A Master Plan To Market My Self-Published Book — that Tyson would approve
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First off — I do write for the love of writing.
But as I found, there’s a lot of people that start from a concept or idea that will sell first, and then write their book. In essence, reverse engineering the authoring process.
I don’t necessarily agree with their approach, but I appreciate this growth-hacking way. So I went down the rabbit hole on this way and spent over 50 hours of research on YouTube and talks with consumers, self-publishers, and authors to come up with a plan. Once my book comes out in mid spring, I plan on executing this below plan.
I just hope it won’t be like Tyson’s saying —
Required marketing tools
- I use Book Beam to figure out what keywords and niches are best. Use them to figure out how to improve your titles and subtitles. I also use it to figure out what category and sub-category to aim for
- Develop an author website. I’m currently on beehiiv to grab emails, but am adding to my Squarespace page later where I can add testimonials, my author page, and other things
- I use Notion quite a lot for drafting my gameplan. I like Notion to do so because I can link different references and it sorts out the documents in a nice visual way. Let me know in the comments if you want to see my Notion set up
- As Pico Iyer told me when I met up with him in Hong Kong — make sure have a good cover and title. He feels these two things are the most important things to make sure a book markets itself
- Include in the book an ask for reviews. Include this towards the middle and one towards the end
- I set up book Instagram and Twitter accounts to document the process on how to do this. Follow me there!
Review Phase (pre launch)
- The phase is all about reviews. You can get reviews from Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs). Check out Pubby, Net Galley — these are great resources for reviews on ARCs
- Do KDP select and book all the free days you can. Then slot in those free days in the book reviewer websites I mentioned above
- Then launch!
Free Phase
- The phase is still about reviews.
- Do KDP select and book all the free days you can. Then slot in those free days in the book reviewer website like BookBite, where you can actually get reviews. Other promotion websites are great, but will not guarantee reviews, which is what is required in this phase
Paid phase (3 weeks)
- This phase is when your free promotion is over. Then raise the price and keep sending your book to promoters. Some promoters are Book Cave, Fussy Librarian, Book Bub, Book Doggy, Book Raid, eReaderIQ, Book Gorilla, Bargain Booksy, Robin Reads, and Many Books
- But at what price? Here’s a graph that Malky McEwan talked about in his Medium post that I found interesting. The best price to sell for maximum sales is at $0.89 (grey dotted line) — which is the price I’m aiming for to sell for maximum sales.
- Make sure there’s enough promotions week after week.
Post paid phase (post 3 weeks)
- At this point, monitor the situation. You should have a flywheel now that the Amazon algorithm will push and recommend your book.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you’re interested in my book, subscribe to my waiting list!
And as a bonus: these are some of the resources I’ve seen on Medium for those that are interested. Happy marketing!
