How to Create a Book Marketing Plan in Three Tidy Phases

The super annoying thing about books is that they don’t sell themselves.

It doesn’t matter if you spent years painstakingly drafting and revising the world’s most compelling debut novel in a prestigious MFA program. It doesn’t matter if your book has been vetted by 200 beta readers and blessed by the Pope.

(Do not use 200 beta readers. Analyzing and applying feedback will be a nightmare.)

It doesn’t even matter if you write to market, which is like the number one thing people tell you to do if you want to make a lucrative career out of writing.

No one can buy a book if they don’t know it exists, and it’s up to you to get the word out, especially if you’re self-published.

Don’t worry if book marketing doesn’t come naturally to you. That’s the case for a lot of authors, many of whom have managed to create incredibly successful marketing plans anyway.

All you need is a little guidance and the courage to draw attention to yourself. I can help with that first part. Stay tuned to find out the key components of a good marketing plan and how to market your novel before, during, and after your book launch.

And what the heck? I’ll even share a little tip for summoning the courage you need to take on this new adventure. 

First, let’s get motivated with a little chat about the power of marketing. 

Why Do I Need a Book Marketing Plan?

When new and aspiring authors ask this question, they’re usually asking one of two things:

• Why do I have to promote my book at all? Isn’t it enough that I worked hard and wrote a great novel?
• Why do I need a plan? Why not just try some stuff and see what works?

We’ll tackle these one at a time.

Why You Need to Market Your Book

For indie authors, the answer to this question is simple. You need a marketing plan because no one is going to promote your book for you. Not unless you pay them to, anyway.

In self-publishing, you’re both author and entrepreneur—an authorpreneur, as they say. That means you have to do entrepreneurial-type things like research your target buyer and analyze conversion rates.

Now let’s say you’re traditionally published. Hopefully, your publisher will put their team of book marketers to work promoting your masterpiece. But most authors won’t get enough support from their publishing house to give their book the boost it deserves. 

So it’s still a good idea to create your own book marketing plan.

Either way—indie or traditional—you should know that Amazon currently lists more than 32.8 million titles. Even if you break that number down by subgenre, you’re still competing with at least hundreds of thousands of other books.

If you want readers to choose your book over all the other options (not to mention find your book in the first place), you need a marketing strategy.

Why You Need an Actual Plan for This

So why does there have to be a whole marketing plan? Why not just start a newsletter, try a few ads, and post about your book on social media? What’s the point of being all Type A about this?

Because when we say “book marketing plan,” we really mean “book marketing strategy.” You’re not just trying stuff. You’re taking the time to thoughtfully consider which efforts are most likely to get the results you want.

If you just try whatever, you’re likely to waste a lot of time and money on marketing efforts that don’t reflect your author brand or reach your target audience. Creating a book marketing plan forces you to figure out the best way to reach your future readers.

Of course, that’s not a guarantee all your marketing efforts will work. Some tactics might fail. But guess what?

A great plan also includes strategies for testing and adapting your efforts, so you can move forward and do better without freaking out. Or, at least, without freaking out too much.

Components of a Successful Book Marketing Plan

Before we dive into a mile-deep ocean of book marketing ideas, let’s start with a framework for your overall plan. 

After all, we’re not just here to create ad campaigns. The goal is to nail down your audience’s priorities, your own concrete objectives, and the resources available to you so you can be strategic about this.

Here are the must-have components of a good book marketing plan:

Clear Understanding of Your Target Audience

To sell more books now and for years to come, you need to build a solid fan base. In order to do that, you have to get super clear on who your readers are, what they care about, and where to find them.

Read reviews of books similar to your own to learn what readers love about stories like yours. Check out online forums and attend book events centered around novels in your genre. 

Research your prospective readers until you have a clear picture of the people who will one day populate your fan base. What other books do they read? What’s their favorite TV show? What do they want out of life? What do they fear? What are their biggest challenges?

It may seem like more information than you need, but you’ll begin to see how these insights help you shape your marketing messages. 

Also extremely important: find out where your future readers discuss and discover books, where they buy books, and how they make purchasing decisions. 

SMART Goals

Just like any business plan, a book marketing strategy needs clear, concrete goals. And you’ll want to get more specific than “sell more books” or “make money.”

Think in terms of SMART goals:

Specific - What’s your biggest priority right now? Book sales? Income? Building a fan base? 

Measurable - How much money do you want to make? How many newsletter subscribers would you like? Put a number on your goal so you’ll know when you’ve succeeded. 

Achievable - What can you realistically accomplish at this stage in your career? If this is your first book and your goal is to earn a full-time living within six months, you’ll most likely fall short of that objective and feel like the problem is you, when it’s not.

Relevant - Your goal should fit your overall vision for your career and where you are at this phase in the process. 

Time-based - When do you want to reach your objective? Remember to keep it achievable!

