How To Market A Book | 2020 Edition

Figuring out how to sell books in 2020 means facing a pair of imposing challenges : the multiplying complexity of book marketing and — speaking of things rising exponentially — the global pandemic, which has led to lockdowns, recessions, as well as no small amount of tragedy.

And I want to focus on that second challenge for a moment — before we dive into all the ways that you can get your books into readers’ hands — because there is something rather different about this year.

Writers are generally quite fortunate in that they can work from home and sell books online and, for the moment at least, the digital side of the publishing business looks less exposed than the physical end.

Indeed, retailers and distributors are reporting a boost in ebook sales, and freebies in particular seem especially popular. Anecdotal reports concur, and also seem to confirm that there has been a surge in new entrants to the ebook market — which makes sense when people are stuck at home or less inclined to go browsing in meatspace, for painfully obvious reasons. Read More…

How To Use The Reader Journey To Create Superfans

It’s almost exactly a year since I gave a talk at a conference in Austin which introduced a concept I call “The Reader Journey” – which is a bookish version of a new marketing paradigm that is helping companies understand their customers better, and how to tailor their marketing accordingly.

I’ve spent the last twelve months researching and testing and experimenting, and then organizing all this information into a structure which will help you understand exactly who you are writing for, plus how to sway them with your marketing messages. But also how to treat them after you have convinced them to buy. How to turn them into the kind of superfans that will do the selling for you.

Strangers to Superfans: A Marketing Guide to The Reader Journey is out now and you can pick up your copy from all these lovely retailers: Read More…