Writing.Com General Discussion

The questions "how to market your book" and "how to reach enough readers" are essentially the same, and whether you are self-published or going the traditional route, this is really all down to you. Nobody has a bigger vested interest in the book selling well than you. Publishers generally expect to make a loss on a debut novel, and an agent usually doesn't expend much effort on a debut novel either (that's not cast in stone, but if you expect an agent to pull out all the guns for your debut novel, they probably wouldn't have picked it up anyway).

Firstly, you should start networking on social media. Writing groups are a great place to make friends and learn stuff about the craft and the art, but they are terrible places to market a book. People aren't in those groups to buy books, they want to write them. On the other hand, being in those groups can get you 'friends', and often some hints about other groups you could join that are full of readers of the sort of stories you write.

You can never start networking early enough. Don't wait, it takes time. I can reach about 250,000 people on Facebook, but a good half of them are writers. On the other hand, the other half are all confirmed Sci-Fi fans - the genre I write in - but it took me two years to get to that point.

Secondly, you can get a website and start blogging - not so much about your writing, although a few articles about it here and there won't hurt, to remind people you are a writer. Neither do you want to document your daily routine - people really don't care what you had for breakfast this morning or what colour underpants you're wearing. What you can really let rip on are the things that interest you. For me, that's physics and all things space science, from astrophysics to cosmology to technology. Posting links to these articles in your social media groups will hopefully get people interested in you.

The trick with a website is to sell yourself. If people are interested in you - or the things that interest you - it takes a lot less arm-twisting to get them to buy your book (or at least take a look at it on Amazon).

You can also put together small collections of short stories, flash fiction and drabbles into e-books or pdf's. Offer them for free on your site - all they have to do is enter their email address so you can send it to them. Hang onto those addresses, they'll come in handy when you want to let the world know your novel has been released.

Thirdly, you can send copies of your novel to pundits - bloggers, vloggers and so forth, who have a large following and regularly review books. Look for those who like your genre, and check whether they want hard-copy or accept digital. Especially handy are those who review new and up-and-coming authors. I do this kind of review, and while there has been some dross, I've generally been amazed at the high standard. The last novel I reviewed went on to be nominated for a BSFA award, the one I'm reading now is a high-fantasy mashup with steam-punk, electro-punk and some semi-sentient AI thrown in - yet it all works wonderfully.

You can use adverts of course. Social media adverts tend to cost more than you'll make on your sales unless you do really well, but taking out a small advert in a popular genre magazine will pay dividends.

Networking has the biggest gain. Let's say you are connected to around 50,000 people through the various groups you're in. You make a post to advertise your book and ask anyone who sees it to repost. If just 5% of them do, that'll be 500 people reaching out on your behalf to all their friends. Then ask anyone who buys it to talk about it, especially if they'd recommend it to their friends. If you're lucky, it'll go viral for all the right reasons.