When Should You Start Promoting Your Book?

Many authors wonder when they should start promoting their book, and when searching for the answer they can hear misleading advice. In this episode I’m sharing a shocking piece of advice an author was told and then giving my take on when authors should start their book promotion. 

Transcript

Aryn: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to rock your book launch podcast. My name is Aryn Van Dyke. I'm the host. I'm also the founder of book rock star, which is a book marketing consultancy, helping authors and publishers rock their book launch. So today I want to talk about timing for book marketing. So when is this something that should be going into place?

This is a pretty. Common questions that I get from authors and also even from publishers as well, is just what is the kind of ideal timing for an author to start promoting their book? So I'll kind of lead in with a recent story that I heard from an author that I was talking with and kind of what inspired this episode today.

So This is an example of what I would say is bad advice. So I was talking with this author and he was telling me that he spoke with another professional who gave him the advice of don't do anything. When your book comes out, just let [00:01:00] it sit there for a few months and see what happens. When he told me this, I had to remember that I was on a zoom call and had to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor because As someone who's been in the book marketing world and the publishing world for, eight plus years, this is just advice I would never ever give to an author.

So here's just kind of share a little bit of What happens when an author follows advice like this? So when you just let your book sit there, you don't do anything and just see what happens, on its own there's kind of three key things that happened that I think can have a negative effect.

So one you miss out on that new book wave of marketing opportunity. So, I mean, of course, when a new book comes out, it's a great opportunity to be talking about it. you have this kind of springboard of newness of this wave of momentum that you can be using to talk about your book on social media, to be sharing about it in email newsletters, to be, you know, Sending out messages to people in your [00:02:00] network, whether it's personal or professional, letting them know that this new book is here.

So, a lot of times when there is a delay in marketing, you miss out on this momentum and this kind of new book wave. That you could have had when it came out not to say that you can't start at any point because absolutely you can. And you should, you know, I don't have, I don't create this episode to try and shame or judge any authors who have waited.

I think that any day is the best day to start on book marketing strategy to start on getting your book in front of people. But. If you have that advantage of being ahead of your book launch you can use that new book that kind of release time as a momentum to be talking more about your book.

Second thing that happens when following this type of advice is that you are not giving retailers You know, maybe Amazon in particular, any information. So the retailer algorithms, particularly the Amazon [00:03:00] algorithm, they thrive and they exist on information on customer data. So if you're not sending potential readers to the book page, if no one is putting the book in their cart, if no one is purchasing the book on a retailer site like Amazon, then it's getting absolutely no information.

According to the algorithm, your book will look. Irrelevant, and therefore the algorithm is not even going to start recommending the book to readers who are in your target audience. Whereas the more information that you can be giving the Amazon algorithm, or really any sort of digital algorithm, the better because then it can say, oh, well, if this type of customer is purchasing, book a, then I should be showing it to this other customer because they have similar you know, Purchase history, so they might be buying books B and C but, Amazon algorithm realizes, hey, book a is also relevant.

I'm going to show this to them in this, customers also bought [00:04:00] section. So when you are utilizing. Marketing strategies around the launch of your book, you are giving the retailers more information to be recommending your book to other people in your target audience. The 3rd thing when you're following advice, of just letting your book sit out there ultimately you as an author will end up hurt, disappointed, discouraged because you've likely spent years sometimes, Five plus years, you know, sometimes a couple of years writing this book putting together these stories, putting together this message, doing all of this learning and research.

And it can be very disappointing and discouraging when you're looking at that kind of sales line and it's flatlining. So when you are actively getting out there, promoting your book, implementing marketing strategies Then this is something where you can avoid a lot of this hurt.

You can avoid a lot of this disappointment because what you're doing is actually getting the book in front of your ideal readers people who are actually going to be [00:05:00] likely to purchase the book. When you're not doing this, that's when you start seeing those kind of flat lining sales. That's when you start feeling that kind of discouragement, you know, where you might want to just give up completely.

But when you're actually spending time implementing and executing on your marketing plan this is way less likely to happen. So this advice of leaving your book out there for a few months, seeing what happens is not a strategy that you can rely on. But what you can rely on is when you are spending time and investing your time into marketing strategies that are going to help get your book in front of more people.

