful indie author?

Writing itself is something none of us ever master, and that’s just the very tip of the iceberg!

To succeed without the backing of a big book publisher requires a lot from indie authors. Even the most successful out there are still learning and growing all the time. 

Regardless of if you’re just starting in the self-publishing world, or if you have a few books under your belt, book marketing isn’t something you can afford to ignore.

Too many authors have been held back from the success they deserve by failing to market their books properly. 

If you’re not sure where to start, consider these essential elements of marketing your indie books.

Start With The End in Mind

Too many authors see book marketing as a set of unrelated activities that need to be carried out.

In fact, book marketing is a holistic, integrated process.

The first key to marketing your book properly is to start with the end in mind.

This is a concept taken from Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, but it applies to book marketing all the same.

Before you start making a list of ways you will promote your book, stop, and try and see the bigger picture.

Do you want to sell a certain amount of copies? Do you want to add a particular number of readers to your author mailing list? Do you want to achieve bestseller status?

Whatever your end goal happens to be, there will be a series of steps you need to carry out to get there. Only by starting with a clearly defined aim can you then work backward and figure out how to get there. 

Without an end goal, your book marketing efforts will be unfocused and ineffective. 

You can’t measure success without an aim. 

Make sure to start clearly with your ultimate book marketing goal in mind before going any further. 

Copyright, Registration, and Other Formalities

While we’ve just covered why the big picture overview is essential to have in book marketing, it’s also vital to take a more granular, zoomed-in view of things.

If you don’t try and account for every practical task you will carry out as part of your book marketing efforts, you run the risk of overlooking something crucial. 

Some of the practical steps you need to schedule in your book marketing plan include.

• Copyright. Don’t run the risk of having your work stolen. Make sure you not only copyright your work but create a legally valid copyright page to place within your book.

• Uploading. When will you upload your book to the places it will be sold? What are the technical requirements to do this? Do you have all the files you need in the correct formats and sizes?

• Promotion sites. Will you submit your book to promotion sites? What is the lead time you will need to do this? Will you need to have any fees ready? Are there prerequisites your book will need to achieve before it can be promoted?

• Sales tracking. How will you measure your sales as they come in? Do you have target numbers you are aiming to hit for particular days? Will you take remedial action if your targets aren’t being met?

• Paid advertising. Are you running paid promotion for your book? What will your daily budget be? What’s your plan for scaling spend up and down? How often will you tweak your creative, and what will be your criteria for doing so?

• Social media promotion. Which social media platforms will you promote your book on? Will you use automated software to make this easier? Do you have all the graphics and copy you need to ensure social media promotion runs smoothly?

These are just a few examples of the types of activities you need to plan for. Your book promotion campaign in particular will likely look a lot different. 

Only by starting with the end in mind and considering everything it will take to get there can you come up with your own list of marketing activities. 

Creating Tasks and Tracking

For any one of the book marketing activities listed above, you will need to further break it down into specific tasks.

One of the major keys to being a productive book marketer is making everything into the smallest steps possible.

When we small chunk our book marketing tasks, the impossible suddenly seems manageable. Also, it’s a lot easier to get started and build momentum if the first step is very small and achievable.

So how do you create small, manageable tasks for every stage of your book marketing project?

Make sure to base the small chunk tasks on reality, not your idea of how something will look. For example, if you’re small chunking the process of getting featured on book promotion sites, either go off your experience or ask an author who has that experience. Things rarely work in reality as we imagine them to. 

Once you’ve got a series of the smallest steps possible to get something done, consider the wider context. Which parts of your book marketing and design plan need to be carried out before others? Are there some later activities that depend upon earlier ones?

Finally, keep in mind the duration that each of the small chunks will take. Schedule them in, and be strict about allowing yourself some buffer room for if things go wrong.

Answer these four questions to make sure you’ve covered this properly:

1. Have I come up with a full list of activities I need to realize my eventual book marketing goal?
2. Have I broken each book marketing activity down into the smallest steps possible?
3. Have I assigned a realistic amount of time for each of the small steps to be carried out?
4. Have I determined the proper sequence to carry out my book marketing activities, and scheduled them accordingly?

When you can honestly answer yes to these four questions, you have a book marketing plan to be proud of. 

Measuring Results 

It’s important to make time to measure your book marketing results and reflect upon them.

Ideally, you should carry out this process of measurement in two phases.

First, measure your activities as you go. For example, if you’re running paid ads on a particular day, measure their impact on that day. If your book is featured on a book promotion site, note down the downloads you got on that day. Track everything.

Second, you want to measure the effectiveness of your campaign as a whole. Which activities produced the best results? What would you do more or less of next time? How will your initial results inform your ongoing book marketing efforts after the time of your launch has passed? Would you benefit from hiring a launch team next time, or will you continue as a solo marketer?

Like everything else in the indie publishing world, book marketing is very much a growth activity. It takes to get it write, just like the craft of writing itself.

It’s unlikely you’ll experience a flawless marketing campaign on your first try. 

Instead, see the learning process itself as valuable. As long as you’re becoming a better marketer with every book you release, you’re moving in the right direction. 

I think it’s a crying shame that many authors seem to carry out book marketing through gritted teeth.

It seems like book marketing has something of a bad rep in the author community. 

