How to Promote a Self-Published Book

When I say the fist steps, I don’t mean when you are ready to launch your book onto the market. I mean before you are going to launch it. Preferably at least two months before the official release date.

Start promoting your novel in advance. The key is to try and build a buzz around your book. Not just your book though, you too. You are a brand now. Can you come up with some great share worthy content for your social media pages? Think outside of the box. Get someone to take some great images of you at your computer and post them out with hashtags.

A hard launch is the best way forward. Before you embark on this course though, be sure of your release date. Make sure everything is in place. You have the completed, edited manuscript, the cover design in the right dimensions and you’ve covered all of the bases when it comes to copyright material.

If you don’t have one then you should. If you can’t afford to employ a developer to build it for you then you might like to take a look at Wordpress, SquareSpace or Wicks. Each of these platforms has either an SEO plugin or has one as standard (built in)

Have an engaging home page with some captivating imagery and enough text to satisfy the Google algorithm. Embed a blog and always have an ‘About The Author’ page. Add your book details with some catchy call to action text and a link to your book on Amazon.

If you are using Wordpress then you can download a free version of YOAST for your SEO. SquareSpace and Wicks have it built into the template.

Add a search friendly title - Your Book Title Here - Popular Womens Fiction

You are allowed around 70 characters including spaces so think carefully.

Include meta descriptions that accurately reflect your book and your individual pages.

YouTube is a great platform for new writers. Talk about yourself, what you like, how you write, what inspires you etc. Make sure you optimise your channel and each video in the setting section. Just checkout how to do this on Youtube!

When you are ready to start filming just go for it. You'll want to edit your content and YouTube users like slick professional looking content over un-edited content. There is plenty of editing software available.

I'm sure you already have the usual suspects like Facebook and Twitter, but have you thought about Pinterest? I get a huge amount of traffic via this sharing platform. Don't just add images of your book cover, but images of yourself with links back to your website. Add search friendly text to you pins such as: New authors for 2018. Add your blog posts here too. Make sure, as always that you use eye-catching imagery and catchy titles.

So all of the above before you even think about submitting your book to KDP.

When you finally do submit your novel to KDP for approval, make sure you add descriptive keywords. You have six key-phrase boxes to use, so again, use them wisely. Don’t use the name of your book because you’ll have that in the title so you’ll be wasting a valuable search term. Think long tail key phrases - So perhaps: Popular womens books 2018, new books for young adults…..

Use all of the SEO tools available to you within your KDP account. Break up your description with subtitles and be sure to use H1, H2 or H3 tags. You’ll see a list of permitted html code. Don’t be scared of it. Just give it a go. You can always go back and edit the content later if you don’t like the way it looks. KDP allows you to make edits and and when you want to. There are no restrictions, but it's worth bearing in mind they will not be published immediately.

So you’re good to go. Be realistic and allow a year to become established as a writer. Don’t give up when it seems like you can’t get anything the than free downloads. It will get better, believe me, I know.