Market A Book: 20 Ways To Promote A Book In 10 Minutes

Easy ways to promote a book in only a few minutes

For authors and publishers, learning how to market a book is one of the most challenging tasks in the self-publishing process. But it doesn’t need to take hours and hours of your time.

However, it is worth taking a moment to do a recap and define what book promotion and your marketing strategy mean.

In brief, any action you take to bring your book to the notice of potential readers is of high value. Whether it is an expensive advertising campaign or a short post on one of your social media platforms, the aim is exactly the same.

It is to encourage as many people as possible to consider buying copies of your book. But importantly, it is not a means of finding people to buy your book.

Think of it this way. Attracting social media followers is all about finding people, connecting, and then communicating. It’s a very slow and time-consuming process.

Online marketing or promoting your book is about getting your book out to the world in as many ways as possible and to as many people and places as possible. The more eyes you can attract to your book, the better your chances of making book sales.

Ideally, for Indie publishing, the different ways you use to do this should be both time and cost-effective, as well as having a long-lasting effect.

With these goals in mind, here are 20 ways to help your book sales. Each idea will only take around ten minutes for you to do.

20 Ten-Minute (Mostly Free) Ways To Quickly Promote Your Book

1. Re-Post one of your 5-star book reviews

You can add your review on Facebook and Twitter along with your book cover image and pin it to the top of your feed so every visitor will see it – for weeks or months.

To get the link to your review on Amazon, go to the review, and click the permalink button. Then copy this address from your browser.

2. Open a Pinterest account

Pinterest helps you to gain image search traffic to your website or blog. It’s an ideal social network for book covers because it works by attracting interest purely from images.

Here is a quick screenshot of my Pinterest referral traffic from my Google Analytics account to show you how it can deliver a steady stream of new visitors to your blog.

3. Add a comment on a popular book blog

Look for articles on three high traffic book blogs and post a comment.

You’d be surprised how many people click on comment links, which will lead readers to your profile, your email address, author website or blog.

It’s a bit like a book tour, but it is much easier and quicker for you.

4. Add a comment to a newspaper article

Look for a major newspaper lifestyle article. Make sure it is a non-topical article though. Avoid politics.

Once again, your profile link as a published author will be valuable in gaining some traffic to your blog and books.

5. Check your author bio again

Carefully read your bio or profile on your social media sites.

Has it been exactly the same for a very long time? Does it need refreshing to make it more appealing to readers? Can you improve it? I am sure you can.

Authors hate writing bios, and would much prefer to write a book instead. But, it’s a task that has to be done.

If it has been a while since your book launch, perhaps you could check your book trailer again too and improve it.

6. Publish to Medium

Open an account on Medium and re-publish your best-performing blog posts or short stories.

It’s a very easy process to import articles from your blog. Medium can help you gain a lot of new readers. Remember to put a link at the end of the article to your author website or blog.

7. Do you have a Facebook Page?

If not, create one and then invest a little money in gaining Facebook Likes for your page.

On average it costs about 8 to 15 cents per Like. That’s cheap, and also a wise long-term investment to get people to read your book as Facebookers very rarely unlike a page.

8. Open a short URL account

You can open an account on bit.ly and shorten all your commonly used book links so they look far more attractive when you post them on social media or add links to your blog posts or comments.

Tip! You can edit these short links to reflect a little of your book title or author name.

With bit.ly you can change this very ugly book link:https://www.amazon.com/One-Last-Love-never-late-ebook/dp/B007L5C424/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1499424937&sr=8-16&keywords=one+last+love

To this attractive and meaningful link:http://bit.ly/onelastlove

Which one do you think will work better and attract more clicks?

9. Run an ad

You can quickly set up and run ads on Facebook or Amazon. But with either, be prudent and stay well within your budget.

10. Place an ad on your blog

Find three of your best-performing blog articles and place your book cover image as a text-wrapped ad.

You can insert a link to Amazon, or you can use a universal link to all your book retailers.

It doesn’t need to be a big image. Size it to suit your article.

Where better to advertise for free than on your own site?

11. Find three high traffic book, writing or publishing blogs and write an article

Make contact and ask if you can write an article for them.

Many sites have a Write For Us or guest posting page, so keep your eyes open for opportunities to promote your writing to a much wider audience.

Tip! In fact, some writers don’t even bother with having their own blog, because having articles published on popular sites brings far more traffic, readers and importantly, social shares.

12. Set up a free ebook promotion

Free books are a lottery. But hopefully, someone will read your free Kindle books and be kind enough to post a review. Online book clubs often choose free ebooks, so it’s worth a try.

On this point, I discovered I had a new book review recently, which I think came by way of a free Kindle copy of an ebook I last offered for free well over a year ago. Now that really is long-term free promotion.

13. Is your book cover absolutely fabulous and eye-catching?

Now, be brutally honest with yourself, or better still, ask people what they think. If you don’t have a top-shelf killer book cover, take a few minutes to search for a reputable book cover designer and hire one.

Also, check how your cover looks in thumbnail size. It is the first impression of your book that potential buyers will see, so it has to be good.

You can use a free book cover creator to help you design a better book cover.

14. Buy affordable long-term book promotion

Whizbuzz Books offers one year of book promotion for only $49.00. There are many book promotion sites offering different book promotion services.

15. Read an article about SEO

Read an article about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and put one or two ideas into practice for your blog or website.

Search engine traffic is by far the best way to attract new potential readers and book buyers, day in and day out.

16. Check your book metadata (SEO for books)

Check your keywords and categories for your book on Amazon KDP or any other online retailer you use.

Can you make a few small changes to your categories or keywords that would help readers find your book more easily?

Book discovery by user search on Amazon is the most powerful way to sell books. So check and change your categories and keywords to make your book more discoverable.

17. Is your book in KDP Select?

If your book in not enrolled in KDP Select, why not try it for 3 months to see if you can attract Kindle Unlimited readers.

Or, if you have been in KDP Select for quite some time, perhaps try open publishing for a while.

18. Change your book price

Is your book too expensive, or even perhaps, too cheap? Try changing the price for a few weeks.

19. Use the Amazon book widget

Add Amazon’s embedded book widget on your website or blog. It looks fantastic and gives visitors a chance to read a preview of your book and buy it, directly on your site. It is one of the best widgets to help you sell books.

20. Create your Amazon author page

Every bestselling author has one. If you haven’t done so yet, create your author page on Amazon Author Central.

You can add your blog feed, change and improve the look of your book descriptions, add editorial reviews and much more.

Yes, you can add book reviews to your Amazon book sales page that will not be deleted.

An Amazon Central author page is a must-have promotion tool.

Tip! You can create your author pages on Amazon US, Amazon UK and Amazon Germany.

Bonus Tip – Update your email signature

If you use email a lot or have an email list, this is as close to word of mouth advertising as you can get.

Add your, blog, Amazon Author page or even a thumbnail or your book cover to your email signature.

It will then be automatic and ongoing book advertising for you.

Extra Bonus Tip – Start promoting your new book now

Not a ten-minute tip, however. Start working on letting people know well before your next book is published, or is even written.

It’s never too early to tell people about your books, and it will be a great source of new material for your blog.