So, This could look like getting serious about social media and building your community. So getting consistent with creating content and getting content that is going to be meaningful. And that's going to connect with your target reader on to the platform of your choice. Again, it doesn't have to be every single platform.

It can be the 1 that. Is where your audience spends the most time? The same thing could be [00:06:00] said for email newsletters. So can you be using email to, know, share more about your book with a target, reader base? are there advertising platforms that make sense for you? Whether it's Amazon advertising or Facebook advertising, maybe even some case exploring, LinkedIn advertising.

So, yeah. There are several different marketing strategies. It always, will differ based on what your goals are, who your audience is, where they're at, how you're able to reach them. So know, there's not really a one size fits all marketing plan. But what you can control is actually getting out there and doing something.

So That is kind of my, my counter advice to this advice that I heard is you know, get started. Maybe if you've got the luxury of time for four to six months out from when you expect your book to release, to start that runway of marketing strategy, start talking about the concepts and topics that are found in your book and get your audience, get your [00:07:00] community Used to hearing from you, so that by the time your book comes out, and you're posting or sending out information on a more frequent basis, they are expecting it.

And they know they have that trust in the expertise that you've been sharing, for these last couple of months. If you've got ultra luxury of time, you can start doing this community and platform building, a year plus before you're expecting your book to come out. So again, that's something where if you're really thinking long term start, creating content on a consistent basis, whether that's through email, whether it's through social media, whether it's through, finding know, speaking opportunities and building an audience that way.

Really know, do what you can as early as possible to start that community and platform building. But when it comes to specific, marketing strategies for your book, if you can think, for 6 months before you expect the book to come out, that is kind of that ideal, perfect timeline that I'll tell authors and even some publishers to go with.

But again, that's a timeline that [00:08:00] You can't make because your book is already out, or maybe the book comes out in a few weeks. Don't let this deter you from using today as the 1st day to promote your book. So, again, this is, not this is sharing this timeline sharing this, you know, timeline.

Bad piece of advice is not to shame anybody who might have followed similar advice. So if that, if that was you, if you, you know, have gotten to a point where your book has been out and you haven't done marketing today is a great day to start. So if you are an author who doesn't really know what marketing strategies are going to work or what's even possible for you or what's out there, what would make sense for you to do?

few resources that you can turn to know, I try and share as much marketing advice and different strategies and tips on my blog. So you can go to BOOKROCKSTAR.COM/BLOG. See if you can find some advice and inspiration there that is going to help jumpstart your business.

Marketing ideas, marketing strategies. If you want to really dive deep and [00:09:00] learn marketing strategies get lessons, tutorials for different advertising platforms, templates for social media, email exercises that are going to really help you Dive deep into the book marketing process.

That's exactly what I created my online course for. So that's called Book Rockstar All Access Pass. Again, you can find information for that online course at BOOKROCKSTAR.COM. So that course is made to be a one stop shop for authors who are looking to learn The marketing strategies of best selling authors based on my experience from working on the corporate side and in house at a big 5 publisher, but then also, independently with publishers for the last 5 years.

So that's, that course is really kind of made to be a place for an author to go and learn everything that they need to know and have multiple tools and resources at their can start feeling. having clarity on the book marketing process and confidence to go out and get it done. So those are a couple of different resources [00:10:00] that, I'm happy to point you towards.

So go check it out. If you are looking to learn, get inspiration for marketing strategies or kind of really get that more like hands-on approach for how you can actually get it done, head to BOOKROCKSTAR.COM and either click the blog tab or Or scroll down and look for information about the digital resources and the online course.

So again, I hope this is helpful for any authors out there who are have been considering the timeline for their book marketing and trying to figure out when they should get started or kind of what that process looks like. So, again if you have that luxury of time, four to six months out is good, but otherwise just think about it as today being the best day to take the first step.

And if you need help taking that first step, you can find resources at BOOKROCKSTAR.COM So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for tuning in. stay tuned, stay around for more episodes on different book marketing strategies that can help you rock your book [00:11:00] launch.