It’s a money pit.
If you’re marketing your novel, you have to advertise on social media, otherwise you’ll never be seen outside of your own ‘social media connection’ bubble.
Success on social = how much you spend on social media advertising.
Wrong.
You don’t need to spend a penny on social media to be seen by potential readers.
Take the time to actually understand who your potential readers are, where they spend their time online and what they’re interested in and you’ll know how to talk to them.
Here’s your first step: narrow down five hashtags related to the genre or theme of your novel and follow them.
Scour the posts using these hashtags to find readers. Read their posts. What kind of things they talk about?
Next: engage with their posts. Build a relationship with them, a genuine one.
Once a relationship is established, you can mutually follow one another. You’ll talk to them. They’ll talk to you, they’ll talk about you.
Know your potential readers, don’t just talk at them and hope for the best.
PS: I’m not suggesting social media advertising is all bad, by the way. If you do have some budget and it’s used as part of a bigger strategy, it can be powerful… but it’s not a solution on its own and it will not solve all of your book marketing problems.
About The Author
Nigel Cooper
Nigel’s debut novel Beat The Rain was a semi-finalist for Best Debut Author in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2016. His second novel The Pursuit of Ordinary was a finalist in the People’s Book Prize for Fiction 2019. It was also one of the 8-12 titles ‘called in’ for the Man Booker Prize, a first for his publisher. It was also long-listed for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize. His third novel will be released in September 2022 and is now available for pre-order. Nigel brings his own experience of the trials of getting published, building an author profile and marketing his own novels to AuthorSpark. As well as co-founding AuthorSpark, Nigel co-founded digital marketing agency and employee advocacy platform We Are Togethr alongside Andrew, alongside online content sister company Togethr Lab. Prior to that he was a newspaper subeditor and a writer and editor for Channel 4 Interactive.