Here are some example goals to help you come up with your own:

• Double sales this year compared to last year.
• Grow my email list to 1,000 subscribers before my launch date.
• Increase blog traffic by 30% in the next six months.

You can create multiple SMART goals, but don’t go too crazy. The whole point is to focus on the results that matter most right now. 

Budget

It’s possible to promote your book without spending a dime, but it sure is hard. Even if you skip paid advertising, you may still run into expenses like:

• Website design and hosting
• Cover design
• Software for designing social media content
• Subscriptions to email marketing platforms or social media management tools
• Printing advanced reader copies (ARCs) for reviewers and influencers
• Book marketing courses

Before you start laying out your book marketing strategy, determine how much money you’re willing to spend on this. Remember that this is only part of what you’ll spend on your book overall—it’s separate from writing and production costs like editing services and formatting software.

As you consider different marketing strategies, note all the costs associated with them. Prioritize the tactics that have the greatest potential to move the needle without destroying your budget.

Marketing Strategies

Now let’s talk strategy. What will you do to get your book in front of readers? Newsletter swaps? Paid advertising? Blog tour?

You’ve got an absolute embarrassment of options. We’ll get into a bunch of them in this article, but I also recommend paying close attention to what’s working for other authors in your subgenre. Clever new marketing strategies emerge all the time.

This is also where all that audience research pays off. By now, you should know how your average reader finds out about new books and where they hang out online. Use that intel to shape your strategy.

Testing Strategies

This is an easy one to overlook, but boy howdy is it important.

How will you know if your marketing efforts are succeeding?

You’ve already set a SMART goal, so that will help you judge the performance of your book marketing plan overall. But you’ll also want a system for evaluating individual strategies. Look at things like:

• Shares, likes, and comments on social media posts
• Click-through rates and conversions on paid ads
• Newsletter stats like open rates and click rates
• Possible correlation between a new campaign and sales numbers

When you know what you’re looking for ahead of time, you can be quicker to adjust and optimize your strategy.

Book Marketing Timeline

Finally, you’ll want to nail down your book marketing timeline. What will you do when?

Your little book baby has different needs at each stage of its development. When it’s a young manuscript, it depends on you to set a solid foundation for its arrival. You know, create an author brand, build a fan base, and generate buzz.

When it finally launches, you build on that foundation to help it thrive.

And as it grows older and finds its own momentum, you’re there to keep supporting it even as you turn your focus to your next book baby. 

It’s true what they say: you never stop being a book parent. So let’s take a closer look at your book marketing timeline and what it takes to help your little creation thrive in all phases of life.

Phase One: Pre-Launch 

Marketing in the pre-launch phase can feel a little awkward because you don’t have anything to sell yet. You’re just handing out promises that something’s coming and it’s worth getting excited about.

It helps to remember that you’re not just selling books at this stage—or at any stage, really. You’re also selling yourself—your voice, your perspective, your whole intriguing, one-of-a-kind vibe. This is called your author brand, and you can learn a ton about it here.

So while you definitely want to get your audience psyched about your forthcoming book, you also want to help them fall in love with you.

Here are some key strategies for accomplishing both feats:

Build an Online Presence

Your audience is going to get to know you through the internet. That’s just how they do it these days. So you’ve got to put yourself out there. The absolute must-haves include:

• An author website
• A social media presence—whichever social media platforms are fun for you and help you connect with your target audience
• An email list

It’s possible to find successful authors who skipped out on one of those three things, but those authors are rare.

If you have the time and interest, you can also write a blog, start a YouTube channel, create a podcast… whatever thrills you.

As you do all of this, try to maintain a healthy balance between promoting your book and connecting with your audience as a human being. No one will follow you if you’re constantly selling, so give them something of value.

That could include glimpses into your writing process, hilarious memes, muffin recipes, genre-focused conversation starters… literally anything you think will engage them. Good thing you did your research, right?

Create a Buzz

Now let’s get people talking about your forthcoming novel.

Create some teaser content like a cover reveal, book trailer, quotes or images from your story, and even early access to the first chapter for newsletter subscribers. (Just make sure that chapter has been relentlessly edited and polished.)

Share this content on social media, in email newsletters, and on your author website.

You can also put together a press or media kit—a file you pass along to media professionals to help them discuss and promote your book. You can create one in Google Drive and include materials like:

• Cover art
• Book description
• Book trailer
• Excerpts
• Author photo
• Author bio
• Press release
• Social media links
• Suggested interview topics

Now, the very existence of a media kit implies that you’ll have to reach out to media-type people. Let’s discuss that.

Engage With Influencers and Bloggers

Getting a social media influencer or book blogger to shout out your book before the launch is a great strategy for expanding your reach and growing your audience.

Of course, that means you won’t be able to click “publish” the moment your book is ready for the world. The industry standard is to send ARCs to reviewers at least three months before the launch so they have time to read it and add their review to their content schedule.

When you choose which influencers to reach out to, remember to keep your audience in mind. Who are they following? Who are the major influencers in your subgenre?

