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Marketing Magic: How to Sell Your Book Without Selling Your Soul

• Amra Pajalic

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We explore how to market your book effectively without compromising your values or feeling overwhelmed. This episode offers practical strategies from metadata optimisation to social media marketing that work for both indie and traditionally published authors.

• Marketing is about connecting your story with readers who need it most
• Prepare comprehensive metadata including keywords, descriptions, and retail links
• Create titles and covers that meet genre expectations rather than trying to stand out
• Develop multiple versions of your blurb from one-sentence to full description
• Make a dedicated book page on your website with downloadable media kit materials
• Use universal purchase links for all promotions rather than favoring one retailer
• Create evergreen social media content that can be regularly recycled
• Design a unique hashtag for your book or series to build brand recognition
• Build an advanced reader team through platforms like NetGalley or your own list
• Focus on marketing activities you genuinely enjoy and can sustain long-term

You can download my metadata template from my website to help prepare your book for publication. Remember, marketing is a marathon, not a sprint - find what works for you and keep connecting with readers who will appreciate your stories.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to Amara's Armchair Anecdotes. And today I'm talking about how to market your book. So it's how to sell your book without selling your soul. So just some practical tips about you know how to go from the book idea to long tail sales. There are some tips here that will be helpful, whether you're an indie author or whether you are traditionally published. First, I'm going to start with something that's more relevant to indie authors, which is when you are first preparing a book to be published, the first thing that you need to do is prepare the metadata. The first thing that you need to do is prepare the metadata, so that is like the title, the descriptions, the ISBN, all of the things that you will need to upload your book onto retail platforms. So to do that, oh my gosh, welcome to amra's armchair anecdotes. And today I'm talking about how to market your book without selling your soul. So there will be tips here that are relevant for indie authors as well as traditionally published authors, and I'm just sort of going to take you through all the things that you need to think about before publication and then the launch and post launch.

Speaker 1:

So first of all, I just want to talk about what is marketing. So marketing is about connecting your story with readers who need it most. So you think about it as storytelling. You're just telling a story in a different format and it's something about you know don't try to be everywhere, be where your readers are. I found that definition really helpful in terms of thinking about it, about connecting with readers and about sharing my story and sharing news of my book and sharing all the different things that I've been doing and that helped me to figure out how to market and to not view it as something, you know, really daunting, but just if you focus on it being sharing and joy, I find that it makes it easier and I found things about it that I really love doing.

Speaker 1:

Before I start talking about the you know big marketing, I wanted to talk about metadata. So this is more relevant for indie authors, and the metadata is all of the information that goes into your book. So it's the things that we see, like the title and the cover, but it's also the things that we don't see. So when we're uploading information about our books to retailers, it's where we categorize them. It's the keywords that we list so that if people are searching for a book and they use those keywords, they find our book, and so I'm going to share on my website and within my show notes a template of a metadata template.

Speaker 1:

So it's an Excel spreadsheet that, when you are an indie author, you basically use to prepare all your information about the book before you publish. So you obviously need to have the title, and then you have three different descriptions. You have a short description, which is your one sentence, a medium description, which is a few sentences, and then your full blurb. Now you need all these different descriptions because when you are entering your metadata on the different retail platforms or when you are marketing your book on social media, you need the variety of descriptions that you can use. Then you need to think about the keywords that you're going to use, and so for that, you buy Rocket Publisher and you research which category your book should be placed in and the keywords that should be used.

Speaker 1:

And this spreadsheet that I've got is really helpful because it's about putting all of the links that you need as you are promoting your book, of the links that you need as you are promoting your book. So it's, you know, linking all of your sales pages, your book funnel, landing page, reviews, etc. And so I find this really invaluable for preparing my book for launch and then also for having the one place where I've got everything, where I can just click on things I can click on. You know, if I'm looking for the retail link, I want a nice shortcut for that. I've got everything listed and that's the one thing that is sort of invisible, that is in the background, but that is really important because if you set up your metadata correctly and you fill out all of the information that is requested on retail platforms and the different platforms that we use to get a book to publication, all of that links together and all of that sort of works together to market your book, because then if you have the one ISBN for your e-book and you publish it on the six different retail platforms, all of those retail platforms will be linked because you're using the one ISBN. So it's just something that's really important in terms of preparing a book. And the other reason that it's important to have that spreadsheet is you want to copy things across. You don't want to be typing things in and possibly making mistakes, and so it's about preparing everything and also making the publication process easier and quicker. So I will link that to the show notes. So when we're talking about marketing, we're talking about the core content.

