Hello Everybody,
I just wanted to briefly share some early insights on marketing a self-published book.
This is by no means a definitive guide. I just wanted to share a few issues I’d found that may help others attempting to self-publish.
THE MARKETING ADVENTURE BEGINS
Next Monday sees my hiking book, Adventure Dayze, go ‘live’ on Amazon. It’s actually been out about a month, but my main aim in the first four weeks was to get word out to family and friends, and to build up a few reviews.
I’ve also used that time to create my Facebook page and to put together a list of blogs, podcasts, tourist boards etc as I start to promote and market the book more from Monday 5th July.
LESSONS LEARNED
My approach has been a little different to the advice I’d researched on how to market a self-published book. Normally, having a team of readers to review the book before the launch and doing a few other marketing bits and bobs is the regular way. However, it was important for me to focus on getting my book out there first and dealing with the other steps one at a time. My mind works better that way as I can give more thorough attention to each step.
That said, for my next book there’s things that I’ll definitely do differently before the book launch (e.g. getting it reviewed) as I can see the benefit in that.
What I appreciate is that I’ve had some great advice from my mentors, Jessica Coleman (editor) and Hollie Marsh (marketing), that is steering me in the right direction, and that the way I’m presently doing it is okay. It’s so important to have people around you that help you to believe in yourself.
Overall, this is all a learning curve and I’m enjoying the whole experience.
WHAT’S NEXT?
I’m returning to Rutland on a camping adventure holiday this weekend.
Then, it’s time for the marketing to begin properly.
I’ll put posts up about all this in the next week or so.
If you’ve self-published or are about to, what has your approach been? Or, if you’ve enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a comment. It’d be great to hear from you