KWE Publishing Newsletter - 04/06/23
Welcome to this birthday edition of the KWE Publishing newsletter; I'm excited to celebrate my birthday, hence the balloons!
So it's time to start marketing your book. Where do you begin? What should you most prioritize, and what is less important?
While the answer is different for every author, we know marketing can be overwhelming to authors. That's why we've broken things down a bit to help you meet your marketing goals.
There are three elements you need to think about when you're considering marketing your book; think of them as ingredients to have a successful marketing campaign.
Time
Money
Effort
Generally speaking, when it comes to marketing, you can leave out one of the above three aspects and successfully market a book, but you need two out of the three "ingredients" to get the results you're looking for.
Let's break these down a little more and talk about what these elements mean in regard to book campaigns.
Time
The amount of time you spend on a marketing campaign can have a big impact on how well your book sells.
Marketing early on, well before your book is released, will help you gain a larger audience. You can do this by using social media platforms (TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), interviews on radio shows or podcasts, advertising (if you have an ad budget), etc.
You also put a lot less pressure on yourself when you start marketing earlier in the process. Instead of feeling rushed, you'll be able to have a clear plan. You can also experiment with different marketing methods when you have the time, which means you can also figure out what works best for you and your audience.
Money
Money doesn't automatically mean you'll have a great marketing plan...but it does make marketing much easier. You can hire experts to create ads, research keywords and best practices for your genre, and connect with media contacts to get your book in the public eye. With enough time, those experts will have the best chance at creating marketing campaigns that meet your vision.
To be clear, there's no set amount of money that you have to spend on a book campaign; every book is different, and what will work for a children's book can be different than what will work for a memoir.
And if you have a smaller budget, don't worry—your marketing can still be unique and effective! The best way to do this is to do some research on your audience (which takes effort and time) and figure out the best ways to spend the money that you do have.
Effort
The amount of effort you put into marketing can also play a big role in your marketing outreach and its overall impact on your potential readers.
Of course, you do have to put in some effort even if you spend a lot of money and have a large amount of time to work on marketing. However, if you spend a fair amount of money and have a lot of time to work on your marketing campaigns, you generally won't have to put in as much effort all at once.
A quick caveat here—if you have a big marketing and PR budget, you can outsource a lot of the tasks that you might be doing yourself. This way, effort is still put into your outreach, but someone else can contact bookstores, libraries, podcasts, radio hosts, etc., and help spread the word about your book. Likewise, someone else can put in the effort of writing your newsletters or creating cool graphics for your ads. So while this is a bit of a workaround, your marketing campaign will still require some effort from you to ensure your marketing sounds like you!
As we said, some authors will prefer to spend a lot of time and effort, whereas others will prefer to spend a large amount of money and effort or money and time. It's up to you to decide what's most important, what your budget is, how much time you have, and how much effort you're willing and able to spend.
There's no "right" answer, but having a clear idea of what "ingredients" matter most to you makes marketing easier!
If you're still not sure what will work best for your book, our KWE Publishing team is happy to help! You can schedule a time to meet with Jean Sime, our KWE Publishing VIP Marketing Concierge. Jean and Kim will be glad to do a complimentary consultation with you to assist you in choosing the marketing and PR solutions that best fit your time, money, and effort!
What marketing questions do you have? Reach out and let us know!
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