Book readers love recommending and sharing books with their friends. After finishing one book, a reader will usually tell five or more friends about it. Why? Because we love sharing stories. We love discussing stories, and we love it, even more, when our friends follow through with our recommendation. Word of mouth is powerful. It is also the reason why book readers can multiply fast! The more readers you have, the faster they reproduce. But before any people start reading your book you need to target them and in order to target then you need to outline who your book’s ideal reader is.
But Where Do You Start When It Comes To Finding Your Book’s Ideal Reader?
The best place to start promoting your book is among the people you already know. They could be friends, family, colleagues, your existing social media following, or people you sometimes see at the gym. Your inner circle is more extensive than you think.
Getting family and friends to buy your book can be tricky, and you don’t want to force them. So instead give them a copy for free. Your primary goal here is to get your existing contacts to share your book with their friends. Plus by providing a copy of your book for free, your network will be more inclined to give something back, like a book review or a little free shout out on their social network.
Outline Your Ideal Reader
Once you have your inner network busy reading your book it is time to start marketing it. Before you start promoting your book, you need to know who your ideal reader is.
Stephen King describes a book’s ideal reader as, “all novels are letters aimed at one person, the ideal reader.”
To create an effective marketing plan for your book you need to identify your ideal reader and target them specifically. The broader your target, the more diffuse your message will be.
It can be challenging for authors to determine why a person will want to read their books. But it is vital for you as an author to understand and outline who your audience is. If you don’t know what value your book is providing your reader or why the reader wants to read your book, then you won’t be successful.
You can read my blog post on how to outline your ideal reader for your book for more information. But if you already know who your reader is then read on!
So, now that you know who your ideal reader is it is time to start getting people to read your book!
How to Attract, Engage, and Convert More Readers Who Will LOVE Your Book
Attract, engage, and convert are the three main steps to getting people to buy your book. Here is an outline to describe how these steps work.
Attract Readers To Your Book
The biggest struggle you will first face as a new author is that nobody has heard of you yet. Your goal is to change this by attracting your readers to come to you. There are many ways you can go about this, such as running social media ads, holding contests, attending fairs, increasing your exposure by doing blog tours, doing a free promotion, and other types of marketing activities allow people to learn about you. Your audience may not be ready to buy the first time they hear about you, but getting them to know about your book is the essential first step. Your audience usually needs to hear about your book a few times before they are ready to make a purchase.
Engage With Your Target Readers
The next step is to “engage” with your audience. Once you have been able to attract people to follow you on social media or gave you their email, then you need to engage with them.
Engaging with your audience is an opportunity for you to build relationships with readers. Once you develop that relationship, readers become more invested in you, and they will be more likely to purchase your book. When you engage with your target reader, it is essential to offer them something of value and answer their questions. Don’t engage with them by saying ‘buy my book.’ Saying this is the fastest way to lose readers.
Convert Your Target Readers Into Book Sales
Your last step is to convert your target reader to buy your book. Many authors try to start at this step. They want sales right away and then when no sales come through they wonder why they aren’t getting any. If you have not attracted and engaged with your audience, you will not get many sales- if any! But, if you attract and spend the time to engage with your audience, it will be much easier to make book sales.
Attracting your target audience takes time, and it will be a continuous effort. The results make it worth it though.
Once you build a solid reader base, attracting new potential readers will become easier. Your current readers will start promoting you through social media, book reviews, and word of mouth.
12 Ways To Build A Solid Reader Base For Your Book
- Create an author website
- Do A Blog Tour
- Ask your readers to send in images of them with your book and then pin them on Pinterest. (people love the human connection)
- Comment on threads in relevant Facebook groups to build your reputation as an expert in your niche or to offer advice
- Start and follow a well-planned social media campaign (psst. get my free 100 tips towards social media success here)
- Do a presentation at a local meetup group. Don’t ‘sell’ your book, provide great information, and make sure to have some books to hand in case people ask.
- Create a discussion on Quora. Ask questions that engage your target audience, but don’t make your discussion a pitch for your book. If you are keyword savvy, then use keywords in your post title and content so that it will show up on the search engines and give you ongoing promotional returns.
- Put a link to your book in your email signature
- Set up an Affiliate partnership or program
- Run a contest or a giveaway for your book from your website or Facebook page
- Contribute advice and ideas to LinkedIn groups and make sure you have a section of your profile that promotes your book
- Write an in-depth blog post on a topic related to or covered in your book, and add a CTA to learn more about your book at the end.
These are just a few ways to promote your book. There are hundreds if not thousands of different ways an author can promote a book. The trick is understanding who your audience is and creating a marketing strategy that will best attract and engage with them.
Leave a Reply