How To Promote Your Book Online Even If You’re A New Author

Are you an author who wants to brainstorm more about how to sell your books online? Maybe you want to promote your book online, but you’re not sure how to start?

If so, then you should read this guide! We’re about to brainstorm all about book promotion from A-Z.

If you want to use your book to generate leads, or if you’re going to sell your book online, then this guide shall contain a ton of sparkling gems.

Let’s spend some time diving deep all about book promotion ideas for authors. Let’s also look at why book publishing rocks, and also some cool book promotional ideas that might surprise you.

In This Epic Book Promotion Guide, You’ll Discover The Following:

Why the author profiles on Bookbub and Goodreads are a stroke of genius.
You’ll learn about the critical differences between KDP and KDP Select, and why publishing on Kindle is incredible.
You’ll learn why Smashwords is one of the smartest ways to make your self-publishing efforts a breeze.
Two powerful ways to transform your books!
You’ll also discover the exciting ins and outs of sales funnels for authors.
Two simple apps to help build beautiful sales pages so you can promote your book online.
Discover how your book can help to generate targeted leads.
You’ll learn about an old-school marketplace that’s perfect for launching and promoting your book.
Plus a ton more!

Promote Your Book On Bookbub And Goodreads

Two of the coolest places to list your book immediately are Bookbub and Goodreads. Both Bookbub and Goodreads make it very easy for you to launch an online presence and also a nifty-looking author profile.

You can use this profile to centralize all of your different books, to showcase your profile, and to promote your upcoming book launches.

Both of these services offer excellent opportunities for you to list your books online.

Other benefits are easy to overlook. First of all, Bookbub and Goodreads make it easy for your potential readers to find you. Once you create an Author profile, these services can help to pull your book’s metadata from Amazon. This way, your Author profile will quickly populate a ton of your book’s data and organize it neatly on your new profile page.

Your readers can also review your content on these platforms, which can be a fantastic way to generate social proof as an author.

As you know, nobody wants to be the first person to read a book! Everyone loves the popular titles. So you can encourage your readers to leave reviews for you on these platforms if you wish.

Another massive benefit of bothBookbub and Goodreads is that they offer paid advertising opportunities! So, you can buy paid advertising on either of these platforms if you want. We’ll discuss the idea of paid advertising in more detail later on in this guide.

Benefits Of Listing Your Book On Bookbub And Goodreads:

Bookbub and Goodreads both pull your book’s artwork automatically from Amazon Kindle.
Both platforms can be a great way to reach a new audience.
All of your fans can follow you on these platforms, and write reviews.
You can keep your amazing readers up to date on both platforms!

Promote Your Books On Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle is easily one of the fastest and easiest ways to promote and sell your book online.

Make no mistake about it; Amazon is easily one of, if not the single largest bookseller on the planet! Therefore, listing your books on this market is recommended.

You can publish on Amazon for free, and I promise, it’s ridiculously easy to list and sell your books on their platform. You upload your manuscript, write a sales letter, decide the cost of your book, and hit publish.

Amazon Kindle makes it wildly easy to list and sell your book online. Whether you want to list your digital edition on Kindle, or if you have physical bound books, then Amazon is recommended.

One variable of consideration is KDP Select. In other words, do you want your book to be exclusive to Amazon? Let’s spend a minute talking about Amazon KDP vs. Amazon KDPS.

The Major Differences Between Amazon KDP, and Amazon KDPS

There are two primary flavors of Amazon publishing that you need to know about and consider. The first is Amazon KDP, and the other is Amazon KDPS.

Amazon KDP is Kindle Direct Publishing. KDPS is Kindle Direct Publishing Direct.

Either option is beneficial for authors; there is one primary difference. With KDPS (KDP Select), you grant Amazon exclusivity for your book.

In other words, if you publish your book through KDP Select, you may not distribute your book elsewhere. Amazon does give you advantages if you decide to offer Amazon exclusivity.

Advantages Of Amazon KDP Select:

Amazon gives you slightly better royalties! For example, Your books earn 70% royalties on sales from Mexico, Japan, Brazil, and also India when enrolled in KDP Select.
Amazon lets you place your books in the Kindle Unlimited in the United States. Your book is also eligible in the KOLL (Kindle Owner’s Lending Library).

