Book promotion for self-published authors is definitely not a waste of time. People cannot buy a book if they don’t know it exists, that is why book promotion is a necessity. It generates interest in and awareness of your book, allowing you to reach out and communicate with your potential readers and buyers.

Book promotion is even more crucial if you are a self-published author who is just starting his literary career and has just published his very first book. You are virtually unknown and so is your book and if you don’t promote it, who will? If you just let it sit on the shelf waiting for people to notice and hopefully buy it, you won’t get anywhere; it will get buried under hundreds of book titles that get released every day. Even if you write other books, chances are they would get the same treatment as your first book since you never made any conscious attempts to get people to notice and read them.

That is why it is very important to market, advertise and promote your written works, especially your first published book. Use the internet; create your own author website and launch your own author or book pages on social networks and online book forums. Encourage the people who buy your books to leave reviews and recommend your books to their friends. Ask distinguished writers who write in the same field as you to endorse your books. Also, do not forget to attend and launch events that will allow you to market your book in front of other people personally like book signings, conferences and radio or television interviews.

However, even though book promotions can boost your book sales and your reputation as an author, too much promotional activity or badly executed promotional campaigns could actually do the opposite; damaging your reputation and lowering your sales instead. That is why it is important to keep a logbook that tracks and records all the promotional activities you have done so far in order to market your book. If an activity is doing more harm than good, then stop it immediately and think of another way you can promote your book.

Moreover, if you truly want to call yourself an author, you must not forget to keep writing books. It is not good to focus on only one book just because you already had it published. If you already did everything to market and promote your book and it is still not selling as many copies as you would like, just give it time. Move on and start working on your next book. And instead of looking for new or potential readers, take the time to get to know the followers that you already have. Build a strong and lasting relationship with them; show your readers that you appreciate them and that their opinions matter to you by listening to their critiques and comments and making sure you consider them while writing your next book.