The Accidental Author

Chapter 6 - Where to start with book marketing a self-published title

For debut authors, marketing and promotion is aimed at making readers aware of your book and of you as an author. This sounds simple enough, but don't be deceived. It can be harder than you think. Take a look on Amazon or any aggregator, in your genre or niche, and you will find a plethora of talented and experienced authors demonstrating their craft. Outside the sales aggregators and distributors, for example in Facebook groups or on Twitter, it can appear daunting to even mention your book for fear of exposing your inexperience or amateur writing ability. This however is where as a debut author you have to put your helmet on and stick your head out of the trench. It is only by interacting with authors at varying stages of their writing careers that you discover that you are not in competition with the more experienced authors in fact you are in allegiance with them. Self-published authors are a group bound by honour. They support, educate and enhance your efforts by a process of mutual reciprocation, a big word for saying sharing! The key to success as a debut author is to embrace this ideology and start 'paying it forward' because in the world of the independent self published author truly 'you reap what you sow' so happy growing and harvesting.

The development of your author platform and the network that you develop will be key components as you move forward. This series of books will address many aspects of book marketing and promotion, focusing primarily on free ways to sell and market books, but also incorporating some low cost options. I anticipate that the series will develop into a catalogue of resource links, information and articles that can be used as reference points as your writing career develops.

What's next in this series?

I feel extremely fortunate to have met, networked and become friends with a variety of people in the self publishing arena since November 2013. It is hard to believe the amount I have learned and how much I still have to learn. That is the whole concept for this series of ebooks. I am not preaching to you as an expert in this field, I am merely a conveyor of tips, resources and information based on my experiences and those of some of my peers in the hope that it alleviates some of the anxiety of a novice author or gives aspiring authors the confidence to plan, write and publish their first book.

Therefore the subsequent books in this series will cover:

Social media in relation to your author platform and branding.

How to work from your platform as you build it by growing followers, gaining likes and encouraging the sharing of posts, pins, etc.

Hints and tips on how to maximise exposure of you and your books by Twitter.

The importance of author websites and blogs together with tips on the importance of blog content and setting in driving traffic to your previously unknown site.

Diversifying your writing business and book promotion outside of KDP Amazon including audio books, podcasts, aggregators, accessing worldwide markets, etc.

The business of being of a writer, things to consider, research and do to establish yourself as a professional and to operate effectively.

We will look at time management, use of free software and how to plan for future books.

As you can see from the topics to be covered there are many facets to the business of being a writer and I am fortunate that there are some experienced authors and book marketers who have been willing to share their experiences with me so that I can help you.

The website I formed to help authors like myself and to give us a platform to share each others work and books is the backbone to this series and there will be links to additional resources and sites available at on a page dedicated to this series. Be sure to subscribe to the Rukia Publishing newsletter

If you have promotions coming up that you would like featured for free or if you are a reader and you want to receive news of self-published books which are free or available at bargain prices, then the site can be of particular use to you. If you would like to contribute and share information with the authors at Rukia Publishing feel free to get in touch as guest blogs are always welcomed.

I hope you have enjoyed or found this introduction to the new series interesting, useful and informative. I look forward to sharing much more with you in the ebooks that follow and I hope to see you at Rukia Publishing either as a reader or an author showing your support for self published authors.

Thank you for reading.

Sarah Jane Butfield