Amazon KDP Select Also Gives You More Promotional Options:

Promotional option # 1 – Kindle free promotions.
Promotional option # 2 – Kindle countdown deals.

Should You Choose Amazon KDP Select To Help Promote Your Book?

One of the biggest questions that a lot of my writing colleagues have is if they should enroll their books in Amazon KDP Select. At this point, I use KDP Select. I think it’s cool.

There are a ton of advantages to offering Amazon exclusivity!

Ask yourself, do you have any intention of publishing your book elsewhere?

For example, do you want to publish your book on Barnes and Noble, on ClickBank, or your website?

If you choose to go with the noteworthy KDP Select, really the only downside is that you may not publish your books elsewhere.

So if you don’t want to publish your books on other platforms, then you may as well go for Amazon KDP Select. Amazon has a ton of cool promotional features that aren’t available anywhere else. The only thing Amazon asks for in return is exclusivity, which is fair.

Amazon KDP Select IS For You If:

If you want to publish on Amazon and nowhere else.
KDP Select rocks if you want to earn more royalties from book sales from India, Brazil, Japan, and Mexico.
KDP Select is excellent if you want to take advantage of free promotion days and Kindle countdown deals.

Amazon KDP Select Is NOT For You If:

If you want to publish your books on other platforms.
KDP Select isn’t ideal if you want to sell your book on your website.

Promote Your Book By Publishing On Smashwords

If you decide that you wish to forego the benefits of Amazon KDP Select, then you should check out Smashwords.

Smashwords is a fantastic service for authors that lets you publish to a variety of retail book outlets from one central hub.

So, if you love the idea of publishing your books far and wide, Smashwords is an ingenious platform to use.

Smashwords makes self-publishing and promoting your book ridiculously simple. You upload your book to Smashwords, and then you can send it far and wide without any stress or technical hassle.

Another massive benefit of Smashwords is that you don’t need to create 15 new accounts and individually launch your book on different platforms. Smashwords saves you a ton of time, frustration, and annoyance.

The best part is that it’s free to list your books. Smashwords also consolidate sales reports so your tax at the end of the year will be neat and tidy, as opposed to dealing with different platforms and reports individually. Overall, Smashwords rocks, is mighty, can save you a ton of time, and is worth checking out.

Here’s A List Of Platforms That Smashwords Works With:

Promote Your Book By Using Sales Funnels

The first thing to know about sales funnels for authors is that there are so many different types and variations.

For this guide, a book sales funnel is simply a regular sales funnel where you sell a book as the front end product.

It’s also critical to consider that there is a wide variety of different sales funnels for authors! Each of them has a set of unique features and benefits.

For Example, Here Are A Handful Of Marketing/Sales Funnel Ideas For Authors:

A free plus shipping funnel.
A lead magnet funnel.
An upsell funnel.
A traditional sales letter.
A video sales letter funnel.
An automated webinar funnel.

Promote Your Book By Turning Your Book Into An Audiobook

If you already have an excellent book that you’ve spent weeks or even months writing, then why not make the most out of that book?

These days it’s super easy to turn your book into an audiobook. If turning your book into an audiobook sounds way too hard or expensive, or complicated, then relax!

You Only Need A Few Things To Launch Your Audiobook:

A book script for you to read (you probably already have this).
You need a cheap USB microphone ($50 on Amazon).
An audiobook marketplace to publish your books (use KDX).

You can find a USB microphone on Amazon for pretty cheap. I use the Blue Snowball (which is around $50) or the Samsom GoMic (around $40), and both of them are decent.

The cool thing about creating an audiobook is that there are many services you can use to help distribute your book.

For example, ACX is an excellent audiobook service that will help you list your audiobooks in the marketplace.

ACX Helps To Launch Your Books In The Following Marketplaces:

Promote Your Book By Turning Your Book Into A Video Course

If you have a written draft, and an audiobook, then creating an online course is a smart step to consider next.

I could rant and rave about why online courses rock for hours. The most important thing to know is that the eLearning industry is enormous! According to this Forbes article, the eLearning marketplace is slated to be worth over $325 billion by 2025. That’s three-hundred, and twenty-five billion!

