Self-Promotion Ideas for Indie Authors

Deciding where to focus your self-promotion effort can be challenging, especially if you start thinking that you should be spending more time writing.

Here are four self-promotion ideas that yield good results.

• BookBub

BookBub sends its subscribers daily emails notifying them of books that have time-sensitive, deep discounts. With hundreds of thousands of subscribers and emails tailored to subscribers’ interests, the site often generates very large sales.

Focusing on BookBub will encourage you to work on two important aspects of your book marketing: your cover design and your Amazon reviews. Both of these factors are influential to BookBub’s decision whether or not to list your book.

The cost of a BookBub promotion ranges from $25 (for a free ebook on politics and current events) to $2560 (for a crime novel that is discounted to $2 or more). Books that are not free are likely to sell in the hundreds or thousands, boosting your income. Making your novel free temporarily, however, could mean that it is downloaded tens of thousands of times, improving your Amazon ratings and credibility.

• Contests

Hosting a contest is a fun way to engage with potential readers and spread the word about your novel.

Your contest might involve having your social media followers share a particular post for a chance to win a copy of your novel, asking readers to suggest the title for your next book, having them subscribe to your blog, or asking people to decide between two covers for a future novel.

Set clear rules, keep the contest simple, and deliver the prize quickly when you have a winner.

• Boxed Set

Collecting your novels or novellas in a boxed set creates a product that offers great value to readers. Which is more tempting? A novel reduced from $4.99 to $2.49, or a boxed set that is reduced from $19.99 to $9.99? In both cases, the discount is 50%, but the discount on the boxed set offers greater value.

Think less about the money you are making or losing here and focus on long-term goals, including reaching new readers, garnering reviews, and improving your rankings and visibility online based on the increased number of downloads.

• Publish a novella to bridge between pub dates of your main releases

Your novels are your best marketing tools. There can be a significant delay, however, between the release of one novel and the next. Keep readers engaged and boost your rankings by publishing novellas between your main releases.

Increasing your number of titles leads to a larger digital footprint, which means that potential readers will find your books more easily. There are also plenty of readers who won’t try a new author until they have a sizable backlist to work through. Releasing novellas between larger projects is a relatively quick way to get their attention.

However you choose to self-promote your novels, keep your goals clearly in mind. Increasing sales might be considered a short-term strategy. In some cases, this might be just what you need. Using the above techniques, however, can also provide long-term results, improving your visibility, growing your mailing list, and connecting you with new readers.