Marketing Tips For Indie Authors

It’s a given that having an online presence is an important part of book promotion, and there are plenty of people out there more qualified than I am to talk to you about social media best practices, so I’m not going to get into that. Though, frankly, I think a lot of indie authors will agree that social media marketing doesn’t directly lead to many sales. It’s primarily for brand awareness. In this post, I’ll be talking about outside-the-box marketing tips for indie authors, because when you’re an indie, it takes innovation to get noticed.

1. Run Amazon Ads

OK—so maybe this one isn’t that outside-the-box, but it’s a strategy I think a lot of first-time authors dismiss because they feel it isn’t necessary if they choose good keywords for their product listing.

Despite reading an entire book and many articles on Amazon ad strategy, I’ve yet to master it. If you know someone who’s experienced with Amazon ad strategy and analytics, I recommend talking to them about setting your campaigns up for you rather than wasting your money with trial and error.

Despite their trickiness, I’ve found that Amazon ad campaigns convert book sales more effectively than social media ads.

Fortunately, you can set low spending caps for your campaigns and stop them at any time if you aren’t seeing profits. Like I said, it’s going to be trial and error if you’re new to the process, because other people’s strategies, which you might be reading about, aren’t always going to work for your book category and/or budget.

Keep testing different campaign parameters within your spending limits. At the very least, your ads can get thousands of impressions, and those build brand awareness.

To set up ad campaigns, log into your KDP account and select “Marketing.” You’ll find the info you need to get started on the Marketing page.

2. Directly Ask Indie Bookstores To Stock Your Book

This tactic is totally free. Start by doing an online search for independent bookstores in any large or mid-sized city you can think of. You’ll come up with a decent amount in and around most U.S. cities.

I've found mom and pop bookstores to be very welcoming to indie authors. Many regularly stock indie books and will allow you to use their space for book signings and author expos.

So once you start pulling up independent bookstores in your search engine, go through each of their sites and determine which ones sound like places where your book could fit.

Some stores only stock out-of-print books or ones on specific topics, so those would be places to weed out. When you find your first winner, look for their contact info. They may show an email address for the shop owner or manager, or they may have a contact form to fill out. Stores that are frequently contacted by local and indie authors might have instructions listed for how to get your book stocked.

Next, send a short message via their preferred form of contact. Include a reason or two why you think your book would be a good fit for their store, the discount you offer independent bookstores through IngramSpark (or whatever publisher with a global distribution network you’re using to publish print books), and a link or two to positive reviews of your book.

I recommend also letting them know that you allow returns, which is often a condition they set to do business with them, and to say you’re willing to do consignment, because I’ve found some bookstores will only stock independent authors with a consignment agreement.

3. Look For Author Expos

“Expos and panels are both great ways to network and get the word out about your book. ”

Search for author expos in your city, state, or wherever you’re willing to travel and speak to the event contact about participating.

Local libraries also host indie author expos, plus indie author panels, where participating authors take questions from aspiring indie authors. Expos and panels are both great ways to network and get the word out about your book.

Tons of indie bookstores will let you host your own expo and book signing in their spaces. If you know other indie authors that you can connect with to set one up or think you can draw a crowd on your own, these could be other ways to gain loyal readers.

4. Make Your Book Attractive To Book Clubs

Create a book club discussion guide containing questions for members to answer at their meetings. You can also include points for readers to reflect on independently or to pay special attention to as they read. It’s an opportunity to help the reader connect more deeply with your characters and see things from your perspective while you were developing the story.

Once you make your guide, promote it on social media and your author website. If book clubs decide to pick up your title, that guarantees you groups of sales.

5. Create And Sell Book Boxes

Check out some of the book box subscriptions that are out there as well as the book boxes people are selling on Etsy. This should give you lots of inspiration for creating your own book box or assortment of book boxes that feature your novel, which you can sell through various websites. Etsy has many that probably cost the seller $20 or less to make.

You don’t have to create a lot of boxes at once. You can start with a few and keep putting them together as they sell so that you don’t waste money.

Keep in mind that it takes a long time to build a loyal reader base and that selling books is way more difficult in reality than so many people out there make it seem. Don’t feel like a failure because your book sales aren’t soaring.

I highly encourage you to do your own research on average book sales to see the numbers different sources provide. It’s eye-opening; it made me realize how much pop culture has glamorized author life and given us unrealistic expectations about the wealth we can obtain from writing books.

There are a lot of these “become a six-figure author” and “make $5k a month in passive income selling short books on Amazon” types of schemes out there, which are extremely unlikely to work. The books and courses promising to show you how you can get rich fast from selling books are just ways to make money off you.

Very few people get rich fast, or ever, from writing books, even with a publishing house behind them. In my opinion, there’s still almost nothing cooler than seeing your story online or on a shelf and knowing that someone is connecting with it.

Got any marketing ideas for indie authors that I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear them! Feel free to send me your marketing ideas for indie authors any time.

MJ Biggs is the author of the novel A Wonderful Place To Die.