With up to a million books published every year in the U.S. alone, how is an author supposed to lift a new release above all that noise? Book marketing and advertising can become quite expensive. If you’re not careful about allocating funds, promoting a book release can easily break your budget. Yet not doing any book promotion guarantees that your new release will sink like a stone. Thankfully, the experts at Web Design Relief have some ideas.
9 Tricks To Trim Costs While Promoting Your Writing Online
- Use Free Creative Common Images. Graphics rule when it comes to social media. But rather than pay for stock images each time you post, use graphics and photos that are covered by a Creative Commons license. There are lots of websites that offer free Creative Commons Images including Pixabay and Canva.
- Use A Free Mailing List Service. Newsletters to a dedicated subscriber list are the most effective promotion of all. MailChimp offers a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. Sendinblue offers a free plan for unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails a day. And Benchmark offers a starter plan allowing 2,000 subscribers and 14,000 emails per month.
- Cross-Promote With Other Writers. Collaborate with other writers in your genre by exchanging email newsletter announcements of new releases. You might also consider creating an indie-published group anthology using BookFunnel’s Book Bundle promotions.
- Be Your Own Social Media Campaign Manager. Rather than hiring someone to manage your social media accounts, use free services like TweetDeck or HootSuite to keep tabs on what’s happening and schedule posts ahead of time.
- Share Or Embed A Free Kindle E-book Preview. No need to print out book samples! These days sharing a digital sample of your book is painless and free. Just go to any Amazon book page and look a few lines under the buy box for a hyperlink that says <embed>. If you click on this you’ll get a pop-up box explaining how you can embed a sample of your book on your website, or easily share the sample on social media.
- Create A Free Amazon Central Account. Harness the power of Amazon by setting up an Amazon Central Account. Not only can you improve your Amazon book page by adding editorial reviews, a bio, etc., but Amazon will then send a new release email to anyone who follows you on their platform when you’ve published a new book.
- Get A Free BookBub New Release Alert. Set up a BookBub author profile ahead of your book release. Like Amazon, BookBub will send a New Release alert to anyone who follows you when you are launching a new book. It’s an easy way to boost your book promotion reach, and it won’t cost you any money.
- Announce Your New Release On Booklovers’ Websites For Free. Booklovers are always searching for their next read, so be sure to check out some websites where you can make your announcement for free.
- Run A Contest To Promote Your E-book Only. With a little creativity, a good contest can go viral. By choosing to give away e-books or other free digital goodies through a distributor like BookFunnel, you can keep the cost down.
Marketing, promotion, and publicity are necessary if you want to become a successful writer. But thanks to ever-evolving digital marketing techniques, book marketing doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. What’s most important is that you work hard, smart, and creatively to get your books and your message out to the world.
Question: What shortcuts, tips, and tricks have you used to help ease the cost of book marketing?
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