Many authors out there are trying to catch readers and find better strategies to market their self-publish books. Check this out, I want to share with you these 3 ways to find more readers for you to succeed in your self-publishing journey.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to the one thing you don't want to be doing. To find more readers so let's get into it.
The topic we're discussing today is three ways to find more readers now when you first get your book on the market. You have the desire of finding as many new customers and readers as possible to read your book. You have quite a bit of excitement around that entire process.
But then you quickly discover that it is not as easy as you thought and your books simply aren't selling. Therefore if you're going to find readers for your book you're going to want to check out this article. You can find out exactly how to go about doing that.
Here's My Story
Grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist to make sure that you are not skipping any of the important steps. Necessary to win at the self-publishing game so let's get into it. Finding cloudberries now before I even start telling you about cloudberries.
The story here, I wanted to just explain that cloudberry is something in Norway which is these little teeny orange berries. They're like see-through almost and they have a very unique flavor to them. They're extremely rare in Norway.
I've never even heard of them where I grew up in America. But that was the starting point so here I was walking across the high mountains in Central Norway. Around himself which is a major ski area and also is a fantastic area for finding this gold.
This treasure is in the mountains which are cloudberries or they call Milta here in Norway. The thing was I was looking for these difficult-to-find cloudberries. They're difficult for a couple of reasons.
The thing is you're not sure where to find them. As you're going through forests or rocky peaks you simply aren't going to see any of them located in those locations. Because the thing is that to find them you need to be looking in the right areas.
A little is similar to your readers you need to know where exactly you're looking when you're going to find them. The thing was we were walking across some swamps in the high mountains. You would imagine this could be difficult because the water is melting from the snow downwards.
Creating this water that's sitting there and in these swamps. Suddenly these magical little orange berries show up and the thing is we finally saw them. Finally, we saw some orange off of the main path that we were looking at.
You have to sort of look closely because Norwegians will pick these as much as humanly possible. They're the most expensive of all berries and if they're even protected on your land. Most other things are like blueberries or raspberries.
You people can just come by and pick them but not on these particular ones and people who know where to get them. They keep this hidden it's a secret where they will keep these things hidden. Nobody else can find them but when you're walking around the open mountain ranges from time to time.
You will see them and so off the path in difficult-to-walk terrains. Even in the middle of these swamps in only certain seasons of the year like fall autumn. Sometimes I think summer and spring but see they're so rare.
I can't even fully remember which months the cloudberries come out but the thing is that only then and there in the right conditions. Are you going to be able to find these elusive cloudberries and that was what we found that day? We put them in a bag and then you take them home.
Find A Specific Readers
You make some cream which you mix up whipping cream and then you put the berries in it. Creating this thing called multi creme is like this combination of the two rights. It's very delicious some people don't like them but it's just so rare.
These berries are that it makes their taste all that much better. Because of the price associated with them and it's even better when you manage to find them on your trips. That's something that I find very interesting within Norwegian nature.
Something I've never seen in America or any other where else in the world. I'd be interested let me know if you've seen these cloudberries. The thing is if you aren't looking in the right places you're never going to find the berries.
Because if you're in a swamp but it's not on the mountains they're not there. If you're in the mountains without a swamp you're not going to find them. Because they require exactly perfect conditions to grow.
So what does that have to do with the main topic three ways to find more readers, the answer is we need to find these readers. These are not any average readers they're specific readers who are looking for what exactly you're writing.
On the first thing is where exactly are they? Well, the answer is they're going to be hanging out in forums where people talk about what you're writing on. If you're writing on puppy training my favorite theme then maybe areas, where people have puppies, are going to be very interested.
I need to tell you to be careful here that you don't just spam these people with links from your book. Rather engage them but make it clear on your profile that you have written books on this. You can also even cite aspects of your book.
Give away little paragraphs and things like that or small pdfs and say "here's a pdf" you know document that I found. I wrote that sort of summarizes how to do puppy training for example. We're able to start connecting with people this way giving them free little things away from lead magnets.
Check out this related article: You Don't Have to be an Expert Writer to be a Best Seller
They call them to get them on an email list and then we're able to tell them more about our background. Puppy training for example if we're dealing with the non-fiction. Now, if you're dealing with fiction that brings us to number two.
We want to go where the audience and your main competitors are hanging out. So for example if you're writing horror books well maybe some like Stephen King's style horror books. Well, maybe Stephen King readers are going to be enthusiastic to read your books as well.
Going in those very areas where Stephen King readers are hanging out. Sharing samples from your book and engaging them about Stephen King will be able to pull people into your ecosystem. You can start selling books to them as well.
You're not trying to be spammy, we're trying to be human. We're connecting people at a personal level and we're just simply saying "look if you enjoyed this you may enjoy some of the stuff that I'm writing as well".
This is something that so many people are very shy to do. But how else are you going to get your books selling if you aren't building an audience? The second thing is running ads using your competitor's names. In the keywords, I know with Amazon this is a very popular one.
Content Marketing
Now with Google, I saw they restricted my ability to do some of this on google ads. But with Amazon you can use your competitors they can sometimes be very great keywords. Somebody's looking for Stephen King up comes your books.
Because they're using the same sort of horror or whatever it might be. If it's sci-fi or you know like dune is getting popular again. If you wrote a book that was similar to dune for example right with sci-fi then maybe you would use the author of doom, right? does that make sense?
So what we're doing is we're trying to find the audiences where they are so you can use ads to do it. You can also use all of the different social media like TikTok or Youtube. Maybe your ideal audience is hanging out there but this is one of the reasons though.
I want to hit this point is because of the secret answer of today. That is where you shouldn't do it you should not spam other authors far too often. If you go to Facebook groups where other authors hang out and start spamming them.
Well, what good is that going to do they are not your target audience. Unless you're writing to authors, for example, I do write some stuff for authors and so of course my stuff would be relevant. Then again people who are looking you know along the same lines.
If somebody's writing a book on puppy training another person's writing romance novels why would you post your books in there? It's not going to increase your sales it's just going to frustrate people and kill these groups.
As opposed to when you're with authors you want to share the tricks and tips that you're doing. Just like, I'm doing on this very channel with over 320 or 350 videos that I've put out. To help authors and writers get their books onto the market and get selling.
In this article, we're looking at the selling aspect of it and the thing is that we want to increase our sales with whatever means are necessary. But as we find these people we're going to pull them into our blogs, our podcast, and our videos. That's content marketing.
Check out this related article: How This Tool Made Me A Best Seller
Conclusion
That's one of the reasons I sell my Content Marketing Course below in the description of all of my YouTube videos. Also, do additional Coaching in combination with it to ensure that you get those results that you're looking for. As you're going to be building an audience so that's another thing.
You're going to want to consider it when you're first getting started. Even if you're in the more advanced levels it's never too late to start building an audience. And doing it through content marketing which is by far the cheapest.
And the best return on investment just takes a long time and in the meantime, you're also going to be running ads against your books. There are lots of options available to us for us to find these new readers.
But my question for you today is where are your ideal readers hanging out? have you found them?. Have you dialogued with them? Have you figured out where they're at? If you have, I want to know below in the comments where exactly are your ideal readers hanging out.
Have you gone into the Facebook forums and other places where people would be interested in hearing or reading possibly your books? So you're interacting with your readers. Let me know because I need to know if this article is helpful to you.
And also how exactly you found ways of interacting and reaching your readers so thanks a lot. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.