At best, many authors see promoting their work as a necessary evil that needs to be carried out. 

At worst, people see it as utterly soul-destroying, not to mention many other phrases that aren’t suitable to be written here!

What if I were to tell you that book marketing is something to feel excited about?

You’d see me as crazy, right? 

Well, I’m confident that if you give book marketing a fair trial, and come at it without preconceptions, it’s something you’ll find exciting and interesting.

Here are my main reasons why. 

Book Marketing Lets You Experiment

If you’re an author, you’re creative at heart. Someone who likes to create something new and do things differently. 

Rather than being the sterile activity it’s often presented as book marketing is the perfect chance to indulge your creativity.

While the creative choices you make for your book itself are fairly set in stone, your book marketing choices aren’t.

You get endless attempts at writing cool ad copy or coming up with some good creative visuals for your work. 

If a social media post promoting your book falls flat, you can simply delete it and try again. That’s not exactly easy when it comes to elements like your book cover!

Aside from the surface-level creativity, such as the copy you write and the visuals you choose, marketing your book allows you to tap into something deeper.

At its heart, marketing is something like applied psychology. The best marketers seek to understand people’s hopes and desires and effectively speak to them.

If you’re feeling down about marketing, try and focus on how it lets you be creative and experiment.

When you start to see marketing as a worthwhile, creative pursuit just like writing is, you’ll start to feel better about it. 

Promoting Your Book Can Lead to Great Things

Sometimes, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds when it’s time to promote your book.

Filling out your fiftieth book promotion site application form can feel tedious. That’s entirely understandable.

However, there isn’t a type of work on Earth that doesn’t have some element of routine and drudgery to it. That’s inevitable. 

What’s not inevitable is the way you frame the mundane elements of book marketing.

One effective reframe you should try is seeing marketing as a stepping stone that brings you closer to your eventual dreams as an author.

For example, to go back to those book promotion site forms, try and imagine the face of a reader who becomes a fan after finding your book. Isn’t that person worth trying to reach?

Or if you’re in the nonfiction space, think about giving an amazing Ted Talk as a result of your book. Doesn’t that make redrafting your book description that little bit more tolerable?

Often, focusing on the bigger picture makes the smaller, more tedious book marketing tasks a lot easier. 

Keep your eye on the eventual prize. Think of book marketing tasks as planting seeds. Amazing and beautiful things may grow from them. 

A Good Book Marketer is a Matchmaker

In some sections of the author community, book marketing is seen as antithetical to the creative craft of writing. 

Writers are seen as pure, artistic souls, while book marketers are seen as slick salesmen looking to make a quick buck.

In reality, that’s absolute nonsense. 

Book marketing is nothing more or less than trying to get books into the hands of the people who will love them the most.

Isn’t that something noble? Something worth doing well?

A good marketer is a matchmaker. They are trying to find the right match between reader and book. And that’s no small thing.

Think about a book you truly love. Hasn’t it added something special to your life? And the lives of many other people who have had the joy of reading it?

If you have any hangups about marketing your work, cast them aside.

There’s nothing noble about being a starving artist.

When you promote your book, you not only help it get the attention it deserves, but you stand to make people’s lives a lot more enjoyable in the process.

Try and hold onto that if you ever feel less than enthused about marketing your book. 

Marketing Campaigns Can Refill Your Writing Battery 

As much as we love and need to write regularly, we are human beings, not machines.

Everything in the natural world has its season. As writers, we can’t be expected to prioritize output every day.

Just as it’s important to write regularly, it can also be beneficial to have times where we don’t write. Book marketing campaigns can provide an ideal change of pace.

When you dedicate a serious period of time to promoting your books, rather than writing them, you let your creative juices fill back up. 

You not only get a break from the pressure of meeting a certain word count each day, allowing you to eventually return to daily writing sessions with a new sense of vigor. You also get to see your book become tangible and experience success through your marketing efforts, whether carried out on your own or as part of a team.  

Seeing your book marketing activities bear fruit naturally increases your enthusiasm for writing another book, eventually leading to a virtuous cycle of book writing and promotion. 

Four Steps to Take 

Hopefully, you now see how marketing can be an exciting and creative activity in and of itself. 

If you’re feeling good about marketing at the moment, why not seize that feeling and translate it into action?

Here are four steps you can take relating to the information you’ve just learned:

1. Brainstorm creative copy. Try and come up with five pieces of promotional copy for your book. Check out some book ads on Amazon or Facebook if you need inspiration.

2. Dream big. Could you make your book marketing the start of something special? Research five events you could one day speak at, and brainstorm five other things you could offer through your book, such as access to a course or even just signing up to your mailing list. 

3. Imagine your ideal reader. Take some time to think about your book’s perfect reader. Who are they? What do they do? What are their dreams and problems? Where could you reach such a person?

4. Plan an example campaign. Have some fun with scheduling out an example marketing campaign for one of your books. How many days would you dedicate to each activity? What kind of planning would you need to do? 

Book marketing isn’t a necessary evil, or something indie authors should carry out through gritted teeth.

Far from it.

Instead, I hope you now see book marketing as the exciting, creative pastime it truly is. One which can lead you to amazing levels of success you might not have dared to dream about.