If you’ve never thought about creating an online course before, then the entire process might seem daunting.

After teaching many dozens of online courses, and enrolling well over 14,000+ unique students, I can promise you that teaching is easier than it seems.

I’m the biggest introvert on the planet! So, if I can muster the courage to teach online courses, then I’m so confident that you can too.

Here’s A List Of Things That You Need To Teach Your First Online Courses:

A course script (you already have this! Your book or your audiobook are perfect).
A cheap USB microphone (Can be snagged for $50 on Amazon).
You need a good landing page builder or course marketplace.
A good SlideShare software (I’m a huge fan of Microsoft PowerPoint 365).
A reliable screencast software. (Camtasia, ActivePresenter, or Screencast-o-matic all rock).

If you decide to turn your written book into an audiobook, then the entire course launching process becomes much more comfortable.

Because, once you have an audiobook recorded, your course is nearly finished.

From that point, the only thing you’d need to do is to create some slides using PowerPoint. Then, you can use screencasting software to help overlay your presentation over your audiobook, and then you end up with a course ready to launch.

There is also a myriad of online course platforms that you can use to launch your online course.

Here’s A List Of My Favorite Online Learning Platforms:

Why You Should Use Sales Funnels Or Marketing Funnels To Promote Your Book Online

The main idea of a marketing funnel is to improve the viability of promoting your product.

If you’re promoting your book with Pay Per Click, then it can be challenging to afford the cost of advertising. That’s because the cost of advertising can be sky-high, as you know.

A sales funnel’s primary purpose is to position yourself, so it’s easier to afford to advertise your book. The idea is that, hopefully, your book buyers will also consider buying your other products and services.

For example, if you’re selling a book for $3 per book, then it will be impossible to afford to advertise if the cost per click is $4, right? Because, even if your book sales letter converts at 100%, you will still be losing $1 per click.

But, what happens if you sell a $1,000 coaching program after your book buyer buys your book? Now, you have a chance to increase your average value per customer!

A book marketing funnel can help you to promote upsells, to generate leads, and to cross-sell your other offers. You can even use a book sales funnel to advertise affiliate products if you want.

Here’s Why Marketing/Sales Funnels Are A Genius Marketing Tool For Authors:

Sales funnels can allow you to advertise your other books.
Sales funnels can allow you to generate email leads.
Sales funnels can allow you to promote your business, your service, or your other products.
Sales funnels can even allow you to promote affiliate products.

Think About Upsells That Your Book Sales Process Might Offer

The first thing to remember about book sales funnel or any marketing funnel design is that it never starts or ends with your book.

Let’s pretend that you want to launch a traditional sales funnel complete with one-time offer upsells. What service/product would your book-buyer need after they buy your book?

When you design an upsell for your sales funnel, always try to think about your ideal reader. The more you know about your dream reader, the easier it will be to provide an excellent book-buying experience. Knowledge, used wisely, is the most powerful marketing tool!

The Perfect Sales Funnel Upsell Ideas For Authors

If you’re going to build a sales funnel, then you may as well offer some one time offer upsell.

An upsell can allow you to increase your average value per customer. Your average profit per customer is ridiculously significant. As you know, if your value per customer is too low, then it’s challenging to afford the cost of advertising.

Ask Yourself These Questions About Your Book Sales Funnel One Time Offer Upsell:

What other products and services could you offer to your buyer after they purchase your book?
Do you offer any coaching or consulting?
Do you teach any online courses?
Do you offer any professional services?
Do you have any other books that you can sell?
Do you have any excellent affiliate programs that you can promote?

2 Nifty Apps To Quickly Help Promote Your Book Online

There are a handful of options when it comes time for you to build your book’s sales funnel. One option is to use WordPress to help make your book sales funnel. There are plenty of premium WordPress themes so your sales page shall look beautiful. There are also tons of eCommerce plugins for WordPress to help handle the sale of your book. Thrive content is an excellent plugin that can even help you to build beautiful sales letters, complete with upsells. I’m a huge fan of Thrive!

