Lots of authors have trouble marketing their books, especially if they are an indie author without a traditional publisher behind them. One simple and relatively easy way to promote your book is through guest posting. It is a common tactic that both independent and traditionally published authors use. But you need to approach guest posting in the right way.

The basic concept

A guest post is a blog post written for another person’s blog. The post should contain all the same elements of a blog post and offer information that is helpful or interesting to the intended audience. The idea behind it being that if you offer an informative blog post to a new audience, they may then be interested in learning more about you and your book.

Typically, when writing a guest blog post, there will be guidelines that you need to follow to have your post accepted. Following is a sample of guidelines you might expect to see for a guest blog:

Word count: 500 – 800 words (the blog owner may want shorter or longer posts, but posts of 500-800 words are usually sufficient to cover a topic).

A short book blurb: As tempting as it might be to offer a 500-word synopsis of your book, keep it short (100 words) and succinct. Remember the blog owner is doing you a favor by exposing you to their audience and if you look too much like you’re just self promoting, the audience won’t respond.

A short author byline: The same holds true for your author bio; make it short and sweet. If your guest post is interesting and well written, readers will act to learn more about you on their own.

A high resolution author image and book cover images: Hi-res pictures are 250-300 dpi. If you turn in a 72 dpi image, it will look grainy and unprofessional.

Depending on the blog, they may also ask for your book link, your website link and/or social media links. That is not a given though – often you are only allowed to have one link, so choose wisely if that is the case.

What to guest blog about:

Often the blog owner will have ideas about what topics she wants to be used on her blog, but typically the following are pretty safe topics:

1. Writing craft, tips, tricks, and/or process

2. Marketing and promoting tips and tricks

3. Social networking around books, writing, reading

4. Self-publishing

5. Inspiration and encouragement for writers

6. The writing life

Guest posts aren’t meant for blatant self-promotion

Don’t confuse a guest post with an author interview that is all about you. A guest post is you offering the wisdom of your experience to the readers of the hosting blog. In exchange for that, you get to briefly tell them about your book (via the book blurb and your bio) and yourself. If you do provide helpful and interesting info in your guest post, chances are the blog’s readers will want to learn more about you. But if your post reads like a lovefest for you, they will be turned off.

Guest posting can be a great way to introduce yourself to new audiences who will hopefully become new readers. Do it well and you may find that your fanbase increases.