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Promoting Your Book Part II: After Self-Publication

In part one of this two-part book promotion series, we outlined effective and easy ways to promote your book before its publication – from creating your author website to sending out Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) and acquiring reviews for your book. In this part, we highlight ways to promote your book after its publication—and making sure your book hits bestseller charts and continues to reach readers across the world.

01. Advertise Your Book Launch

Your book launch event is going to be one of the most important moments of your life. Establish an effective launch plan and research your target audience. To whom does your book most appeal to? What is the age range of your targeted readers? Learn more about marketing channels and tactics that can help you best reach this target audience.

Publish advanced reviews from readers on your blog and social media posts. Procuring reviews from well-known authors and book bloggers can create interest among the reading community towards your book. Do a cover reveal to hype up the audience. Taking advantage of easy-to-use graphic design tools like Canva and RelayThat to create eye-catching visuals and promotional images for your upcoming book launch.

Also remember to have some surprises in store for attendees—and make sure to drop hints before the event!

02. Give Book Discounts

Offering a wholesale discount to local bookstores and retailers will lend you credibility as an author as you market your book to them. According to IngramSpark, the award-winning independent publishing platform, “Not all self-publishers understand why they should offer wholesale discounts, so they don’t. The savvy indie author, like you, is already beating out tens of thousands of other self-publishers just by knowing the necessity of offering these discounts. This knowledge puts you on the same playing field as major traditional publishers… Because having this discount makes you competitive with traditional publishing houses, retailers will see that you know what you’re doing and will be more likely to do business with you.”

Besides offering wholesale discounts to retailers and local bookstores, you can also offer limited-time book discounts and sales for readers, ideally in the weeks immediately after your book release, when the hype for your book is going to be at its peak.

03. Run Book Giveaways

Nothing creates a buzz like a book giveaway! If you’re a bibliophile, your first instinct when you hear of a giveaway—whether it’s a book you’ve been anticipating for months, or a book you’ve never heard of—is to participate and hope you win. Establish some rules for participation: ask the participants to tag a couple of other users in the comments and to share your giveaway post on their stories. This will help your book reach a much larger audience.

Make use of Goodreads: the world’s largest community of readers. Create a Goodreads author profile and host a giveaway to its community of over 60 million members.

04. Organize a Book Signing Event

A book signing event can help drive word-of-mouth exposure to your book and also help you gain reviews. Organize book signings at bookstores, libraries and conferences. These face-to-face connections with your readers can help solidify readers’ interest towards your book.

To encourage readers to attend the event, give discounts for the copies purchased at the event, or host a small contest and give away merchandise (like mugs and bookmarks) related to your novel to a few lucky winners.

A book signing event can also be a fund-raising campaign. Giving back to the community and raising awareness on important issues through your event can help increase your author brand’s visibility and trust.

05. Go On a Blog Tour

If you don’t want to travel to bookstores and libraries in the middle of a global pandemic, you can go on a blog tour. You can talk to a new audience from the comfort of your sofa at home—all you have to do is visit as many blogs as possible after your book launch to promote your book. There are several ways you can do this:

Guest posts: Choose a topic based on the major themes of your story and pitch them to popular blogs. Guest blogging will allow you to engage with a larger audience and build credibility and trust as a writer. By including links to your own site within the guest post, new readers are likely to follow through, which will drive more traffic towards your website.

Go for interviews: Reaching out to famous book bloggers for interviews is another great way to increase your readership. It can be a podcast or a live video or even a written interview, but what’s important is being genuine and sincere, and giving your listeners a reason to pick up your book.



Sharika Hafeez

Sharika Hafeez is a nerd, and she’s proud of it. Growing up, she fell in love with books and writing, and is currently following her undergraduate degree (for some mysterious reasons) in Physics. She likes procrastinating by watching the stars with a steaming cup of tea, composing poetry in her head.

November 9, 2021

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