Book Marketing 101
and other news from Duskbound Books
Book Marketing 101
by Kaytalin McCarry
Marketing is the sum of all your efforts to drive traffic to and purchases of your product. Marketing isn’t advertising, but advertising is marketing. Marketing communicates value to your customers. Marketing can create value for your customers.
Types of Bad Marketing:
Hype
Spam
Cheap
Sleezy
Fake
Types of Good Marketing:
Informative
Entertaining
Engaging
Valuable
How people choose to buy things:
There’s a lot of psychology packed into how individuals make their buying decisions. Many moons ago, before the internet and mass-communication, advertisements were geared towards teaching individuals how products could solve pain points in their lives. Now, most people do a ton of research on their own before buying a product, or ask their friends and families for recommendations. Companies, at least larger companies, have phased into gearing their marketing efforts towards brand-recognition. Others rely on content marketing—creating engaging, amusing, informative, or entertaining media and advertisements.
A great example of this is insurance commercials: Geico, Progressive, State Farm, etc. They make you laugh, and then in the last five seconds they deliver their sales pitch. Honestly, sometimes they don’t even do that. They weave it into the narrative of their commercial to the point you barely notice. You’re just entertained. The next time you get angry at your current insurance company, you call up the last one that made you laugh. It works.
They rely on Awareness.
Buyers go through decision making stages. Those stages are Awareness → Consideration → Decision Making.
You, the author, are trying to sell a book, whether that is fiction or nonfiction. In fiction, your goal is to entertain. In non-fiction, your goal is to teach. No matter what goal you have, the buyer has the same decision making strategy before they buy.
Awareness: Stumbling on your book through the Amazon search engine, seeing an advertisement, finding you through social media, finding interest in something else you’ve created, an influencer showing off your work, etc.
Consideration: Reading the blurb. Looking at reviews. Determining if this is something they’d like to read.
Decision: Should I buy it? Is it priced right? Will I regret not buying?
The Rule of Seven:
There is an old-school marketing rule that applies to the digital age. That rule? An individual usually needs to hear or see a product seven times before they make the decision to buy.
In the digital age, you're competing against Noise. Everyone wants your customer’s attention. Their social feeds are full of information, drama, advertisements for everything from copper-lined socks to do-it-yourself bidets. Without a focused marketing plan, you may need more than seven times before you grab their attention or tempt them to buy.
Old-school marketing messages and, “buy buy buy” sells tactics of putting your product (book) before eyeballs won’t cut it.
In a modern age, two things shape buying decisions for customers: content, and the feeling that content leaves behind for them. Make an emotional connection, fill a need, provide something, and you will be rewarded in return with the purchase of your book.
Content Marketing
Marketing is difficult. I’ve worked in design and marketing for over ten years and methods are in a constant state of flux. The industries I’ve worked in have, for the most part, lagged behind current marketing trends. Engineering and manufacturing “Powers That Be” are slow to accept the importance of modern marketing–resources like social media and content strategies—and civil services agencies are beholden to bureaucracy. Example, no TikTok presence when they have a need to market mental health services to a struggling younger generation. I’ve spent most of my career convincing stakeholders in companies the importance of digital and content marketing.
Content marketing is the creation and distribution of content to targeted audiences, and is a method to expand your audience as well as create a solid “fan base”—people who keep coming back for more. Why is it an important method of marketing?
Today, content marketing is one of the most effective means of growing your audience (current or potential clients/customers). Gone are the days where you could share a picture of hand soap and call it the best smelling hand soap in the world, and people would run out and buy it. Buyers are savvy. You’ve got to show and tell them why its the best smelling hand soap in the world—and why (outside of how awesome it smells) they should buy it.
Content marketing increases sales, is cost effective, and builds a stronger, more loyal customer base. While content marketing can be easy for companies with solid, straight-forward, no-nonsense products (like hand soap, clothing, board games), it is less so for those who produce subjective content (writing, art, film).
Content marketing for non-fiction writers is a bit easier. Most non-fiction content is already written or easy to write for the author because it involves topics they are already covering and/or are familiar with. Content marketing for fiction writers is harder.
The ultimate goal of an author (other than sharing their work with the world) is to sell books. You spent months (or years) working on your art and need some return on that investment (other than praise). Not to mention, artists deserve to get paid for their work. However, the purpose of your content can’t be heavy on the sales pitch. This is tiring, and it can turn people off. Instead, alternate educational, fun, or informative content and sprinkle in the sales talk.
What types of content can you make?
Written (Blogs, articles, newsletters)
Audio (Podcasts, audio books)
Live Streams
Videos (pre-recorded and edited)
Visual graphics/Images
What types of content does your target audience consume?
Written (Blogs, articles, newsletters)
Audio (Podcasts, audio books)
Live Streams
Videos (pre-recorded and edited)
Visual graphics/Images
Where does your target audience consume content? This is your “distribution channel”. (Hint: How old is your target audience and where do they lurk?)
Substack/Newsletter
TikTok
Facebook
Instagram
Threads
Bluesky
LinkedIn
YouTube
X
Snapchat
Reddit
Other
You may be feeling overwhelmed. I don’t blame you. At this point, it might seem like content generation is a fulltime job (and sometimes it can be). Look, most of us have a full-time jobs. We don’t have the time to create multiple types of content for almost every distribution channel, while living our life, working our jobs, and writing our books. So… breathe and focus on what works best for your target audience, the type of content that comes easiest to you, and the type of books you write.
Best practice:
Pick 1-3 distribution channels (platforms) where your target audience frequents, and focus on making content for those. Ignore the others. Don’t burn yourself out posting content to every social platform or new platform that pops up.
Tips for digital content:
Create something people will feel compelled to share.
Example: Meme your work or connect with a reader about amusing things within your book/writing. Example: He’s a 10… or Commission or illustrate your own character art/scenes.
Use keywords/hashtags to optimize your content.
Using Meta Business Suite’s Content Planner allows you to focus on hashtags by popularity, allowing you to see how much content is posted per tag.
Batch/Bulk make your content and use a content scheduler to relieve your stress.
If you batch-make your content, you can schedule them out using Meta Business Suite for Facebook and Instagram, or another content planner. Batch making content keeps you from having to generate something new every day. You take one evening and make multiple types of content for the days going forward. Scheduling them out relieves the stress of day-to-day posting. You can even schedule TikToks using their desktop website (but you have to film and upload separately from your phone.)
Use well-designed graphics to stand out in feeds.
For those who aren’t design savvy, Canva has templates and places like Creative Market sell Canva marketing templates that you can tailor to fit your brand.
Reuse old content and share it again and again. People may not have seen it the first time or it may remind them that they wanted to buy your book and forgot to.
Show your face. People like selfies! I know it can be scary, but content where people can see and/or hear you does better than graphics/still object photography.
Maintain a newsletter. In the current social media wars, platforms may come and go, but your list is forever (unless they unsubscribe). Drive people to sign up for your newsletter by offering things like free ebooks, a novella connecting to your series, a physical book giveaway, etc.