Marketing Fiction: 8 Tips To Help Sell Your Novels

Marketing fiction is a challenge. New authors are disappointed with their sales. Established authors struggle to find readers.

What about you? If you feel that times are tough, take heart. Focus on expanding your readership, reader by reader. You can do it.

On the other hand, you may be sabotaging yourself: what if you hate marketing?

Nervous of marketing your novels? It takes repetition

Once upon a time, I hated promoting my books. Funny, because I work in marketing. Now I enjoy it, mostly. What changed? Repetition. I persisted, until I got bored. You can’t be scared and bored simultaneously.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked to a new author, who’s put up a Kindle pre-order for his book.

He said he’s learning as much as he can about book advertising, but everything involved makes him nervous. “It’s expensive,” he said. “My wife and I were looking at how much we can budget for it. But with a young family, money’s tight right now—we can’t afford much. I’m wondering why I got into this…”

His tone was rueful, but I know what he means. You hesitate to spend money on marketing because there are no guarantees.

Look at it this way. Remember: readers want your book, but they need to know it exists. The competition for readers is brutal; nevertheless, good books are hard to find in every genre.

Let’s look at some tips to help.

1. Get enthusiastic about your book (if you’re not)

No one knows your novel as well as you do. You know the characters and why you wrote the novel. Remember the excitement of your first inspiration.

Cast doubts aside and remember 1 John 4:18: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Decide that you love your book. Your enthusiasm will be contagious.

2. Still writing? Build excitement NOW

The perfect time to market your novel is while you’re writing it. Don’t wait until you finish. Share your successes (“I completed a scene today!”) on social media.

Join the fellowship of other authors who are also writing. Look for the “writing” hashtags on your social media platform.

3. Use your journal to generate ideas

Use your journal to develop ideas you can share. If you’ve been journaling, you may already have material for posts.

If you aren’t journaling, now is a good time to start. A journal stops you staring at the computer screen, wondering what to write. Procrastination is the prime reason I keep a book journal.

Your journal helps you to think: about characters, your plot, location. It helps you to generate ideas. I enjoy reading over what I’ve written at bedtime. I always wake up with fresh ideas to jot into my journal.

4. Choose two social media platforms: you can’t cover them all

All marketing takes time—and it succeeds over time.

You may think that you have few followers on your social media platform, but you’re building a platform. Readers are becoming aware of your novel.

Be wary of spreading yourself too thin. Choose one or two platforms and focus on them. Are other authors on your platform? That’s usually a good indication that it works for them, so it should work for you too.

5. Introduce yourself to readers: write short stories for them

Habitual readers carve time out of busy life. We read anyway, no matter how little time we have, but we want to read something we’ll enjoy. How could you convince readers to take a chance on your book?

Try writing short fiction. Publish your short stories on your blog, or on social media. If readers enjoy your story, they may take a chance on your novel. (Remember: you build your readership reader by reader.)

6. Use your journal to build an idea bank (think snippets)

You need material for promotion, and that material needs to come from you. Big companies can churn out waffle, but anyone who reads your novel wants a flavor of you, not a one-size-fits-all sample.

Yes, it’s challenging to create regular posts, but you can make it easier. We looked at using journaling to generate ideas; consider doing this deliberately. Keep a small notebook or index cards in your pocket or purse. (Or use your phone.) When something occurs to you, write it down, then transfer the snippets to a journal you keep as an idea bank.

I keep mine in Evernote, but you can keep them in a paper notebook, or any app you choose. Your idea bank will help prevent procrastination and that panicky I don’t know what to write feeling.

7. Short and sweet: stick to the concept

Everything is storytelling today. Politicians are warned to “stick to the narrative”, as are marketers. You need to do that too.

Decide on a concept for your promotions: write the concept in a sentence. Think in terms of taglines. You can find them in the Internet Movie Database. For example, here are some taglines for the movie Scarface, from the IMDb:

– He was Tony Montana. The world will remember him by another name…SCARFACE.

– He wanted to live the American Dream until the end.

Your concept should be simple because you need to remember it when you mould your snippets into promotional posts.

Of course, you can change your concepts. But stick to a single concept for at least a month. Remember to ensure that your concepts reflect your novel.

8. Talk to people: what are they reading? How do they choose their reads?

I’m not a fan of the idea of writing in any genre that’s popular right now—unless you LOVE that genre, and would write it even if it didn’t have a big market.

By the time a genre or sub-genre becomes popular, it’s usually hit its peak. You run the risk of climbing on a bandwagon that’s headed off a cliff.

Write what you love to read. Also, talk to readers, not only online (read reviews) but in daily life. If you spot someone reading on a train, chat. Which genre do they read, and why? Ask how they pick their novels. Via personal recommendations, reviews?

Everyone markets: have fun with it

Many authors cringe when they think about marketing their fiction.

Remember to persist, no matter how weird you feel, until you get bored with it, and it becomes something you do automatically.

And please have fun with it.

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