If you’re not a fan of WordPress, then don’t worry. There are plenty of marketing page builders that are ridiculously easy to use. One of my favorites is ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels makes it easy to help design all of the marketing and sales pages for you.

That way, you don’t have to do any of the computer code. Any robust page builder worth its salt will have plenty of sales page templates that you can use.

The exact pages your sales funnel needs will depend upon the style of your sales funnel. Do you want to have an upsell funnel, a free lead magnet sales funnel, a video sales letter, or maybe a combination of different styles?

Either way, your book sales funnel might contain a variety of the following pages.

A Book Marketing Funnel May Contain The Following Pages:

A sales letter.
An upsell sales letter. (Or even many upsell sales letters!).
A checkout page.
A confirmation you page.
A download page.
An email followup campaign.

How A Book Marketing Funnel Helps To Generate Leads

Whether you want to generate high-ticket coaching leads, or if you wish to build an email list, sales funnels rock for lead generation!

A lot of authors automatically add their buyers onto their email list. In the day of GDPR, I’m not sure that this action is wise. So, it’s always best to ASK for the express permission of your readers before you add them to your newsletter.

The reason sales funnels rock for authors is that they give you so many potential avenues to promote your lead capture page.

Here Are A Few Promotional Methods That Marketing Funnels Provide To Authors:

You can promote your lead capture page on your book’s download page.
You could promote a lead capture page in your member’s area.
You can promote your email newsletter at the end of your book.
You can promote your webinar funnel on the footer of every page.
You can sprinkle the book content itself with offers to join your email newsletter.
You can promote a compelling lead magnet at the beginning of your book.

How To Promote Your Book By Launching On ClickBank

One question you might have as an author is how to include the dreaded “Add To Cart” button on your first sales page.

In other words, how the heck do you integrate a payment gateway onto your sales funnel sales pages? After all, your website visitors need to pay for your book before they read it.

There are a few different options that you can use. Let’s spend a minute talking about ClickBank.

ClickBank is great if you want to list your book in a digital marketplace.

Listing your product on ClickBank is surprisingly simple. Once you have your book’s sales page online, the only thing you need to do is copy and paste your ClickBank’s “buy button” onto your book’s sales page.

You configure your “thank you page,” or “download page” inside of your ClickBank account.

So, after your customer lands on your book’s sales page, they will click on your “buy now” button. After your prospective reader clicks on that button, they are then taken to the payment gateway hosted by ClickBank.

After your reader buys the book, they are then automatically forwarded to your “download page” so they can download your book.

There are a small handful of essential reasons why you might want to list your book for sale on ClickBank.

Why Promote Your Book On ClickBank:

ClickBank makes it easy to start your affiliate program.
ClickBank has a ton of affiliates.
ClickBank is cheap to use! You can list your product for about $25 – $60.
ClickBank makes it easy to accept online payments.
ClickBank has a neat and easy to use payment gateway so you can even help you to deliver your products to your customers.
ClickBank is very easy to use. ClickBank easily integrates with many different page builders.

How To Easily Promote Your Book Sales Funnel

Once you have a sales funnel up and running, now comes time to promote it.

There are two main avenues to promote your sales funnel. The first avenue is through content marketing.

So if you have a blog, then you could announce the launch of your book on your blog. Or, if you have a Podcast, announce the book launch on your Podcast.

Of course, if you have an email list of existing subscribers, then launching your book is infinitely more manageable.

If content marketing isn’t your style, then it’s also possible to try promoting your book with paid advertising.

Paid advertising is tough! And, of course, it’s never as easy as the marketing experts say it is, even if your funnel rocks.

So, if you want to experiment with paid ads, test small! Try to split test several variations of your sales page to see what works, and what doesn’t work.

Here Are A Few Advertising Platforms To Help Promote Your Book Online:

Book Promotion Concluding Thesis

Writing and launching a book is a ton of work.

That’s why learning the marketing side of sales funnels and marketing funnels is such a big deal.

Because if you bend over backward to write a remarkable book, then you may as well try your best to promote it!

Share your message with the world: one reader, and one page at a time.

Thanks for reading and happy writing!

Mike “The Book Launch” DeVincent

MrComputerScience.com

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