This blog post is the first of a series we’ll be posting over the coming weeks to help authors promote their work in cooperation with their publisher. Some of these ideas can help directly increase book sales, while others may help expand your platform, which can lead to future sales. We hope you will find it helpful!
Know Your Audience
- Survey your audience. Ask questions about demographics, psychographics, and online behavior, so you can better understand where to market to readers and what messaging they’ll respond to. Survey your existing audience and fans of comparable authors and books.
- Conduct reader interviews. Try to understand how your readers find new books to read and make their purchasing decisions. This will add qualitative color that can help you understand the quantitative data you analyze in spreadsheets.
- Create reader personas. Write a short paragraph that describes each core group of readers you’re targeting. Refer to it whenever you’re creating an ad, designing a cover, writing a tweet, or want a refresh on your audience’s motives.
- Create a list of target keywords. Compile a list of search queries that your target audience is using to search for books. Use tools like Google Trends and Google AdWords’ Keyword tool to see which relevant queries are frequently used.
Feel free to read Parts 2, 3, 4, and 5 to learn how to better market your book.