Book Promotion & Publicity

You’ve written your book and completed the hard work of producing it. Now, it’s time to release it to the world. In other words, it’s time for a book launch party.

The most important part of being a writer is writing, but if you want a career as a self-published author, you need to do a whole lot more than just write: you have to learn the business and market yourself so you're on the same playing field as mainstream authors with big publishing houses behind them.

This collection of BookBaby Blog posts features tips to help you optimize your promotional and professional exploits on social media.

Let’s get your book marketing healthy and thriving this year. Here’s what the doctor recommends.

If you’re preparing to promote a horror book, these social media sites and forums will open the crypt and connect you with groups and forums likely to devour your title.

[Note: This post was written by guest contributor Beth Hayden, a social media expert and author of Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest.]

Pinterest may be the hottest ticket in town these days — but what are the best ways to use it to promote your book? How can you create targeted, effective Pinterest campaigns, so pinning doesn’t turn into a time-wasting social media sinkhole?

First things first — for a primer on what Pinterest is and how to begin leveraging it as an author, read this great post by BookBaby’s own Chris Robley. Now that you’ve got the basics down, I’m going to share a little secret about Pinterest marketing for authors. Here’s the trick: When you market yourself and your books on Pinterest, you must take every opportunity to drive users back to your Amazon, the iBookstore, or Barnes & Noble sales pages so people can quickly and easily buy your book. You can put links to your book’s sales pages in the description field for pins or pinboards, and in your Pinterest profile.

There are dozens of things you can work on to start your book promotion before you finish writing your book. I’ll focus on the three most important areas that require authors’ attention from the get-go.