By Books Author and Podcaster Denise Turney

These 5 clever book marketing techniques help readers discover your titles. You can benefit from the techniques whether you’re a self-published author, bookseller or a literary organization that uses profits from book sales to support those in need.

New Book Marketing Techniques

If you don’t think you need to continue implementing new book marketing techniques, consider these numbers. The first number surprised me:

• About 2 million books are published globally each year. Include self-published books and the number could be around 4 million books each year
• Estimated net revenue from book sales in the U.S. in 2022 was $28.1 billion¹
• Bookstores pulled in about $8.994 billion¹
• 65% of U.S. book buyers purchase books simply to enjoy reading the book¹
• Global trade book sales revenue is estimated to be $78.07 billion, a slight increase over the previous year²
• Print books make up the bulk of the $78.07 billion in revenue, topping $64.35 billion

Most Book Sales

Top genres⁴ that generate the most book sales revenue are:

• Romance³
• Mystery
• Fantasy
• Young Adult
• Children’s Fiction
• Self-Help, Religious, Inspirational
• Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

Write a book in a top selling genre and you could shorten the time it takes to get your book into the hands of 1,000 readers. And it’s this that leads to the first of the five book marketing techniques.

Research Genres First

Research the genre you want to publish a book in. Do this before you write the book and you could save time, not to mention money. Factors to research include:

• Number of books published annually in the genre
• Average sales “per book” generated by the genre (You might have to research this by self-published books, author and books published by the top five publishers, as the numbers will vary by publisher and author.)
• Seasonal peaks – time of year when books in the genre experience the highest sales

Throughout the book marketing process, analytics are your friend. In addition to keeping your from slipping into magical thinking, analytics can point you in the direction that you should go.

First Two Book Marketing Techniques

Regarding the above analytics, the 1^st book marketing technique is to publish books one to two months before the genre’s peak buying season. One to two months will give you time to get book reviews, a definite influence on book sales.

The 2^nd book marketing technique piggybacks on the first. Prior to publishing your book, build a launch team. Offer these people a complimentary copy of your book. You can build a launch team by:

• Adding a sign-up form to your official author website
• Offer those who sign up to become a member of your launch team the first copies of your new book
• Send launch team members a non-editable PDF version of your book with copyright protections written on the document (make sure that you file the book with the copyright office before you share it in any form with anyone)

Building Launch Team

Keep in touch with launch team members by adding them to a distribution list. Send them birthday and holiday greetings. Also, send them beta reader copies of your future books, bookmarks, postcards and T-shirts.

When your new book is published (as well as future books), ask these team members to post their honest review of the book, adding valuable commentary to the review. In other words, encourage these readers to do more than just give the book a star rating.

However, don’t stop with seeking book reviews from your launch team. Book reviews are so important that they’ve earned the spot of being the 3^rd book marketing technique.

How to Get Those Book Reviews

Net Galley, discussion forums and social media book groups are places you can turn to in order to get book reviews. More ways to generate book reviews include:

• Gifting friends with a PDF copy of the book, asking them to share an honest review after they finish reading the book
• Requesting members of book clubs you’ve spoken at or are a member of to post an honest review
• Sharing the book with colleagues, again asking them to share an honest review

The 4^th book marketing technique needs to be put in place before your book is published. With this fourth technique, take advantage of print fonts. For example, if you’ve written a children’s book, consider using large fun fonts for your chapter titles.

Choosing Meta Data

Effective fonts can engage readers. After all, many readers enjoy a story from an emotional and visual perspective. The same applies to font size. Avoid using fonts that are too small or too big.

Complete the 5^th book marketing technique by adding the right meta data (keywords and key phrases) to your title. Google keyword planner, Publisher Rocket, Amazon ad keywords, etc. are tools you could use to find keywords and key phrases, also known as meta data, for your book.

While searching for meta data, consider your book’s genre. For instance, if you’ve written a mystery, choose one or more keywords or key phrases that have words like mystery, suspense or thriller in them.

Other factors to consider when selecting meta data to add to your book description follow:

• Time period your book is set in
• Story location
• Popular key character descriptions

Keep Target Audience in Mind

Also, consider the story’s target audience. Are your target readers college students majoring in liberal arts, biology, economics or creative arts?

Or is your target audience middle-aged women who have been married for 10 or more years, have two to three children, posses a college degree or high school diploma and are self-employed? Keep these readers top of mind while looking for the right meta data.

After all, it’s these readers you’re using keywords and key phrases to attract. Once you discover the right meta data, add it to websites you publish your book at. Include meta data in your book title and your book description.

To keep book sales coming in, commit to marketing and promoting your titles indefinitely. If you do, older titles you publish could sell for decades. Also, keep writing and publishing new books. There’s little like a new book to build interest in your backlist.

Resources:

1. U.S. Book Industry – statistics & facts | Statista
2. Global Book Sales Statistics – WordsRated
3. 23 Gripping Book Industry Statistics [2023]: Average Book Sales Over Time And By Genre – Zippia
4. 30 Book Genres (List of fiction and nonfiction categories to know) (authority.pub)