5 Book Marketing Techniques Before Release Time
Book marketing needs to be prepared before your book’s release to make it effective
Whether you are a new or seasoned author, every author can stand to improve their marketing skills.
It’s no secret that marketing is a tough feat.
In fact, we often struggle with creating effective marketing materials that see results because our audience is frequently exposed to them. For example, a single person can see advertisements on their phone screen, television, magazine, or billboard over the span of 24 hours. All of these advertisement placements cross their intended targets at least once if not more during their day.
And when authors try to pitch their marketing content to the world, it can quickly be buried by the other noise out there.
This is where discovering how to reach your target audience is useful.
Before your book is launched, you want to be sure that your marketing reaches your audience.
If you want your marketing to be effective, you need to plan ahead and begin building momentum in order to do so.
Here are five marketing techniques to try:
Book Bloggers/ Reviewers
Reviews are one of the most important aspects that sell a book to readers.
And even though it would feel like a dream for a book blogger or reviewer to stumble across your book and leave a review to all of their followers, it’s rare. Mainly due to the fact that thousands of books are published a day. Making it impossible to keep on top of the latest books unless they are an instant success or recommended.
So, this is exactly why you should be compiling a list and reaching out to them.
This can’t be done out of the blue, however. To successfully gather a list of reviewers, you need to follow their accounts and interact with their posts long before you ask them to review your book. By doing so, you are showing that you value what they have to say and want their opinion of your own work.
When reaching out to them, be sure to:
Contact them in the manner they prefer (email, a submission box on their site, message on social media)
Offer them a free EBook copy of the book
Send them a description of the book
Provide links to where they can leave a review (Goodreads, BookBub, Amazon, and so on.)
Tell them what you can do for them in return (share their posts on social media, share them with your followers)
Videos
Thankfully there are tons of ways to make an amazing video that highlights your book.
Whether you create a reel for Facebook or Instagram, or you create a video for YouTube or TikTok, you are going to reach an audience. You just need to know which one your audience is going to be watching. And you need to be sure that you have a professional-looking video.
I personally use Canva.com to create my videos, but you can also use Animoto and Vimeo.
But…what kind of videos can you be making before the book releases?
Quote videos: Choose clip art video clips and place a quote from your book overtop. Add some music and transitions and you can make something great. See an example here: https://www.tiktok.com/@klrice912/video/7275343286141832490?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7276243201290339882
Basic Traits Videos: Show your book cover or hold your book cover and add text to share basic concepts to describe your book to readers. If your book is a contemporary romance, what would interest your audience? Friends to lovers? Slow-burn romance? See an example here: https://www.tiktok.com/@klrice912/video/7239779410512071978?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7276243201290339882
Sneak Peek: Even a short section of your book being read can spark interest in your book. However, if you are making a video of this, be sure to make it something more than reading it in front of a camera. Perhaps pair it with a character reveal with a character mockup photo.
Theatrical Trailer: Creating a book trailer is one of the best ways to build interest. And there are tons of stock videos to help you do this. See an example here: https://www.tiktok.com/@klrice912/video/7201120688969616686?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7276243201290339882
Create a Blog Tour
It takes planning and organization, but if done well, a blog tour can reach tons of readers.
Using a list of bloggers whom you have made an effort to follow and support beforehand, you can reach out and ask them if they would be interested in joining a blog tour for your book release. This is when you provide a free copy of the book for them to read and they ask you questions about yourself and the book. Then they post the interview on their blog along with a review of your book.
When asking them to join your blog tour, you want to be sure to:
Leave them adequate time to read the book before it’s release and to conduct the interview
Promote the blog tour to your audience
Provide a few week window of the blog tour dates so that multiple blogs can fit you into their schedules
Talk about your book from the beginning
Too many authors are afraid to talk about their book in the early stages because they fear that they won’t follow through with the book to release, someone will steal their idea, or that people will be negative.
However, if you don’t continue to talk about your book, how will people know about it?
It can be as simple as, I’m working on my latest fantasy book and I feel super positive about it. About 9k into it so far…think Lord of the Rings meets Eragon. Or, After a very long re-edit, I discovered that my characters were screaming at me to vote Cedric off the island of (book title here). It was a sad day…may need a pick-me-up afterward.
The more that you talk about your work, the more of an audience you are going to build for it.
Reveals
The most common reveal before a book release is a cover reveal.
But, what if you did several reveals leading up to the release?
Character reveals (Create a mockup image to go along with it)
Location reveals (Share images of the location if able, there are tons of stock images available)
Book description reveals (Share the description and ask what people think)
Paperback cover reveal (Many writers do just the Ebook cover)
Makes for a more interesting build-up to the release, doesn’t it?
Marketing a book happens over the lifespan of the book.
You will market it before, during, and after its release. However, the marketing that you do beforehand is what sets the bar for everything afterward.