Writing a book is an incredible achievement to celebrate and enjoy. What’s even more incredible is to turn your book from a raw exchange of words into a polished, released device with a kickass cover and the right design. The day my last novel, Sunken, came alive, I danced happily. If you’re at this point in your writing career, I salute you and offer you a glass of wine from my own bottle.
How to promote your book
I’ve been blogging about music since 2009 and following a little. Instead of starting from scratch on a new fiction book site, I decided to promote what I wrote through my blog. In March 2014, I published my first novel, At War With Satan, to learn more about the process and see if self-publishing would work for met. It worked so well, I was addicted. Next on my list was my latest novel, Sunken, the first part of a dark fantasy series set in a steampunk world where dinosaurs still survive.
Write to your readers
When I started designing book-related content for my blog, I thought about what people reading my books like to read. Speaking with other writers on the forum, I was shocked to find that many of them wrote about the writing process, grammar and syntax, writing habits and marketing tips. Are readers really interested in these things? As a reader, it’s not me!
I can’t read a writer’s blog to find out how they market their books. I read it because I want to know more about the author and the world of books. But so many writers blog about the writing process. Maybe I was wrong. As an experiment, I wrote a post about my writing process for one of my book’s startup contributions. That was the worst message in my entire release series.
Make your blog as good as possible
The book’s publication aims to get a lot of traffic on your blog – people who might want to buy your book or even better subscribe to your mailing list. Before you start a startup strategy, it’s important to get your blog in the best possible shape. You don’t want visitors to land on your site and see outdated design, confused fonts, broken links, images that don’t load, sharp spelling error and patridge in pear tree. Here are some things you can check out on your blog:
The main pages load correctly and there are no errors. You’ve added and updated book links and added your book to the sidebar. It’s a big, obvious button that advertises mailing list orders. The forms on the contact page and newsletter sign-up page work. Since About Me has been updated. Your most recent contributions are without spelling and grammar errors.
The images in your latest posts are clear and interesting. Do you have popular articles about topics related to your book? Why not send them new dates so they are the first messages a new reader will see?