Hey writers! If you are wrapping up the first draft of your manuscript, you might be wondering: “How do I get people excited for this thing?”
Whether you are planning to publish traditionally or on your own, it is always helpful to have people waiting excitedly for your release. How do you do that, you ask? I will walk you through the steps and teach you how to build hype for your book before it’s published!
My name is Cortney L. Winn and I’m a fantasy/romance author, but I’m also a business marketing major! That means I know what it’s like to write a book, and I also know how to get that book in front of your ideal readers!
If you already have an author platform set up through Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc., great job! The sooner you start one, the better! A successful book launch begins way before your book hits the shelves, and honestly, there’s no such thing as too early to start marketing you or your book. If you haven’t made an author account, I suggest doing it today! If you do have author accounts, give me a follow on Instagram or Tik Tok, so I can support you on your book journey!
Building Excitement for your book:
First, you need to have a platform. Sorry to those of you who hate social media. You need to be like The Little Mermaid and “be where the people are.”
Make friends! Seriously, start talking to people and build meaningful connections with them. Find friends who are writing, reading, loving the same books as you, and build friendships.
Support other writers. They are not your competition. They are your life-long friends in the writing community. Support them by buying their books, sharing their posts, or even sending them funny book memes. (I particularly love terrible book puns.) Support them, and they will support you.
Create content. Do not groan at this! If you need ideas on what to share, check out my blog post, Content Ideas for Authors. Make sure you post regularly (yes, on a schedule), and make sure your content is recognizable as your own. In other words, follow the same color scheme for your posts. Choose brand fonts and stick with them. Make a logo. However you do this, people need to see your post and know immediately that it’s yours.
Post this type of content, specifically: I’m going to highlight specific content that makes your audience excited to read your book. The biggest one here is READER REVIEWS. This can be alpha or beta reader reviews. This is called customer-generated content, and it is very effective in the marketing industry. It also falls under the category of ‘word of mouth’ which, as we all know, is HUGE for books. The next thing that you should be posting is SNIPPETS. Why? Because they give your audience a sample of your writing. It can help them to decide if it is a book they will like and will buy.
Have multiple avenues for engagement. This step is hard. I’m not going to lie. Not all your ideal readers will be on one platform, and if you have the capacity to manage more than one platform, it can multiply your results. I repurpose my content across all my platforms to reduce some of the stress this causes. Think of your online presence as if you’re catching baseballs. Would you rather have a glove, or would you rather have a net? If you said net, congrats. You get it. I am currently on Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, YouTube, and my website, obviously. If you are serious about building a fanbase, you might want to consider multiple platforms. However, (and this is important) know your limitations, because it is very possible to spread yourself too thin. Another warning I might add would be: if you don’t understand the platform you’re on, you won’t be able to gain much from it. Take the time to learn each platform before branching to a new one.
Your author website: it should not be a billboard. It should be a party with interactive tid-bits all over the place. My favorite piece of website advice is “No dead-ends.” For a good author website, you want different types of content. Think, videos, pictures, music, blog posts, links, etc. You do not have to have all these things, but the more variety you have, the longer people will stay on your site. The more engaged they are, the more likely they will be to buy your stories! Important tips for your website: make it user friendly, easy to navigate, and please, for the love of all things holy, have some reviews on there! It can be a review of a chapter, a paragraph, a sentence! Anything will work here. Heck, the review can be from your mom, okay?
Be in this for the long haul. This is an EXTREMELY competitive industry. If you aren’t here to stay—if you don’t put in the work month after month AFTER MONTH—you will be yesterday’s news. No, actually, you won’t even make yesterday’s news. . . unless it is the obituary section. You must post when no one engages with it. You must show up when you doubt yourself the most. And you have to do it day in and day out. You have to believe with everything you have that you belong here, otherwise, no one else will believe it either.
Be aware of your mental health. I know my tips can be intense, but I am being real with you. If your goal is to make an income from selling books (indie or trad) you have to be hungrier than the other authors out there. I know I said above that they are not your competition. They aren’t. It’s this industry. It’s social media. It’s this world of technology. Everyone and everything is competing for your readers’ attention. If you don’t believe me, take a look at your TBR pile. Every reader has one, and in order to get your book into someone’s TBR you have to be good. To get your book into their hands and in front of their reading glasses, you have to be phenomenal. I am not talking about your story (although that does help, a lot) I am talking about your work ethic and your ability to learn. That is not to say you shouldn’t take breaks. Content calendars are great for taking a leave of absence. Communicate with your audience if you’ll be taking a break and let them know for how long. Keep tabs on your mental health and have a plan in place for when you get tired. Don’t be afraid to scale back, but never give up on your dreams. They are in you for a reason.
If you liked this post and want to see more like it, follow my Instagram or, if you like romantasy books, sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of this page. You'll get a snippet of Vesselless sent to your email! If you want to see what Vesselless is about head to My Books page!
Thank you to everyone who has followed my journey and supported me every step of the way! I am so grateful to each of you!
XOXO,
Cort
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