The last few months before your book’s publication are an incredibly exciting time. All the time and care you poured into creating your book are finally about to pay off, but you still have plenty of marketing work left to do to ensure your book receives the attention it deserves. As introduced in How to Market Your Book: Prepublication Preparation, spreading your efforts throughout your book’s publication lifecycle can make for a far less daunting—and far more rewarding—experience; establishing an author platform and proactively building your network will grant you strong foundations for all your future marketing endeavors. This second entry in our “How to Market Your Book” series covers how to use those foundations to bring your title into the limelight before it hits the shelves.
Establishing a Promotional Timeline
The final three to six months before your book’s publication date provide the perfect opportunity for generating prelaunch excitement. Establishing a book-promotion timeline that aligns with key production milestones—and, most importantly, your availability—helps make the most of your marketing efforts, building momentum for your book’s future sales without causing you stress.
Production Milestones to Help Frame Your Promotional Timeline:
Final Manuscript Approval
Once you—or your publisher—decide your manuscript is ready for publication, you can begin distributing Advanced Reader Copies, otherwise known as Advanced Review Copies or ARCs. ARC distribution is useful for acquiring book reviews to use in your marketing campaigns, sparking library and bookstore interest in acquiring your book, and generating excitement among readers; depending on your book’s genre and your ARCs’ format—physical or digital—you can distribute ARCs as early as six months to as little as four weeks before launch.
Cover Reveal
Revealing your book’s cover is a common tactic used by publishers and authors alike to provide generate audience excitement via a visual element. Cover reveals are particularly effective marketing strategies for promoting your book through your author platform. For more information on planning the perfect cover reveal, including how to determine the best timing, see Penguin Random House’s Six Tips for a Social Media Cover Reveal.
Publication Date
The day your book is published is a milestone on its own, offering an end date to your prelaunch promotional campaign and a purchase date for prospective readers; it can also serve as an opportunity for hosting a launch event to generate further excitement for your book’s release. If you choose this route, however, keep in mind you’ll also need to promote your launch event for it to gain momentum. Fortunately, launch events provide ample opportunity for adding variety to your network and platform engagement through interaction and content creation.
Engaging With Your Network
At all points throughout your marketing endeavors, it’s vital that you maintain engagement with the network you’ve curated. Maintaining a consistent presence on your author website and social media accounts and routinely distributing content to your email list helps keep your book at the forefront of your audience’s minds and “increases the chance they’ll order it as soon as it is released.” Just as important as consistency, however, is variety. If you only distribute promotional content, your network may grow bored—or begin to feel as if they are marketing targets rather than members of your community. Engagement is not a one-way street, and a strong network is one that benefits all its members. Additionally, keep in mind that digital content creation is not your only method for engaging with your network. Consider attending virtual or in-person conferences and events, reacting to others’ posts, and participating in online discussions relevant to your genre or field.
Creating Your Book’s Metadata
If you’re new to the world of digital marketing, you may be asking what metadata even is. “Simply put, your book metadata is any data that describes your book—including title, subtitle, price, publication date, ISBN, and any other relevant information that readers use to find your book,” such as your author bio and book description. Depending on where your book is in its production lifecycle, you might not have all these elements just yet, but getting a head start on compiling your metadata grants you more time to optimize it; the stronger your metadata, the greater your title’s online visibility.
Keywords are vital in your metadata arsenal for enhancing your book’s search engine visibility. Think of keywords as what your target reader would type into a search bar when looking for your book—or a book that’s similar to yours. “The more specific the keywords, the more likely the more likely the person searching for those specific words will find your book among the search results.” By incorporating strong, targeted keywords throughout your book description, you can help ensure your book stands out among the masses—and reaches the right audience.
If you’ve gone the traditional publishing route, your publisher will likely help with creating and managing your book’s metadata. If you’ve gone the self-publishing route and are creating your own—or you just want to learn more about book metadata–check out AuthorHouse’s article on How to Create Effective Book Metadata, including recommendations for tools that can help with the process.
Updating Your Author Website
While your promotional endeavors with content creation and network engagement may help ensure you’re staying up to date on the social media side of your author platform, it’s vital not to underestimate the importance of updating your author website as well. Think of your author website as the central hub of your author platform. Visitors should be able to gather all they need to know about you, your book, and any potential upcoming events from visiting your website alone, including where they can go to find out more. Fortunately, if you’ve tackled the aforementioned steps, you’ll already have everything you need to make your author website shine, generate excitement about your book’s release, and boost your book’s search visibility.
Your book deserves recognition, but remember not to run yourself ragged promoting it. Focus on appealing your target reader to gain the most from your efforts, and stay on top of tackling your marketing strategy one step at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed—consistency is key.
Keep up with our blog for more tips on managing your book marketing strategy, and let us know your questions in the comments.
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