Speaker 1:

So your first thing is your marketing book, which is the blurb of your book. So you're thinking about your title. Sorry, this is the first marketing book. It must speak to the genre and evoke emotions. You can test options with your newsletter or social media followers. It's really important that it's not too generic.

Speaker 1:

My first debut novel, the Good Daughter, was published, and then, very soon after that, karen Slaughter also published the Good Daughter, which was a crime novel, and I had all these people go. I saw your book here, I saw your book there. It wasn't my book, it was Karen Slaughter's book, and since then I've Googled and there's so many titles of the Good Daughter. Another thing is titles are not copyright. You can have the same title. The only issue is you do not want to have them in the same genre and ideally not to be published too close together, like my book was with karen slaughter's book, where then it causes that confusion. I would really recommend that you google the titles and check retail platforms and see if there's a similar title, so that you've got that unique feature.

Speaker 1:

And then the second thing that's really important is your blurb. So the blurb is the back of the book on a paperback. It's the description that people are looking at to think about. Is this the book that appeals to them? So you need to include the emotional stakes and the reader promise. As I said earlier, you need to have the various versions the one sentence, the few sentences, the full blurb to use for all your different metadata and for your market copy, and there are online tools that will help you. So there's a tool with author media that I will link to in the show notes that you can look at. They have a blurb writing tool.

Speaker 1:

What I do is I look at books in my genre. I use them as a model, so I copy the different blurbs. When I was working on this latest book, which is a historical mystery novel, I was copying different books in that genre. I was looking at how the blurbs were constructed. I was then writing my blurbs sort of using that as a model. You can also use generative AI to help improve your blurb. So when you sort of have something that you think is at a good point, you can put it through chat, gpt and get it to improve and give you sort of different options, and I find that it really helps with those emotive words and just really making those snappy sentences jump.

Speaker 1:

The other part of marketing that's really important is your cover. So when you are designing your cover, it's really important that you meet the genre expectations. Now some writers might think that this is the time to stand out and to do a different cover, and that's really not the thing that you should be doing. You need to research what is popular in your genre, research how those covers are designed, and you need to then create something that meets those genre expectations. When you're thinking about the cover, I remember a lot of people looking at it in terms of thumbnails, and we do have visual cues that tell us what sort of a genre it is and what they should expect, and so that is part of short-circuiting that quick decision-making process for readers who are looking for a book, and, at the end of the day, you don't want the wrong reader who doesn't like your book or your genre to give you a negative review. So it's not about enticing people for the sake of enticing it. You want the readers who will enjoy your book. You don't want people who are, you know, hate crime thrillers or really crime thrillers, picking up your crime thriller and being like, oh no, I thought this was, you know, a romance. Um, that will not help you. Um.

Speaker 1:

So when I am looking at covers, I research and I create a pinterest board and I collect all all these different covers and I look at what are the similarities to use, make sure it looks good on a thumbnail. So you know your covers are going to be really small that people will initially see, and you can design your own covers and you can use photos, but you need to buy a royalty free image from either deposit photos or another service source. You can use canva to create images and use them to publish, and it's covered in the terms and conditions, and they also have templates that can really help you with that initial design process to come up with your cover. Some fonts if you are using fonts that are online, you need to also make sure that they might be copyright and you might need to buy them and have the licensing to use them. So be careful with that too.

Speaker 1:

If you are an indie author, it might be helpful to write a contract for yourself as the designer and including that, you've got the image licensing rights. Every once in a while there are, you know, retail platforms who request to see that you've got the image licensing rights. Every once in a while there are, you know retail platforms who request to see that you've got it. So if you were, for example, getting a designer to do it, they would write up a contract and they would include in that the licensing rights that they got for that cover. You can also get it generated by you know a cover designer, or you can buy pre-made covers. There are some you know options that are easy to buy. It's just you can get them adjusted for the different covers, different size covers. You also need to pay extra. So we've now got our metadata, we've got the title, we've got the cover, we've got the blurb and now we're looking at the media release and the public promotion, publication promotion.

