You’ve finished your book. You’re in your last round of edits. Your cover design is in the process of being finalized. You’re ready to pass out copies to friends.
And just when you thought writing your book was the hard part, now it’s time to promote your work. But don’t worry. We’re here to help.
The first step after publishing your book is to understand the importance of book promotion and starting early. And I mean really early, as in a year to six months in advance.
To do this, you need a website or blog, an author Facebook account, a Twitter (X) account, and perhaps even a Pinterest, Instagram, or Reddit account. You need to appear in public places promoting your book. You need to reach your target audience. You need to build an email or newsletter list. You need to do this, and many other tasks to market your book. And all of this takes time.
We know it takes time and can be challenging, and we’re here to help.
If you’re just getting started, there are a few things you should set up right now, even if you’re at the earliest possible stages of your author career. Yes, even if you’re still writing your book. Yes, even if you don’t have a publisher or an agent. Yes, even if you’re querying. Some things have no time limit on the process. The only thing that changes is the content you put on those platform pieces.
Create a Website
Focus your website on you. Include a short biography, a headshot, and your social media links. (If you haven’t set these up, don’t worry. You’ll do that next.) Include a blog you’ll add to at minimum once a month. Blogs are invaluable as a way to build your following and showcase your writing skills as well as get new visitors to your website.
If you have a book in production, you can add a page to feature your book. If you don’t have a cover yet, you can put in a placeholder image with the text “Coming Soon,” and your best attempt at the back cover book description. If that worries you, just write a short paragraph mentioning the general aspects of the book. “My forthcoming suspense novel will be perfect for fans of Dave Edlund, Christopher Flory, and Nancy Boyarsky. Stay tuned for more information!”
Claim Your Social Media Handles
If you haven’t already, you’ll want to go create accounts on whichever social media accounts you plan to use (we always recommend Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok) so that you can add those links to your website and you can begin posting content to build an audience. The goal of your social media should be to gather interested people to your audience. This way, when you do have book news to tell them—sales, release date, cover reveals, awards, etc.—you’ll have people to tell and you can avoid the feeling of shouting into a void.
Check out this post for more tips on what to post whether you have a book to talk about yet or not.
Start Your Email List
Even if all you do is send your blog posts to people’s inboxes, your email list is something you can begin early. Its effectiveness grows with the size of the list, so the longer you’ve been building your contacts and connections, the more effective this list will be. Do note, however, you’ll need to use an email marketing system in order to follow all the privacy laws required to contact subscribers. Brevo, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, and Constant Contact are some of the most well-known systems out there.
Remember: to one day tell people about your book, you need to have an interested crowd. The sooner you start gathering that crowd, the larger it will be when the day comes to pull out your megaphone.
