How to Market Your Book Online in 6 Steps

Like any commercially sold product, a book's success depends significantly on how many people know about it and whether it reaches the right target audience. This makes book marketing crucial for an author’s journey, and for the book’s recognition, ultimately leading to long-term sales. Effective marketing strategies expand your reach and connect you with the right readership for your genre. They enable you to create a formidable presence as an author, in your own voice.

While marketing may seem daunting, especially for first-time authors, it can be executed successfully by ensuring consistency in promotional efforts. However, if you want to learn how to market a book effectively, you must wear a marketer/ salesperson’s hat along with your author's hat.

Book marketing can be done through digital (social media, podcasts) and on-site methods (book fairs, events). Both routes are essential for success and must be practiced simultaneously for a better outcome. This blog focuses on organic, digital book marketing techniques applicable across all publishing modes such as traditional, self, and hybrid. Although some examples in this blog may relate to educational or business management book genres, they can be easily understood or applied to most other genres out there.

If you’d also like to explore “on-site” book marketing techniques and increase the potential for higher sales, do read our blog “Offline Book Marketing: 4 Easy Steps to Success” here.

Ready to dive into the world of organic digital book marketing? Let’s explore powerful tools—from social media platforms to other essential digital resources—to promote your book effectively!

1. Building Your Community

Connecting with relevant experts in your book’s niche and community enables you to network with individuals who are familiar with and trusted by your target audience. For instance, if you're an author writing a book on digital marketing, connecting with experienced marketers, SEO experts, and influencers in the marketing field can help you tap into their networks.

These experts are trusted by your target audience, and by collaborating with them through interviews, guest articles, or endorsements, you can establish credibility and broaden your reach within the community.

When readers see that a respected authority in the field has reviewed or endorsed your book, it builds trust and increases the likelihood that they’ll pick up your work. Additionally, editorial reviews from experts can be used for marketing and promotion, adding further value.

2. Leveraging Social Media

As you learn how to market a book online, you must recognize the dynamic medium of social media. With numerous social media platforms available at your fingertips, choose the best one based on where your target audience is most active. You could use tools such as Google Analytics to identify this.

Once you have identified which social media platforms work best for your book’s audience, create a plan with weekly themes and topics. Explore platform-specific strategies to guide your posting frequency, the content type suitable for your book, and more. Although promoting books organically on social media may not guarantee a significant boost in sales, maintaining an active presence is still recommended.

While every social media platform has unique features to enhance your book marketing outcomes, LinkedIn is one of the most popular and credible platforms, especially for authors targeting professionals, businesses, or niche markets. Let’s look into how LinkedIn book marketing works in detail:

Posting on LinkedIn

Since educational and management book readers usually prefer LinkedIn over other platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn may be ideal to create a presence about your book, if it belongs to these genres. You can strategically highlight the book in your LinkedIn headline and bio using the right keywords, include it in your “about section,” and list it as a publication on your profile.

Having added the book to your profile section, you can start posting about it through your LinkedIn feed. You can directly post about your book’s launch, as Michelle Bartonico, an author with Vibrant Publishers, does in the following post about her book on Marketing Management Essentials.

Another way to promote your book indirectly through LinkedIn posts is by discussing trending topics related to your book. This is a great avenue to engage with your audience and grow your LinkedIn network.

For example, Vic Clesceri, author at Vibrant Publishers, published an interactive post on unlocking the power of organizational development. Through this post, he piqued interest in his book Organizational Behavior Essentials without explicitly promoting it and showed his expertise on organizational behavior as a subject.

Joining LinkedIn groups

Joining relevant LinkedIn groups is a great way to contribute to discussions and converse about your book in a non-promotional way. By sharing valuable insights about your book’s subject, you can position yourself as an expert in your genre. You can also connect with like-minded subject matter experts (SMEs), influencers, or readers who can amplify your message.

3. Creating Your Amazon “Author Page”

While marketing your book on Amazon, you can create your own Amazon author page; think of this as your personal author website. Here, you can upload your book and update your author profile to include all your published books. This page helps enhance your book’s searchability on Amazon and boost sales.

Check out the Amazon author pages of Michelle Bartonico and Kalpesh Ashar to get a quick overview. If you have self-published your book on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), read our blog on KDP Publishing to learn all about marketing it effectively on Amazon.

4. Participating in Podcasts

Participating in podcasts with renowned hosts and bloggers is a great tool to put the word out about your book and reach a wider audience. Vibrant Publishers, for instance, has a YouTube channel where it invites experts and authors related to educational and management genres to share their knowledge through podcasts. You may also record your own podcasts and share them on social media platforms. Most book topics work well for podcasts as they allow listeners to absorb information at their own pace and time.

5. Publishing Guest Blogs

Today, there is an abundance of blog pages available to promote your book online. One of the best ways to do this is by posting guest blogs on relevant sites. Prepare an impressive pitch about your blog topics, while subtly promoting your book, and share it with bloggers and media platforms.

For example, platforms such as Harvard Business Review and Business Insider publish articles on educational and management topics. You can write blogs/ articles on trending topics related to your book and pitch them to these platforms. You can also create your own website on platforms like Medium and WordPress, and publish blogs/ articles to market your book.

Building on this approach, consider reaching out to SMEs in your book's genre who run their own blogs, and explore the possibility of collaborating with them to publish your articles on their websites.

6. Cross-marketing All the Way

You might have noticed how other authors cross-promote their campaigns across all platforms. For example, share your book’s store link from your publisher’s website, your Amazon author page links, and your guest blogs on LinkedIn to increase traction, and share your LinkedIn profile link on your blog pages to grow your LinkedIn network.

This way, you can utilize all your marketing channels to their optimum potential and enhance your book’s visibility.

Marketing Your Book for the Long Haul

Marketing your book is an ongoing effort, and your work doesn’t stop at the launch—it’s where you should double down. The overall vision governing your book marketing efforts should be to maintain open avenues of communication with readers and engage with them wherever possible.

Simple actions like adding your book to your email signature, mentioning it on your social media bio, and publishing ebooks or audiobooks in addition to printed copies, can create lasting recall. Keep experimenting with these strategies, learn from your competition, and adapt to ensure your work stays relevant.

Now that you’re equipped with 6 key online book marketing steps, hop on to our blog on on-site book marketing techniques here, and boost your book’s success! We’re excited to keep the momentum going with more insightful blogs that dive into innovative book marketing techniques.

So, do stay tuned with us!

If you’d like to entrust your book publishing and marketing process externally with a globally renowned publishing house, email us at reachus@vibrantpublishers.com

About Vibrant Publishers | Why You Should Trust Us

Vibrant Publishers is a one-stop destination for authors seeking to share their expertise with the world through a professional and streamlined publishing process. We are a Colorado-based publishing house, established in 2011, with a mission to produce high-quality books tailored for entrepreneurs, IT professionals, management experts, graduate students, and competitive exam aspirants. With 200+ published titles available in more than 100 countries, Vibrant Publishers has earned its place as a global leader in niche publishing.

We have worked with renowned authors like Jagdish Sheth, Dr. Michael Walsh, Mark Koscinski, and other esteemed authors who are industry experts and distinguished leaders in their respective fields. Read more about them here. We’re part of a robust community of over 100,000 professors who highly commend our books and also review and adopt them. When you onboard with us as an author, you can be assured of exceptional support through all stages of publishing from editing, and book cover designing to printing, marketing, and distribution.

At Vibrant Publishers, we are committed to quality and excellence, making your publishing journey successful and rewarding.

Email us at reachus@vibrantpublishers.com to discuss publishing with Vibrant Publishers.