Speaker 1:

So when you are doing a media release, you want to write two versions, one for general media and one for genre specific outlets and you want to create a press kit and for this to be available on your website. So it needs to have an image, author, photo, bio and links, and ideally what you want to do is reference that in your media kit and not have journalists who might be wanting to write about your book, trying to contact you to get an author photo, trying to contact you to get a cover of your book. All of this information should ideally be available to them, because sometimes they have quick deadlines where they're wanting to just get something done quickly. The other reason that you want to have a media release and you want to write it, so that you need to put some quotes of yourself speaking, is a lot of journalists will use that media release if they are going to write about a book and actually use that to write an article about it. So you're trying to provide that information to make that easier.

Speaker 1:

These should be on your website and easily accessible. You don't want them hidden behind a paywall. You don't want them. You know where. They have to download some sort of software to get to. They should just be able to click it and download it. The best website, the best advice in terms of promoting your book and also helping with search engine optimization and now a new type of optimization which is generative engine optimization is that you should have a book page for each of your books. So on your website you should actually have a dedicated page just to your book and on there. You should have all of the information about your book, ideally have some question and answers. Have a word media kit that journalists can download and copy from, but also just have it on your website that it's available. Have the purchase links and also have graphics that they can download.

Speaker 1:

Another important thing is to create universal purchase links, so the one link that people can use and they click on and then that will take them to whatever retailer that they want to do. Now. You can do this even if you're not an indie author retailer that they want to do. Now. You can do this even if you're not an indie author. I did this for my traditionally published books using Draft2Digital tools and created a book link and then uploaded all of the different purchase links. There's another one called Genius Links that people also use. The Draft2Digital ones are for free free, I believe. The genius ones you have to pay. The genius ones have more options in terms of you can list you know us, england, uk like the different geographical locations, but I I prefer the drafted digital because I want the free version and you want to use this in all your social media promotion. You don't want to be providing one retail platform for them to go to. You want to be providing this one link that will take them to whatever retail platform that they want to. So, at the very least, you want to send your media release to your local newspaper and to media outlets and send hard copy reviews to outlets. So are there organizations that you are aligned with, that you are a member of, that you can use to promote your book, to do giveaways, to get people to review, to write some sort of an article in their newsletter and, you know, get eyeballs on your book and try and get some attention that way. So now we're going to be talking about social media marketing, and this is my favourite type of marketing.

Speaker 1:

I really have gotten into social media and I love creating assets and graphics to promote my book. It's like my happy place, so it's really good to sort of. You know, look at how can you create reels and quotes that promote your book. You want to have a three-second hook, visuals and captions that grab immediately. Canva has audio that you can attach to music and you can also buy royalty-free music from different outlets. I've got Audio Hero, where I've got music that that I can use for reels, so you can do things like where you do a quote of the day from your book.

Speaker 1:

Um, create tropes, posts where it's like you know the different tropes that your book relates to. Um, you can create carousels, like five things I learned while writing my book. Um, I like looking at social media and seeing different ideas that people have and then creating a graphic. You know that is similar to that and you know schedule these regularly on your feed. I use the social media scheduler and for each book I create six reels and I schedule them every. I think it turns out to be every two months and so that way they've just got this regular rotation.

Speaker 1:

Another important thing is create a hashtag for your book and a hashtag for your series and use this in every post and that way you're sort of creating that trail and then if anyone clicks on the hashtag to your book, they'll see all these other posts and if people are reviewing your book or if they're posting about your book, they'll be able to use that hashtag. So make that visible on your actual graphics so that people see that and sort of used as that shortcut signature. You can also do you books talk and Instagram ideas. So if you like this popular book, you'll love you know your book, read a scene with me reels or behind the scenes writing process. So, you know, do whatever, look at your book and come up with ideas for what might be a great book. So for my historical book that's coming up, I've got some about know real life things. Um, I've got, you know, all these interesting and fun um graphics that I've created. Um, like there's one that's um sega's advice to surviving in a war zone, because I just wanted to sort of have fun with it and but also bring to life the reality of what it's like. Um, what I'm trying to demonstrate with this book, which is survival under siege, survival in a war.

