Don’t Know Anything About Marketing?

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If you don’t know anything about book marketing, start by getting a book on the market with a real market, a good cover and correct formatting. Then learn Amazon ads, then content marketing, then build an email list. Learn one at a time. Here is why that order, and the story behind it.

Why isn’t my book selling when I wrote a good one?

Writing and marketing are very different skills. Many authors can write a manuscript, put a cover together, edit and format. Then they put the book on the market and it doesn’t sell, and they start to think it might be the marketing.

That was me. I thought it was about writing the book, so I wrote it, published it and saw no real sales. I wondered if I had done something wrong. I even thought about trading currencies or drop shipping instead, since I wanted an online business as a side gig. But marketing was the issue, and I knew nothing about it. So I read a lot of books, watched a lot of videos and read a lot of blogs. I still do, even more than before.

If this is your situation, What If My Book Doesn’t Sell? goes through the checks in order.

Does marketing matter more than the book?

For sales, it can. That is hard for many authors to accept. Better marketing doesn’t make your book better. It means more people find it and enjoy it, and that is what it is about: connecting readers with your book.

I started running ads, building an email list and doing content marketing. Combined, they made my book start to sell, and the sales have stayed high because of my book marketing.

What should I do before any marketing?

Make sure there is a market for your book, the cover is optimized and the formatting is correct. These took me thousands of hours to figure out. My best tools for self-publishing page shows what I use and will save you a lot of time. A small tool worth having is a short link you can track, covered in best link shorteners for self-publishers.

Some things don’t work well, such as spamming other authors’ groups. They aren’t your target market and they don’t care. Groups of people who only want free books are not a good use of time either. At one point you could give a book away free, get a thousand downloads and boost your rankings so sales followed when the price went back up. That trick doesn’t work the way it used to.

Where do I start: Amazon ads?

Yes, Amazon ads first. They are pay-per-click: Sponsored Products ads have no monthly or upfront fees, you set a daily budget and a maximum bid per click, and KDP authors are eligible. Many authors skip ads or lose money because they don’t monitor them across regions. It can be a burden, but it was my first real introduction to marketing. I learned the basics from a training on running ads, and I still adjust my ads daily. Start with Amazon Ads For Authors.

A book with no reviews and no ads will not make thousands of dollars a month. You’ll see a sale here or there but no real money. Put ads behind it and you start to see traffic, then sales.

When authors I coach ask whether they should do this or that, my first question is: do you even have a book on the market? If not, get one out first. Then learn Amazon ads. Don’t try to learn everything at once.

What is the smallest marketing step I can take this week?

My advice: pick one action you can finish in a day, not a plan. Read your book description aloud as if you were a stranger and ask whether you would click buy. Rewrite the first two lines. Or send one message to a friend who reads in your genre, asking what they think the book is about.

Marketing feels huge because people picture everything at once. It is a list of small jobs, and you only need the next one. Do it, see what happens, then pick the following one.

What comes after ads?

Content marketing, which is a very powerful way to sell books that many authors neglect because they think, “I’m an author, I shouldn’t have to worry about marketing.” Then an email list. The Alliance of Independent Authors builds its marketing advice around your own author website and a signup that gives readers free content in return for hearing from you. I explain why in Email List Is Essential For Self-Pub.

We often have to grow our skills in directions that feel uncomfortable. Some of what we think we know may not even be true: what works best is often not what we expect, but what the market tells us. So watch what works for your books and listen to other authors about what they use to sell. Your readers deserve to find your books, and they can’t if you don’t market them.

Do you know how to market your books? Write “Yes” or “No” in the comments so I know where you’re coming from. If you’d like me to walk you through it, book a free 25-minute discovery call and we’ll work out your first marketing step together.

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