6 Common Book Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Have you written and published a book?

Putting your book on the market isn’t the only thing you need to do to get it to sell. Instead, you need to convince people to buy your book, and this involves using marketing tactics. 

If you’re selling your book online, you have a fantastic opportunity to sell a lot of copies. More than half of the world’s population logs onto the internet on a regular basis. To reach as many people as possible, you need to learn how to avoid making book marketing mistakes. 

Below, we’ll get into the 6 most common book marketing errors. Keep reading if you want to sell more copies of your book!

1. Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Every book has a target audience. This consists of the group of people who are most likely to purchase your book. 

Even though you might want everyone to be interested in your book, the truth is, not everyone will be. As such, if you market as if you’re trying to sell to everyone, you’ll waste your time and money. 

Instead, you need to do some market research. Learn everything you can about your target book audience, including their ages and concerns. If possible, identify some other books that this population likes to read. Then, use this information to market yourself.

2. Not Having a Strategy

Before you start marketing your books, you should have a strategy. Plan out in advance how you’re going to reach your target audience, and set specific goals. 

To set good goals for your book marketing, make them SMART Goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. So, you should lay out a relevant, detailed goal that you think you can achieve, determine how to measure it, and figure out when you want to reach it.

3. Not Using Your Own Platform

Authors should have their own websites and social media platforms. If you don’t have these already, start creating them today.

Once your book is published, make sure your platform gets updated. Feature your book on the home page of your website, and display links to it on your social media pages.

4. Not Enlisting the Help of Other Authors

Authors understand that it’s hard to sell a book, and most are more than happy to help a fellow author out. As such, you should reach out to other writers and ask them to post about your book on their social media pages.

This can even help you develop friendships with other writers!

5. Not Advertising Your Book Signings

Many authors organize book signings at book stores to get people interested in their work. 

If you have an upcoming book signing, update your website and social media accounts. That way, your followers can show up and get their copies!

6. Doing Too Much

A lot of authors assume the more they market, the more they’ll sell. 

Doing so can lead to book marketing mistakes, though. First, you might not have time to make everything look perfect. Second, the more you advertise, the more you’ll spend. So, you need to balance selling books and keeping your finances in check.

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Avoiding Book Marketing Mistakes

If you’ve made these book marketing mistakes, don’t worry. You can still start implementing better practices. 

To improve your marketing, learn more about the genres for books and what readers expect from them. If your book fulfills their expectations, it will be more likely to sell well.

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