No one wants to waste thousands of dollars on a failed promotion campaign for a book. Promotions are essential—especially when you’re new and don’t have a name to rely on. Unfortunately, many promotions available come with a price, and sometimes it can be hard to tell which will actually help your book.
If you’re publishing on a budget and want to get the best return possible, the solution is simple: group promotions and newsletters.
The best people who can help you sell your book are those who are already successful at selling their own, who are willing to share your book to an audience already dedicated to buying what they love.
Many promotional methods take a lot of time and money, and especially when you’re a new author can be an unwelcome risk.
Group Promos? Swaps? What are we talking about?
Group promotions often center around a topic, genre or subgenre. They can be as general or as specific as you could imagine.
For large group promotions, authors share the promotion with their mailing list and possibly advertise it on social media. Readers enter contests or simply choose from the list of books shared to find new favorites, depending on the nature of the promotion.
It’s easy to rake up hundreds or even thousands of new fans with this kind of promotion, especially when a giveaway is involved. While some of them might not stick around for your future books, many will look at your book and check it out when they can or choose to follow your list.
Mailer swaps are smaller and more intimate. You share a book someone else wrote, and that other person will share yours. Readers benefit from having more books to choose from, and when your book is custom-picked for a promotion like this it gets more of a spotlight.
These swaps are fun and easy to stack, and some authors like stringing together a bunch of other titles for their readers in exchange for a host of mini-promotions of your own book. In addition, they’re easy to set up and cost less up front than a group promotion, making them accessible even to people with very small, very new mailing lists.
How can you get involved?
Both of these promotions are highly casual and easy to dive into if you're curious. On a most basic level, you can start a group promotion or a mailer swap simply by asking other authors you know if they’re up for it.
What if you don’t have a community like that?
There are several options for finding a group if you have none.
Book Funnel and StoryOrigin both have strong communities of authors willing to promote, and both make promotion as easy as a few clicks. Even if you’re not tech-savvy, it doesn’t get easier.
These services do come with a price tag, but it’s low compared to other options and often pays for itself within a few weeks. The ease of promotion and the stress taken off of your publishing cycle are also well worth it.
There are other writing communities you can get involved in as well. Some online groups, such as the ones found on Facebook, often allow people to form groups and encourage networking with other authors. You just need to check with the requirements first and then get ready to schedule a promotion.
Keep in mind that writing is the most important part of your work. If you find yourself spending more time promoting your books than creating them, it’s a good idea to step back and look for ways to work smarter so you can get back to what you love.
Bonus: You want a lot of group promos, and as a general rule, more is merrier. I’ve created a sample planner if you want an at-a-glance look at your publishing process, and you can access it and other goodies by becoming a Patron with the button below. Thanks as always for your support!