Speaker 1:

Also, use your goodreads. Goodsreads is really important in terms of your generative engine optimization. So that's basically. You know all all the different AI engines that are using that people are using and that are finding information about your book and that they might be recommending your book to people. So Goodreads is one of them that is really important. So, connect your blog to your Goodreads. I did that and then you know I would just whatever I posted on my blog would show up on my Goodreads and did that, and then you know I would just whatever I posted on my blog would show up on my Goodreads, and then I started having people commenting on Goodreads about my posts and I was like, oh, I always forget about that, but that is really important and that's another way to connect with people. There are also options to do question and answers on Goodreads, and so it's about engaging with people.

Speaker 1:

There are groups of things on Goodreads. I haven't really used those much. You can do competitions where you do a giveaway of your book so that people add it to their TV red pile, and I have done that a few times. I didn't find it you you know really great in terms of getting reviews. I've heard from some people that it's better with the paperback perhaps, but you know it's something to think about. So I'm going to talk about pre publicity and building the buzz early.

Speaker 1:

How do you want to do that? So you need advanced readers in order to get early reviews. So some ways that you can do that is you can upload it on netgalley. Netgalley is a platform that is used by, you know, authors indie authors, traditionally published authors where different people go on and they review books, and it's highly valued. There is is a high fee for it. If you are an indie author, you can find cheaper options. If you are a member of Allie, you can get a cheaper option through some affiliate links. You can put it on other things like book sirens and there's other reviewing sites that people can do. You can also create your own advanced reader list. I have a google form where people sign up that they want to review my books and then I contact them and send them copies of the book. You can do a street team where you recruit super fans to hype your book pre-launch and you offer incentives for them to do it.

Speaker 1:

Um, then it's also, you know, using newsletter, newsletter teasers, where you're sharing sneak peeks, cover reveals and early chapters. Um, I've also used um, a company, uh love book tours to have bloggers basically having, you know, reviewing my book, and that led to a lot of reviews and a lot of sort of mentions on social media posts. I've decided that I'm just going to focus on NetGalley. I found that the best bank for my buck, where it got me the most reviews, and then those reviews showed up on goodreads and I'm using an affiliate link this time around where I will get an email of the people who reviewed it on goodreads and I'll be able to send them an email asking to review it on amazon for me. Um. So when we're talking about launch week publicity, you need to have that media release. Blitz your email. Send outs emails to bloggers if you're doing an event you know.

Speaker 1:

Organize a virtual launch party, collaborate with another author to co-host bookshop readings or writing festivals. If you are an indie author and you're wanting to organize bookshop events, I recommend that you have a bookshop that you are, that's like your local bookshop, that you go to regularly, that you get to know people. They will do it on consignment, which means they will buy copies of the book for you at 40 discount and then they will sell them, and so that way you can, you know, do that collaboration, but the onus is on you to do those things. So some other things that you can do in terms of promoting your book is you can do the paid promotions with Amazon, facebook, instagram, ads, bookbub, featured deals or ads. And then there's also retailer promotions with each of the different retailers, and this is why, if you're an indie author, the advice is that you go direct with Barnes, noble, with Kobo, because they have internal promotions that can help support your book when you're looking at creating content for your book.

Speaker 1:

It's important to create evergreen content, so things that relate to your book's themes and that way they will always be relevant. I create quotes of my book, I do book reviews, and then I have those on rotation constantly because whenever they pop up, they're just a reminder of people to people about my book and what someone said about it, or a quote about it, and that's evergreen. You can also do, you know, podcast, guest appearances and pinterest graphics. I actually use a social media scheduler and I post content on all social media, and so I do reels to all of the platforms that support reels and then I do graphics posts to the other platforms. So some other things that you can think about in terms of marketing is, you know, doing partnerships and collaborations, cross-promote with authors in your genre, bundle books for giveaway or newsletter swaps. So BookFunnel has many of these opportunities that support you in terms of doing those swaps and trying to create those readers. There are also opportunities to submit to awards and competitions and use these. You know, wins and finalists spots in your promo.

