How to Begin Marketing Your Book (in Just 30 Minutes)

What makes most books fail?

• It’s not the writing. Given the time and determination, anyone can write a book.
• It’s not the designing. You can hire cover designers and layout experts in minutes now.
• It’s not the publishing. Amazon has made it incredibly easy to publish any book.

Most books fail for one reason: No one ever hears about them.

Book marketing is something authors never give much thought to while they’re writing their book. It’s only after they publish their book when they realize that their first million readers aren’t going to just stumble across their Amazon page, that they seriously research book marketing.

And they rarely find anything helpful.

The internet is cluttered with high-level advice on book marketing from so-called “self-publishing experts.” Very rarely does that advice come with actual examples or case studies.

As a result, authors end up with a few hundred useless book marketing tips, but no instructions as to how they should actually launch a campaign.

We’re going to fix that today. This guide will walk you step-by-step through launching a book marketing campaign in 30 minutes using Storiad.

Before we begin, you should know that a simple book marketing campaign has three key components:

1. Assets – These include your book itself, and your press kit.
2. Research – You have to find your market before you address it.
3. Execution –  This is when it’s time to go out and pitch.

We’re going to break down each of these steps using Storiad, starting with step 1.

Note: You will need Storiad’s paid Pro Plan to use these features. You can sign up for a free trial here.

1. How To Create A Beautiful Press Kit

A good press kit is incredibly valuable to your marketing campaign in a number of ways:

• Press kits condense all the information journalists need into a beautiful, easy to use format.
• Press kits are reusable—they prevent you from having to type out redundant information over and over again.
• Press kits signal a level of professionalism to media outlets.

Simply put, you need a good press kit to run a good campaign. To set up your press kit in 10 minutes flat with Storiad, do the following.

First, from the Storiad dashboard, create a new project. You will see a screen like this:

Below this, you’ll be asked for a bunch of information, including audiobook links, publisher details, ISBNs, etc.

We’re going to keep this as minimal as possible. The only things you need to fill out are:

1. Your book’s cover image
2. Your book’s title and description.
3. Your author photo.
4. Your author biography.
5. Your contact information.

That’s it. Fill out those 5 things, save the project, and move on. You will be brought to a screen that looks like this:

We’re going to ignore the marketing plan. We’re keeping things simple. Go ahead and click “Create one now” under ePressKits.

A fantastic-looking, basic ePressKit will be generated automatically:

It’s that easy.

2. How To Research Your Audience

Now that you’ve created your incredible asset, it’s time to find your journalists.

When you’re running your marketing campaign, you get as complex as you want with your media lists. You can create a list of journalists, a list of podcasters, a list of book bloggers, and a list of librarians with YouTube channels, and send them all different pitches.

However, because we’re keeping this simple, we’re going to pick one category to focus on.

In our example case—which, if you haven’t noticed by now, is The Great Gatsby—that category would be book reviewers who cover fiction.

To find book reviewers, simply navigate to the “Outreach” tab of the Storiad dashboard. The screen looks like this:

Once there, select the relevant contact types. Using the example of The Great Gatsby, you would simply select “Blogger/Reviewer” as the contact type, and “Fiction” as the genre:

That search nets 100 results. You can quickly add all relevant journalists to a list—for The Great Gatsby, we might call the list “Fiction Bloggers”—by clicking on them like this:

Once you’ve selected 50 or so, move on to execution.

3. How To Pitch These Book Reviewers

This is the part that overwhelms most authors, but the truth is, it’s the easiest part. It’s just writing—and you’re already pretty good at that, right?

Under the Outreach tab, click “Messaging” at the top of the page. You will end up on a screen that looks like this:

Once there, select “Send a new message.”

You’ll be taken to a screen where you’ll be able to select your project and your reviewer list:

After advancing to Step 2, you’ll opt to create a new template:

We’re going to create a super simple template here that any journalist will like. Try this:

Subject: Can I Send You My New Book?

Body:

Hello {{contact.first_name}}!

I’m reaching out because I came across your writing, and thought you might be interested in a free copy of my new book, {{project.title}}.

Here are a few reasons I think you’ll enjoy it:

– REASON #1

– REASON #2

– REASON #3

If you’re interested in a free copy, just shoot me a quick “yes” and I’ll get one over to you. If you need to consider more, feel free to browse my press kit located here: {{project.epk_link}}.

Best,

{{author.first_name}}

Obviously, replace reason 1-3 with actual reasons to read your book.

Once you’ve typed this up, hit “Preview and Personalize.” Skip any outlets that don’t have emails listed, and personalize any emails you think could use a flourish. Once you’re done, hit send, and congratulations! Your first book campaign is underway.

Of course, it doesn’t have to end here. You can follow up with any journalists that don’t respond to you, pitch more journalists, and create different press kits tailored to different audiences. But for now, you just went from “No marketing whatsoever” to “Full marketing campaign” in 30 minutes.

There Are No Excuses Anymore

Writing, publishing, and marketing a book used to be an insane endeavor. You had to learn to write—information that wasn’t widely available—and then spend years querying agents and presses hoping you’d get a deal.

Once you got a deal, you had to handle a lot of marketing yourself—presses have limited resources, after all—without the help of modern software.

Now, you can take a complete course on how to write a novel, get a book cover done quickly (and cheaply) with 100 Covers, upload your book to Amazon, and build your marketing campaign in 30 minutes with Storiad.

There’s no excuse not to make a fantastic book anymore.