Making people aware of your book is one of the most important things you can do to sell your work. Marketing your book provides exposure, builds a fan base, and promotes sales.
Lightning Source offers some excellent marketing opportunities through Ingram. As the world’s largest book distributor, Ingram issues its own series of catalogs to retailers and libraries.
-- Ingram Advance Catalog for adult fiction and nonfiction
-- Ingram Christian Advance Catalog for books marketed to a primarily Christian audience
-- Ingram Children’s Advance Catalog for kids and young adult titles
For more info about advertising with Ingram Advance, please see here.
Additional tips for marketing your titles:
Categorization - Make sure you select the appropriate subject categories during the title setup process and selecting 3 categories is best.
Identify your Audience - Know who your target audience is. Think about where they would most likely discover a new book like yours.
Book Reviews - Get your book reviewed! You can pay to have your book reviewed by established publications such as Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Magazine. Publish the glowing recommendation where people can see it.
Online Presence - Create a webpage for your book and include a hyperlink that takes your online visitors to a page where they can purchase your book.
Spread the Word! - Make noise about your book through social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok(BookTok), and YouTube. Join book groups such as WATTPAD.
Blog - Create a blog of your own. Find some other bloggers who share the same interests as you, comment on their posts, and watch your network start to grow.
Giveaways - Give free books or ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) to booksellers, librarians, and reviewers since they make lots of book recommendations to the public. Write a courteous, descriptive letter to the recipients of your ARCs asking them to read your book, include the letter with the book, and politely check back in a couple of months, to ask how they liked it.
Start Local - Get to know the local librarians and booksellers and make them aware of your book and ask about having an event to promote your book. Be a patron, be appreciative, be friendly, be courteous, and most importantly, be respectful.
Push your e-book - For improvised hand-selling opportunities to folks who use e-readers, print up business cards with a web link they can use to download your e-book.
Together, these ideas can help build a detailed marketing plan that includes print advertising, reading events, online social media, reviewers, tradeshows, and niche audiences.
For more information on marketing your titles please see here.
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