Why do I need a “plan” for book marketing?
With so many strategies available for marketing your book, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of tweeting, blogging, and emailing to no avail. This is why it’s important to follow a strategy — or a “marketing plan” — where you track your efforts and measure their effectiveness. Rachel Abbott, the first UK indie author to ever reach #1 on Amazon, explains why having a plan is so important:
“I spent far too long being completely unfocused, and it was only when I wrote a marketing plan with very specific aims and objectives that things started to happen. Suddenly people noticed my book — the tactics were working. And then it got to number 1 in the Kindle chart and stayed there for four weeks.”
The question is: where can you find an expert book marketer to help you plan out your strategy ahead of your launch?
Look no further, here are the professionals who can help
Mamie S.
Customer-focused and strategy-driven digital marketer with 10 years of experience at Abrams Books and Simon and Schuster.
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Martyn B.
Forward-thinking and creative book marketer. Top-200 Reedsy Provider. Fascinated by doing things differently to get people to buy books!
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Brian B.
I 've helped hundreds of authors manage their Amazon and BookBub Ads campaigns
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Liz D.
My current passion is the reimagining of the book publishing industry as a business and thriving art-form.
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Aryn V.
I'm a former HarperCollins marketing manager specializing in nonfiction, now I'm working with indie authors on rockstar marketing strategy.
view profileHow can a book marketer help me?
The book marketers on Reedsy have brought countless books to market, and devised a strategy for each and every one of them. They know which tactics work for which genre, and how to implement them. In a nutshell, instead of marketing your book through trial and error, you’d be benefiting from years of expert marketing experience. The results can save you time and potentially even money.
The objective is to help you stand out from the crowd by determining which marketing channels are likely to work best for your project. These channels (or tactics) can include:
- Email marketing: Increase the number of subscribers to your mailing list.
- Social networks: Build your platform on the social networks that make most sense based on your genre and audience.
- Author website design: Get help with web copy and navigation.
- Social and display advertising: Advertising on social media, Amazon, or blogs/websites to sell more books or increase your number of mailing list subscribers.
- Giveaways and promotions: Reach more readers (and capture them) through targeted price promotions and giveaways.
- Metadata and SEO on online stores: Use the right copy, categories and keywords to get to the top of ebookstore rankings.
- Promotion: Hire a publicist for media exposure and blog tours. Read more about our publicity services here.
Your marketer will prepare a document of 5 to 10 pages that will detail a proposed plan of action. They will also be able to help you put in place all the tools you will need to capture the audience you reach out to: a website, mailing list, optimized product page on Amazon, etc.
What happens after a “marketing plan” has been drafted?
The objective of a good marketing plan is to leave you with a simple framework to follow for your marketing efforts. Depending on the scope of your collaboration with the book marketer, they can help you implement the plan in the beginning, or even take over some “channels” on your behalf (like email marketing or paid advertising). However, the idea is really to teach you how to market your book, rather than do it for you.
