Promoting your book, whether you are a traditionally published author or a self-published author, is never a waste of time. You need to promote your book for people to know about its existence in order for them to buy it. However, it is even more important for independently published authors to promote their work as they do not have big publishing houses behind them. Most self-published authors will have either used a self-publishing house where they have ‘bought’ a large number of books and therefore need to sell them in order to make any profit, or they have used a print on demand service in which they need to promote in order to sell any books at all.
One of the major problems is that authors have very little interest in promoting their own work; they want to write, but if you do not promote then you do not sell so what is the point in writing? It is a Catch-22 situation. Writing is also a solitary occupation while the world of promotion is very different, as it is extremely social. You need to network in order to get known.
Self-publishers need to promote, but how do they go about it? Ideally this needs to start before the book is even written, as you need to have a plan. Consider who your target audience is? What genre does your book fall into and how do you aim to promote it? This will lessen the load once you are published.
Getting your book reviewed before you publish is one way to promote it. Giving readers and bloggers an advanced copy will be a sure way to create a buzz before it is released so that you can hopefully enjoy early sales. If you sell on Amazon, having early reviews of your book and especially star ratings will also help to generate interest when people are searching for something to read. People are influenced by reviews and are generally more influenced to buy if the book has good reviews.
As a self-published author, it is also essential to have a dedicated author website or at least an author page on a website such as Goodreads or Amazon, particularly if your only sales channel is with Amazon, and this is the case for a lot of self-published authors. Amazon offers a free author page, as do Goodreads, so use this service. It is, after all, free promotion.
Self-published authors can also enjoy promotional events at their local bookstore and library; all you need to do is approach them. You could do an author Q & A session or even a book reading or book signing. Local people within the community will be interested to meet you and learn about the person behind the book. You just need to put yourself out there.
Although it may seem like a lot of hard work, in order to sell your books you really need to promote yourself.
