Complete Guide to Marketing Your Self-Published Book

Why Book Marketing Feels Different

Book marketing is kind of a weird subject. How do you take this thing that you've put your heart and soul into, and then put it out into the world and start trying to convince people to actually buy it and read it?

If you're facing this challenge right now, you're not alone. Marketing your book feels different from marketing other products because books are deeply personal. They represent months or years of creative work, and asking people to spend their time and money on your creation can feel vulnerable and strange.

The good news is that there's one overarching strategy that works for every author, whether you're a first-time writer with no platform at all or a bestselling author with a large following. There's also an essential mindset you must have for your book marketing to succeed. Without this mindset, nothing will work, and your book will be doomed to failure from the very beginning.

The Reality of Book Sales: Starting Small

Here's something you need to know: most books that sell for a really long time start out small. They do not come out with a bang. In fact, one of the most misleading things about the book industry and book marketing in general is the focus on bestseller lists.

The New York Times bestseller list and all the other bestseller lists focus on a single week of sales. There are so many books that are New York Times bestselling books and other bestselling books that maybe sold 10,000 or 15,000 copies when they first came out, and then they literally never sold another thousand copies for the rest of the life of the book.

On the flip side, I also know books that have sold literally millions of copies and they've never hit any of the bestseller lists because they didn't sell a ton of copies in a single week. These bestseller lists are very skewed towards books that happen to sell a lot in one week but may not necessarily ever sell for a long period of time.

When you think about a book that's actually successful, books tend to take a long time to find an audience. There is a long lag time for many popular books. In fact, many bestseller books that have lasted decades and decades took a long time to find their audience.

Consider the book "The War of Art." The first year that it came out, it only sold about 9,000 copies. But then the year after that, it sold more copies. Then the year after that, it sold more copies. Now, decades in the future, the book still sells and sells and sells.

Why Bestseller Lists Don't Tell the Full Story

The bestseller list system is easy to game, especially if you're rich and have a lot of money or happen to be a somewhat famous person. But when you think about what makes a book truly successful, it's not about that first week. It's about sustained sales over time.

There are thousands of books that are selling thousands of copies a month, and you've never heard of them. This is what's amazing about books. What people don't understand about the book industry and how books move through our culture is that lots and lots of people buy lots and lots of books that you've never heard of.

Don't worry about your book becoming some international bestseller to make it successful. You can quietly find your own audience over a long period of time, and often that's the best way to do it.

Your Real Launch Window: The First Two Years

When your book comes out, you shouldn't worry so much about the first week or even the first month. The real launch window is the first two years. When you're coming out with a book, don't worry about whether or not the book does amazing when it first comes out.

Focus on promoting this book for two years. This long-term approach gives your book time to find its audience, build word-of-mouth momentum, and establish itself in the market. Books that sell well over time often start slowly and build gradually.

This two-year window allows you to:

The One Strategy That Works for Every Author

There are a ton of tactics that can go into book marketing. If you go on Google right now and just start searching around for book marketing tactics and book marketing ideas, you'll find lists of literally 100 different things you can do. Most of the tactics out there are just okay. A few of them are pretty good.

But the guiding principle for all good book marketing is this: you're finding the person that you think will like your book, and then you're trying to get them to read it and give it a shot.

This idea connects to the concept of writing for a single audience member. When you're writing your book, you should have one person you're writing the book for. This makes everything about writing your book so much easier. When it comes time to market your book, you should be looking for that one person. Who are those people that you know will love your book? Those are the people you're trying to share your story with.

The deeper you get into this whole book publishing and book marketing world, you realize pretty quickly that it's often easier to get somebody to buy a copy of your book than actually read it. Just think about it yourself. Let's say that you hate fantasy and you have no interest in reading fantasy books, and then someone brings a 450-page fantasy novel to you and says you have two choices: you can either buy this book for $30 or you can read it for free. If you don't like fantasy books, you'll say, "I'll give you the $30 so I don't have to read it."

Getting somebody to actually commit the time and effort and attention to read your book is often harder than getting them to buy a copy of the book. And again, understand that books take a long time to find an audience. The only way you can truly sell a million copies of a book is through word of mouth. It comes down to people actually reading your book and then telling other people to buy a copy.

So the one strategy that encapsulates all the good book marketing advice and tactics you're ever going to hear is: you're trying to find people that you know will love your book and then trying to get them to read a copy. I promise you, if they read a copy and they tell other people, you'll start selling lots and lots of copies of your book.

The thing I want you to see, especially if you're starting out and you haven't done a lot of this, is just do it one person at a time. Even experienced book marketers with email lists start by just getting some people that they know, one at a time, that they think will love their book, and they're just sending them a copy so they'll give it a read.

How to Find People Who Will Love Your Book

So how do you actually find these people who will love your book? Start by going back through everybody you've met, all the contacts you've had, all the friends you have, everybody you know in your life. Go through and reach out to them and ask them if they'd like to read a copy of your new book.

Make sure that you're asking people that you know will love your book. This isn't about spamming everyone you know. It's about thoughtfully identifying people who share your interests, values, or who have shown interest in similar books or topics.

For more specific strategies on finding and reaching your ideal readers, check out our guide on learn more about promote book free:. This comprehensive resource covers free marketing strategies that help you connect with readers without spending money.

You can also learn how to get advanced reader copies (ARCs) and reviews before your launch in our guide on read the full guide. Getting early readers and reviews is a crucial part of finding people who will love your book and getting them to read it.

The Essential Mindset for Book Marketing Success

Now I also promised there was a mindset that you had to have. This came from years of working with authors and running book marketing campaigns. After working with authors that didn't have big email lists or didn't have big social media followings or didn't have big influencer connections to help promote their book, and yet their book found success, I discovered the through line.

All of the authors that found success, whether they were first-time authors or well-established authors or indie authors or traditionally published authors, none of that mattered. What it came down to is the author actually believed it was a good thing for somebody to spend their time and money on their book and read it. They believed that the reader would be better off after having done that than before.

You have to actually believe that your book is good and that people should read it. Otherwise, no tactics, no strategy, nothing is actually going to help you. Because when it comes time to asking people to read your book and then tell you what they think and leave a review and all of those things, you'll pull back and you won't actually do it.

Whether your thing is meditation or prayer or journaling or whatever it takes, you've got to get to the point with your book that you actually believe it's great and that people should read it and their life would be better off if they did read it.

When you're in this space where you're actually reaching out to people, old friends, old contacts, current friends, and current contacts, and you're asking them if you send them a copy of your book, will they read it, you know that it's good for them to read it. You're reaching out to people that you really truly think will like your book, and you actually believe their life will be better. They will be a better person at the end of reading your book than at the beginning.

If you don't believe this about your book, you might as well not even publish it. Your book's going to be dead in the water before it even comes out.

Putting It All Together: Your Marketing Action Plan

So those are the two big things. The big strategy is: find people that you think will love your book and invite them to read a copy. The big mindset is: actually believe that if people read your book, it is good for them, and it's easy for you to ask them to read a copy of your book.

Here's how to put this into action: