Book Marketing 101

An introduction to book promotion

Photo by Gaman Alice on Unsplash

This is the preface to my revised book marketing guide, you can find the whole series on Medium or download the free PDF.

If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you have or will soon have a book out on the market, and are exploring ways to turn it into a best-selling powerhouse that will slaughter the competition and pay for your retirement. The indie publishing world is thrilling because of the possible returns, and I hope you and your book do well.

You’re probably searching for things like “book marketing” and “book promotion” so you can learn how to find readers and convince them to buy your book.

But almost everything you read will be wrong.

That’s because marketing in general is dead. Advertising is dead. Selling and convincing people to buy — also dead. The new law of book sales is this: if you’re talking about your book, promoting your book, sharing your book — you’re screwing it all up.

I had a 30-second Twitter conversation recently with Jonathan Gunson (an expert on “Twitter for Authors”) that went like this:

“Authors who constantly ‘shout’ their books on Twitter and Facebook, and do NOTHING ELSE will soon find themselves ignored.”