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Most book marketing advice is written by people who sell book marketing courses, not by people who have marketed books. The advice sounds reasonable. Build an email list. Use social media. Run Facebook ads. Get on BookBub. But it skips the part that matters: which of those things actually move copies, and which ones burn money while making you feel productive.
I have published 113+ books and ghostwritten 54 more. Here is what I have learned about marketing books by actually doing it.
The Cover Sells the Book Before the Words Do
Your cover is not decoration. It is your primary marketing tool. For more, see navigate the maze of marketing books with these 7 unbelievab. In a scroll of Amazon thumbnails, the cover is the only thing that determines whether someone stops or keeps moving. A bad cover kills a good book. A great cover gives a mediocre book a chance. For more, see acx audiobooks.
Invest in a professional cover designer who understands your genre. Genre conventions exist for a reason. Romance readers expect certain visual cues. Business book readers expect different ones. Science fiction readers expect something else entirely. Your cover needs to signal the right genre instantly at thumbnail size.
I learned this the hard way. My early covers were cheap, and the books did not sell. When I invested in professional covers that matched genre expectations, the same books started moving.
Your Amazon Description Is Your Sales Page
After the cover gets someone to click, the Amazon description determines whether they buy. Most authors treat the description as a summary. It is not a summary. It is a sales page.
The description needs to do three things in order: hook the reader in the first line, establish what the book delivers, and create enough urgency or curiosity to trigger the purchase. If the description reads like a book report, it will not convert.
Spend as much time on your description as you would on a landing page for a product launch. Test different versions. Ask someone who does not know you to read it and tell you whether they would buy.
Reviews Are the Social Proof That Drives Sales
When I decided to push Focus on LinkedIn, the book had 15 reviews. BookBub rejected me. Not enough reviews, not high enough in the rankings. I put out a call on LinkedIn offering free copies in exchange for honest reviews. 1,200 people requested copies within 24 hours.
About 60 to 70 came back with reviews, which is a solid return. When you send out free ebooks, maybe one in forty writes a review. Getting 60 to 70 out of 1,200 was better than average, and they kept trickling in for weeks.
Reviews are not vanity. They are the social proof that tells a stranger your book is worth their time and money. A book with 5 reviews and a book with 65 reviews are in completely different categories in a buyer’s mind. Getting those first reviews is one of the hardest parts of book marketing, and it requires asking directly. Most readers who enjoy a book will not leave a review unless you ask them to.
BookBub Is the Real Deal
After I had the reviews and ran a promotional push that sold 1,000 copies in 24 hours, Focus on LinkedIn hit the top 500 on Amazon and became a bestseller in three categories. I resubmitted to BookBub and was accepted the same day.
BookBub is the single most effective promotional platform for book sales that I have found. Their email list is massive and their subscribers actually buy. Getting accepted is difficult, and they are more selective than most authors expect. But if you can get in, the results are significant.
The lesson is that BookBub acceptance is not the starting point of your marketing. It is the result of doing the other work first: getting reviews, building momentum, and proving the book has traction.
Your Book Is a Lead Magnet
One thing most marketing advice misses is that your book is not just a product to sell. It is a marketing tool for everything else you do.
In the back matter of every book I publish, I include links to my other books, my ghostwriting services, and my mailing list. It costs nothing except the time to set it up. If someone reads your book and turns to the back, they find your promotional materials. The book itself becomes a lead magnet that drives people to your services, your other books, and your platform.
Think of it as two levels: lead magnets drive people to the book, and the book drives them to everything else. The book sits at the center of the funnel, not at the end of it.
What Does Not Work
I have spent money and time on strategies that produced nothing. Here is what I would skip.
Overpriced publisher marketing packages. For more on marketing that builds trust, see Richard’s interview with Jeff Hassemer. Companies that charge $5,000 to “publish and market your book” do not market your book. They take your money and run some automated promotions that produce negligible results. The marketing is your responsibility whether you like it or not.
Blog tours. Unless your book is in a genre with an active blog community like romance, blog tours produce almost no measurable return. The effort of organizing them vastly exceeds the results.
Paid book listing sites with no audience. There are dozens of websites that charge authors to list their books. Most of them have no meaningful traffic. Before paying for any listing, ask for their subscriber numbers and typical click-through rates. If they cannot provide those numbers, they do not have them.
Facebook ads without a strategy. Facebook ads can work, but only with careful targeting, tested ad copy, and a willingness to spend money on optimization before seeing returns. Running a generic ad pointing at your Amazon page is the fastest way to waste your ad budget.
The Work That Matters
Book marketing comes down to four things that actually move the needle: a professional cover that matches genre expectations, an Amazon description that sells, enough reviews to establish credibility, and a promotional push timed to build momentum.
Everything else is secondary. Social media presence, email lists, author platforms, speaking engagements. These all help, but they help on top of the four fundamentals, not instead of them. Get the fundamentals right first.
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