In the first post in this series, I wrote about realizing I was scared of self-promotion and that it took watching someone in my same spot (brand new to the promo world) grab the bull by the horns and make her own opportunities to see that I could do it too. So, I chucked my hangup and freed myself to promote my first book Without A World, a YA Sci-Fi adventure with a dose of magic and an original soundtrack (see how I did that :)). 

In this installment of this three-part series, I’ll lay out the checklist that could help you start your own book marketing journey. Because, if you’re like me you, have to promote a book while working (a different) full-time job.

These are the steps I took, all in one day, to finally get started.

Made real use of Story Origin

• After months of watching other authors use Story Origin to market their books, I finally took the plunge and made a reader magnet, and joined some newsletter swaps. That means now I have a link I can put anywhere that will redirect people to sign up to my mailing list if they want to read the first two chapters of Without A World (because it’s all about increasing that mailing list!).

  You can see the StoryOrigin reader magnet idea in action by clicking the “read the sample” button.

• Once you have a reader magnet set up, you can join newsletter swaps with other authors, which like it sounds, means you will promote their work and they will promote yours. This can be through newsletters but also on your website and in posts. I have set up a special promotion page on my website where I feature the books from my agreed-upon swaps for that month. I love swaps because I didn’t want to send out an email continuously babbling about my own work. I keep my newsletter fresh and interesting with free reads and links for upcoming novels (that I’ve picked based on what I like) and they aren’t looking at the same promo for my book every month. I am also dutifully trying to follow founder Evan Gow’s detailed tutorials about how to successfully market a book because I think all the info we will ever need is likely included on that site. 

Cost

• StoryOrigin was free when I found it, but it went to a paid service this year (2021). It’s $100 a year for the Standard Plan which is full access. Like everything in book marketing, it takes some work, but this journey would be so much harder without it. 

Set up my Welcome Sequence

• A welcome sequence is the emails that a reader will receive after joining your mailing list. I have three set up now: one sends immediately and includes the first two chapters of Without A World, the second sends 7 days later and includes the link to the first two chapters again in case they missed it and an invitation to leave a review, and the last sends 21 days after the person joined and includes an invitation to join the ARC review team. 

• All of the marketing advice says to stay connected to your readers with this sort of outreach. You choose the frequency of outreach. I’ll see whether this timespan seems to work for people and adjust it if needed. 

• These emails will only work if you have them set up to fire automatically (because who could manage this?). My site is set through Squarespace and I signed up their cheapest email plan that will send auto emails. 

Cost

• Widely varies depending on your email distribution. I use Squarespace and my plan is $10 a month. Probably not the best for these things, the templates are a bit clunky, but it’s fine for now. 

Joined 2016 and started auto-posting

• Until quite recently, I was allergic to posting on social media. It felt like a chore and impossibly awkward to tell the world anything about what I was doing, because who cares?! So, I changed the rules. I used Canva to make a few pretty posts (I mean, they're ok…) but it was fun to dabble in the design and Canva made it easy but the real genius was in the (lack of) posting. 

• Posting is still a chore if it’s “pretty” or random scribble, right? Well not if you eliminate the posting, and that’s where Later came in. I upload all of my posts for the week (one a day) into Later and schedule them all using the drag and drop calendar. There was a hiccup on day one because my Instagram account was set up as a creator account so it could not auto-post. Later texts the reminder and the caption for you to copy and paste it and post, but I could not be arsed to do that at the scheduled time, so that one did not go out. But I reset my account to a business account and since then they literally send without me thinking about them at all. And, best of all, I don’t sense the mean girl staring over my shoulder as I type smacking gum saying, “oh my god, you’re not actually going to post THAT are you?” and then I delete it. That used to happen a lot. But Later is impervious to the mean girl vibes-- it’s a bot and bots don’t care! (Update: I have since ditched Later and moved on to Buffer which I find much easier to use). 

Cost

• Canva- I’m still on the free account, which does not allow auto-post (but you can do that from their paid service now). 

• Later- their free account goes really far. That’s what I was using until I switched...

• Buffer- their $15 a month account gets me everything I need in a very user-friendly format. 

In another move timely for 2016, I started a Facebook business page

• There is no real traffic, but I am posting to it regularly (see above), so maybe that will change. 

• I didn’t like to post to FB about my writing because I felt weird talking about that to my regular FB friends (see: fear of self-promotion). But the business page is the natural place to do that, so I can post to FB now. 

Cost

• Free

In next week’s post, I will describe in a bit more detail the shiny tech gadgets I’m using to get this book marketing done. Stay tuned!