It is never too early to start preparing for and laying the foundation to promote your book. Whether you self-publish or traditionally publish your books sales are going to be dependent on the efforts you make to promote your book. Well, unless you are a celebrity author, that is too say, you are going to need to head up your marketing team, be your marketing team and get in the trenches.
Before 2009 you might have sheepishly admitted that you were self-published. Being a self-published author is now something to be proud of. You’re an indie, artisan and homegrown business person now, in addition to being a writer.
Your goal needs to focus on discovered online rather than selling. It makes it so much easier to self-promote when you are not focused on closing the sell. Your work is important. People will benefit from it so focus on helping them find it.
Don’t forget the vital step of identifying your market in the promotion and marketing of your book. Find out who your book appeals to, get to know those people well, and be where they are, both online and off. It is a bonus to do this prior to writing your book, but if you haven’t narrowed this down it can make the act of promoting your book seem overwhelming.
If you know who your market is and where they hang out it makes it easier to determine which marketing tools are best for you. At Selah Press we teach a variety of tele-seminars and sell the audio recordings afterwards. There is an abundance of resources available to you. As an author this handy-dandy Author Marketing Opportunities Resources download from the Author-Preneur Training at Selah Press will come in handy. The audio recording of the class An Overview of Author Marketing Opportunities is available as well for only seven bucks.
Another class that would be useful for you as you build your author platform is the audio recordings of the series An Awesome Social Media Platform Author-preneur Class.