By African American Books Author Denise Turney

One of the easiest ways to boost book sales is to publish a new book. To yield good results, you need to launch new books successfully. Then, you need to work to sustain your efforts. If you want to keep sales coming, you have to keep marketing and promoting your titles. This applies whether you’re a self-publisher, hybrid publisher or publishing a new book through a small press or a traditional publishing company.

Prepping New Books to Launch

But first things first. After you write a book that hooks you, pass the manuscript to an editor. And don’t just focus on price when choosing an editor. Look for an editor who has deep experience editing the type of book you wrote. For instance, some editors work mainly with children’s books, while other editors focus on adult mystery novels.

If you’re seeking a way to save on editing costs, polish your book before you send it to an editor. As a tip, you could submit chapters of your manuscript to a professional writer’s critique group. Another way to tighten your manuscript before you send it to an editor is to ask beta readers to read the manuscript and offer you feedback.

Now, here comes the fun part. And, not just the fun part – but the time-consuming part as well. Are you grinning?

To boost book sales and launch new books successfully, you must consistently market and promote your books. It can’t be any book marketing effort. To succeed, you have to incorporate smart book marketing actions into your book sales plan.

Map Out Book Marketing Strategy to Boost Book Sales

The book industry is fiercely competitive. Yet, you can earn six-figures or more a year in the industry. Part of the work to boost book sales starts months before your book is published. So, map out how you are going to market you new book months before the book is published. To save time, you could create two spreadsheets in the same Excel workbook.

In one spreadsheet, list free book marketing tools you’ll use. Examples include social media platforms, free design tools like Canva and word-of-mouth. Before you start filling out the second spreadsheet, listing paid book marketing options, do some research. Find out which book marketing agencies and websites specialize in your book publishing genre.

Research Book Marketing Options to Boost Book Sales

Also, find out which book marketing companies showcase new books. Here are more points to consider during your research:

• Does the firm market new books to read in print, audio and e-book format
• How many followers does the firm have if book promotions are only on social media? (Check their social media platforms to see how engaged their followers are. As an example, look for comments, shares and how many of their posts get re-posted.)
• Are the firm’s newsletter subscribers mainly other authors who have subscribed to their newsletter, people who may never buy another author’s books? Another stat to check has to do with newsletter subscriber engagement. To boost books sales, find out the open and click rates the newsletters have.
• Is there a limit on the number of books a book marketing website spotlights in a daily or weekly newsletter? After all, if there are too many books in a newsletter and your book is listed midway or further down the newsletter, few people may read far enough down the newsletter to see your book.
• What’s the cost to run a daily, weekly or monthly website literary ad? And how many impressions does a typical ad at the firm receive?

Also, find out the number of people in your book’s target audience the marketing firm reaches. This is important. Remember, book marketers can promise you the moon, stating that working with them could land your new book on a best seller list. Yet, a promise and an actual result aren’t always the same. So, do your research.

Schedule Book Marketing Initiatives

After you finish researching free and paid book marketing options, create a schedule. Within this schedule, include the date you will start and end free and paid ads. For deeper impact, consider running ads on your backlist books too. In addition to running ads (free and/or paid), here are more ways to boost book sales after you launch a new book:

• Take pre-orders for your new books
• Work with an experienced website designer and build an official author website. Then, add a blog to the website. As a tip, update your blog with a new article at least once a week. And use relevant keywords in your blog articles to attract readers. Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that you can use to find keywords. To highlight your books, add your book covers to the top or side of your blog.
• Take advantage of Amazon’s free marketing tools if you publish e-books and print on demand books through Amazon. For example, you could do a Kindle countdown deal or you could offer a KDP e-book for free for a week. If you do use Amazon book publishing tools, apply to have your new book become part of their marketing newsletters.
• Create your own literary newsletter. Add feature interviews, book coupons, links to your new book releases, etc. to the newsletter.

More on Book Marketing Initiatives

• Schedule online and offline radio interviews. Also, interview on podcasts that spotlight authors. To get more traction, consider interviewing on podcasts and radio stations that are looking for guests who cover topics that your book focuses on. For instance, if you wrote a novel about a character who has ADHD, you could interview on shows that focus on mental health, learning or brain function.
• Attend virtual and in-person book conferences, cultural festivals and writer’s conferences. These are good places to meet new readers and boost book sales. Even more, these are good places to showcase your books. As a tip, if you do attend conferences and festivals, consider bringing free book excerpts. For example, you could bring 100 copies of a two-page excerpt and hand them out to people who stop by your booth. But don’t just hand out excerpts. Ask people who stop by your booth to sign up for your literary newsletter. In fact, you could bring a printed sign-up sheet so readers can add their name and email address to subscribe to your literary newsletter. (Keep a copy of the sign-up sheet in case someone says they never subscribed to your newsletter.)
• Use tools like Canva and Book Brush to design book marketing flyers and social media posts to share at your website, on postcards and on social media platforms.

Manage Book Marketing Budgets While You Boost Book Sales

Keep an eye on your budget throughout the book marketing process. After all, you don’t want to spend so much money on book marketing that, even if you sell 1,000 books a month, you find yourself in a financial hole.

And, going forward, always do your research before you pay for book marketing. Also, follow-up to ensure that marketing actions you paid for actually occurred. One good way to achieve this is to ask marketers and promoters you run ads thru to email you links to the places where they ran your ad. Get ad stats too, stats that show how many people clicked on your ads and/or bought your books.

Looking for more book marketing support? Check out the below book.