Speaker 1:

You can, you know, do what I doing, which is create a podcast and a YouTube channel and share your journey and insights related to your book and repurpose your podcast content into blog posts or short videos, and so there are actually apps that do that for you. So I use Snapcut, which cuts my long-form videos into short reels and then I schedule those to promote my podcast episodes. But it also sort of promotes me where they just pop up on a regular basis and there's all the fun things that I really like doing. So, you know, merch and swag stickers, bookmarks, mugs, you can do Patreon I you know I haven't really found that people buy those things, um, but when I did a book launch for my last book, jesse's triumph, um, I had my team who were my sellers wearing t-shirts um, that had the logo and, um, it just sort of created that aesthetic. And I'm going to do that again for my next book launch, where I will have T-shirts with my logo Sega Tualak Mysteries and so the people who are sort of my helpers and selling my books will be wearing those T-shirts, and so it will be great for photos, but also good because they'll be recognisable in terms of the people that are there to, you know, sell books and help things, um.

Speaker 1:

So you know, I do a monthly newsletter also, um, I bought send fox and I found that I've always wanted to do that. I really struggled with, you know, sending something every month, but now I really enjoy it. I really sort of enjoy connecting with my audience and having that as part of a regular conversation that I have with readers and I am creating all this bonus content for my novels so that people have to sign up to the newsletter to get the bonus content and in that way, hopefully, that will be an evergreen and ongoing opportunity for collecting subscribers and people who are following my writing journey and waiting for the next book, especially because this is a series, and so you know, it's really important to sort of think about this in terms of what's working. So, you know, track the metrics if you are doing emails, if you are doing paid advertising. But you know, also remember to celebrate the small wins, like every review that we get from a reader who enjoyed the book. That is a huge win. Like I get such a high when someone reads something that I've written whether it's an article that I wrote or one of my books and then they reach out or they've attended a workshop and they reach out and connect with me, like those things are just gold, because you know we're sitting in our room the rest of the time and then when we have that opportunity to connect and we can hear from someone that we've connected, it means a lot. The other thing that I would really say is marketing and writing is a marathon, not a sprint, and so when we're writing and we're publishing, each book that we publish is another opportunity to market and to connect, and there are constantly ideas for what you can do and new opportunities about how you can share news of your book, and so I love keeping up with all those trends and finding out all these new and different ways of connecting with readers. And there are some fabulous things that indie authors in particular do, where there are Facebook groups also that exist that you can go in and you can promote your books in. You can also start your own Facebook group where readers come and join and have a conversation. You know there are people who do Patreon and then they offer extra rewards and support and they have people paying for that. So there are so many ideas and opportunities. You just have to decide what works for you. What is it, what sort of person are you and what are the things that you work, but you also do need to challenge yourself sometimes and step outside of your comfort zone.

Speaker 1:

When I initially started posting and creating graphics about my books, um, honestly, it was like those dreams, you know, those dreams that you have where you're naked and you're out in society and people are looking at you weird. That's how it felt when I look at those first graphics oh, they're terrible, they are so terrible. But now I've, you know, really practiced and developed an eye. I love experimenting with ideas and fonts and images. I buy photos from deposit photos, so stock-free, royalty-free images that I use then in my promotion. Now there's all these exciting new things that you can do with AI, where you can actually animate images that I just saw recently that I was like, oh my gosh. And then there's also software. You can create things, and so I think you can see it here.

Speaker 1:

The things that I did for my Sassy Saints series is I created little collector cards of my um, of my characters, using AI, and these are not commercially sold because I don't think that, you know, you should be selling things that you're creating with AI. Um, but there's something that I offer, uh, with my book box, where I offer, you know, extra merchandise and stuff for all three copies of the book, and so that's just something that you know I provide as an extra bonus, something that I really enjoy creating and having fun with and just fun ideas. There are people who also, you know, pay people to create character cards and stuff like that, but there are also people who are learning to use illustrating software or, you know, ai software to do those things. As Joanna Penn from the Creative Pen says, someone who I really admire, I am, like her, ai positive and I like experimenting and trying different things with ai to see what I can create, what I can do, and so I'm in that space. Some people might not be, but you decide, um, what you want to do for your journey.

Speaker 1:

So I hope this episode has been helpful for you. In terms of marketing, I will provide the metadata template on my show notes. You can download that and use that when you are actually preparing your book for publication, and I wish you the best of luck with your marketing for your book. Thank you for tuning in to Amra's Armchair Anecdotes. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow for more insights, stories and inspiration From my armchair to yours. Remember every story begins with a single word.