As an Indie author, marketing is a hot topic for me. I am always trying to keep on top of trends and and learn as much as possible. There are so many options to market books out there. It can be overwhelming (and expensive) if you’ve never done it before. It’s easy to get lost when you’re faced with a computer screen full of numbers, acronyms, and abbreviations.

I’ve discovered the best way to get your feet wet in the marketing world is to connect with people and learn from others who’ve done it before. Take a class, read a book, find some author friends and take them out for coffee, or even talk to someone in the marketing industry.

I still consider myself a newbie when it comes to marketing my books, but I’ve taken an online course, talked with other authors, and even found a Facebook group of authors specifically for sharing marketing tips.

I’ve learned form other and found success in the following areas:

• Email Newsletters
• Facebook Ads
• Amazon Ads

Newsletters

I was skeptical about newsletters at first because I rarely ever read the ones I’ve subscribed to, but I’ve found that being consistent with the timing of my emails, adding content that allows my readers to get a glimpse inside my everyday life, and sharing books I’ve read and recommend is getting my subscribers to open, and engage with my emails.It may not result in a lot of sales right away, but it keeps my name, and my books, in their peripheral vision.

Facebook Ads

When I have an ad on Facebook, which is where most of my subscribers come from, I can specifically target those subscribers, along with a host of other people, whenever I have a new book release. Facebook isn’t the perfect place to advertise, but it is an easy place to advertise and gives you a lot of exposure to potential new readers.

I also try to keep my Facebook Page followers engaged in conversation with me. I post interesting articles that relate to what I’m researching for my books at the moment, asking fun and interesting questions, and giving them a little bit of an inside look into my personal life through photos, general information posts, and links to my personal blog.

Amazon Ads

The other place I’ve found success is in using Amazon’s marketing platform. I use the sponsored badge under my book pages and get them placed at the top of the results screen. Amazon advertising has multiple options on where you can place your ads, but I’ve found the sponsored badge to be the easiest and most effective so far on my journey. However, as a fairly new player in the book publishing world, my budget is pretty limited. Since Amazon is used to for shopping so predominetly, sometimes a budget higher than I’m comfortable with using is required.

With everything life throws at us, our time and energy for marketing may be limited.  It can be easy to find two or three marketing tools that work for us and stop searching. Marketing however, is an ever changing game. Just like it takes time and research to write a book, it takes time to market effectively. Carve out time to learn about, and research the current marketing trends in the book publishing world.

One reason I love being in the writing industry is because we aren’t selfish with the knowledge we accrue. Authors are a breed of people who love sharing information, especially if we can write it down for you.