A marketing plan for your book is a tool to help you reach potential readers, and it begins well before you pen down the first word in your manuscript.

You might have a story close to your heart, but you won’t be happy if your reader’s list ends with a group of friends and relatives. The reviews you receive would also be biased since your closest peers would be hesitant to criticize. At the same time, nothing would make you happier than an honest review from a genuinely interested reader in a distant land you never knew or thought would read your book.

Convincing nonreaders to read your book is not your job, but you can make sincere efforts to make your book visible to could be readers. However, book marketing involves an investment of time and money, and you don’t want to mess up. So, how do you ensure your marketing efforts won’t go in vain? Yes, you need a book marketing plan. This will help you take the right actions at the appropriate time and equip you to create awareness about your book in an effective way. If your script is ready or you already published your book, don’t worry, it’s better late than never. You can conduct your research, and define your book from a marketing perspective.

Identify your target audience
Before you start writing your manuscript, know your readers.

Begin with analyzing yourself. Create a bio of yourself on a piece of paper. Start with simple questions like your name, age, gender, country, job description and then move on to elaborate answers like the kind of movies you like, the places you prefer to hang out, the kind of people you like to have a chat and your preferred vacation destination. You can expand the list to more complicated topics like religion and politics.

Once done with knowing yourself, expand the same analysis to your friends, relatives, and people you know. Think about the activities they would like to involve in and the movies they like. Filter out the people who are exactly opposite to your bio.

Once you complete developing bios for some people, you will be able to develop a set of essential characteristics of your potential reader that allows you to dig deeper into their habits. Collect data from social media to analyze the behavior of your customer. The average time they spend on Facebook, what kind of articles they like, how much time they spend in cafés, restaurants, and libraries. Find out what are the most common books your potential readers have read in the past. Such insights will help you construct appropriate content to use for marketing on social media and other platforms.

Importance of a good synopsis
The summary of your book will act like front face of a company. It will visit the bookstores, libraries, blogs and social media and persuade them to host your book. A magnetic five-hundred-word synopsis made available on various social media platforms will attract viewers and create enough curiosity inside them to buy your book.

Creating an author identity
Before you begin actively promoting your book on social media and other platforms, define the kind of author you want to be known for. The genre, the category your book belongs to. Select the colors you would be using on your website and as a theme. In short, you have to be careful with your positioning as an author because you will lose on your author brand if you mix your positioning. For example, once you position yourself as a romance writer you can write a book in another genre, but it would be better to write a second book in romance.

Reaching out to press and media
Much before your book is published, you should try making contacts within relevant magazines and newspapers. You can contact fellow authors to find out their experiences and get references. Media attention before and after the book release is a must because the more the book sells in the first week, the better. The number of copies sold can be used for further promotion.

Editorial reviews
Reviews from established authors in the same genre can work wonders for your book. You can include the reviews at the beginning of the book. Customers love going through what famous authors have to say before buying a book. The reviews can be used in promotional material on the book cover, in social media and other platforms. It may not be easy, but you can do a focused effort by sending requests only to authors who are known to write reviews for new authors.

Create hype for book launch
Book launches are one of the most effective marketing tools for you to escalate your reach in social media. You can share your release news with an attractive banner and a small video where you talk about the book. The videos and banners can be shared across relevant groups in social media platforms to create awareness. You can request fellow authors with more fan following to promote your book. Guest blogging in relevant platforms about writing tips and similar themes can also be used for adding to the hype of your book.

You are the best person to design the marketing plan for your book because nobody else knows your book better than you. The above suggestions may appear scary if you are unfamiliar with the marketing process. Don’t worry, an experienced marketing team of Prowess will help you design your unique marketing plan for your book at any stage.

Help is one call away. Contact us at info@prowesspub.com or call +91 849 792 4873 for more details.

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