Phase Two: Launch 

Book launch time! You’ve done a lot of work to generate buzz—and preorders. Now it’s time to bring your book into the world with all the pomp and ceremony it deserves. 

Make sure all your followers know it’s out there now. Help them feel the same excitement you feel.

Let’s talk about things you can do to make that happen.

Organize a Launch Party

This can be an in-person or virtual event. However you do it, make sure it’s a celebration.

You can incorporate a reading, book signing, and/or Q&A. Give your new readers a chance to get to know you and your book.

Find ways to make it feel more festive than a typical book signing event. Set up a giveaway. Bring fancy-pants snacks (I believe the classy folk call them hors d'oeuvres). Give your guests QR codes for bonus material like deleted scenes or a related short story.

Do what you gotta do to get the people psyched.

Get the Word Out on Social Media

As you launch your book, bring your social media followers along for the ride.

Remind them a few times as the release date approaches. Post about how excited you are when the day arrives. Share photos and videos from your launch party. Screenshot great reviews as they start rolling in.

And don’t forget to include your personal experience of your book launch. Remember, we’re building human connections here, not just advertising a book. Show your followers how you’re celebrating the big day at home or unwinding after all those months of hard work.

Run Paid Advertising

If your budget allows, this is a good time to put those advertising dollars to work. As always, do your research and determine the best platform for reaching your audience, whether that means advertising on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, wherever.

Try a few different ads and keep an eye on how they perform. If one or two of them do really well, put more money behind those ads and try creating new ones with the same messaging or similar images.

Take your time to really understand the advertising platform you’re using and regularly review it. Online advertisers are more than happy to chew through your daily budget, even if your ads aren’t optimized or converting to sales at a rate you want. All that can get expensive if you aren’t serious about this approach.

If you find the right approach, paid ads can boost sales right out of the gate, helping your book rank higher and get it in front of even more eyes.

Phase Three: Post-Launch 

This stage can feel a little tricky. Your book is out there. Everybody already knows about it. You’ve talked about it a lot.

What more can you say that you haven’t already said?

At this phase, you’re working a balance between attracting new readers, convincing folks who’ve been eyeballing it to buy it already, and keeping your growing fan base engaged.

So we’re going to make sure we cover all these people in the next phase of marketing.

Build on Your Momentum

The book is out there, reviews are rolling in, and people are talking about your brilliant story. We want to keep this good thing going.

Once again, social media and email marketing come in handy here. Use these platforms to share new reviews, as well as fan-generated content like artwork or social media posts. 

Ask your audience questions to spark conversation. They could relate directly to your own work (“I’m writing a subscribers-only story about a side character in my book. Which character should it be about?”) or be about anything else you think your followers would love discussing (“Which trope are you totally over?”).

Also consider running a few promotions to boost book sales and give folks who’ve been considering your book a chance to snag it at a discounted price.

Analyze Feedback

I wouldn’t recommend obsessing over negative Amazon reviews, especially anything that's particularly scathing or comes from someone who’s obviously not your target reader. 

Having said that, it’s a good idea to lightly take note of reader feedback and consider how it can help you serve your audience better in the next book.

Pay attention to both criticism and praise. When you know what your audience loves about your work, you’re better equipped to develop an author brand and body of work that connects with them. 

Keep Writing, Keep Marketing

One of your best book marketing tools will be your next book. And the one after that. And the one after that. Every book that’s out there is another opportunity for readers to find you, fall in love with your words, and rush out to buy more from you.

But even as you get to work writing your next novel, make sure you still have a book marketing plan in place for this one. 

Run seasonal promotions. Do a giveaway on the anniversary of your book launch. Set up more book signings or find a way to get involved in local events.

And keep getting your name and brand out there. Collaborate with other writers to co-author a book, do a newsletter swap, or create an anthology. Keep sharing snippets from your personal life or a sneak peek at your writing process.

In other words, always be marketing. Even small, consistent efforts can add up to big gains and, eventually, a full-blown career.

The Marketing Challenge No One Talks About

You now have the basic know-how to create a comprehensive book marketing plan. But before you do that, I’d like to touch on one under-discussed aspect of marketing strategy.

Advertising your book means drawing attention to yourself and your confidence in your own abilities.

That’s uncomfortable for a lot of us—putting a book out into the world and saying, “I made this and think it’s worth your time and money.” That’s a vulnerable position to take, and it’s really tempting to under-market or even just make one announcement on social media and let the book take it from there.

My best suggestion for getting through the fear is to build up your writer community. Surround yourself with people who face the same panic and take the same risks. They’ll support you, promote you, celebrate you, and remind you constantly that your book deserves attention.

If you’re still looking for writer friends, join us in the Story Craft Café. It’s an online community that’s free to both Dabblers and non-Dabblers (or future Dabblers, as my inner optimist calls them). 

Join the community here. Then get to work developing a bold and beautiful marketing plan worthy of your masterpiece.