“Self-Publishing is Super Easy… Kinda” Part 2 – Marketing Your Story

One of the many downsides to any business is marketing. No one likes to do it, especially us writers. We would rather spend our time reading and writing rather than trying to convince people to read our writing. Unfortunately, even in the world of self-publishing, marketing is a must. It’s a difficult thing to do. Where do you market yourself? How do you market yourself? There are many ways to go about doing it depending on your approach and what you find works best for your story.  

Advertising

When it comes to advertising your story, you’re on your own. Sometimes you might have some assistance, but most of the time, marketing is in your hands. Even if you were traditionally published, your agent is likely going to have you take care of the marketing. They can only get the book so far. Maybe they’ll help you, maybe they won’t. Regardless, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty. One of the simplest ways is buying ad space on websites. Typically, this is done through PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. It’s simple, every time someone clicks on your ad, you pay for it. This will require you to budget how much you are willing to spend on this method of advertising. Facebook and Instagram are two places where you can go about doing this. On average Facebook ads cost $0.00 – $1.00 per click, so it’s up to you to work with them on a flexible budget for your advertising. The average PPC cost for other sites though ranges around $1.00 – $2.00. With this method of advertising, there is the added challenge of bidding wars. The sites that offer these methods of advertising often operate on a bidding system. 

While PPC is the overarching advertising model in which advertisers pay for ad clicks, CPC (cost-per-click) is one of the pricing models within PPC, specifically referring to the cost per click on an ad. CPC represents the amount an advertiser is charged for each click on their advertisement within a PPC campaign. In this bidding system, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to outbid your competitors to secure prominent ad placement. This means you may end up paying more per click than your competitors to maintain a competitive edge. The level of competition in your industry is a key factor that influences how fierce these bidding wars can become. This is starting to get confusing, so I’ll try to wrap up this segment real quick. To elaborate on how CPC works, it’s essential to recognize that the bid amount isn’t the only factor that determines ad placement. Ad platforms also consider the quality and relevance of your ad, which is often assessed through a Quality Score or similar metrics. This means that even if you’re willing to pay a higher CPC, you might not win the top position if your ad is less relevant or of lower quality compared to others. The cost-per-click (CPC) advertising model involves bidding on keywords, and advertisers often engage in bidding wars to secure favorable ad positions. Your bid amount, competition in your industry, and the quality of your ad all play a role in determining your ad’s placement and cost. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for effective CPC advertising.

Now, as confusing and difficult as that sounds, this is one of the more common ways self-published authors advertise their stories. Normally, you want to put your ads in places targeting your demographic. In this case, we’re advertising our self-published books, so websites where books are promoted are a safer advertising ground than attempting to put your ads on Walmart or something. If you’re writing fantasy, then put your ads in places where fantasy readers congregate. It’s up to you to find the best places to advertise your story and budget it accordingly. 

Now, let’s discuss some methods of advertising that are a little less costly. Blog posts, like what I’m writing right now (if only I had something to shamelessly plug), are another useful way of advertising your story. As I mentioned before in part 1 of this blog, there are websites you can use to publish your stories. DeviantArt, Ao3, Tumblr, Twitter (X, my bad), Facebook, and Instagram are all places you can do this. It’s a simple matter of finding the right tags for your post, advertising the correct links, and praying for the best. Keep a consistent advertising schedule, employ some fun and creative posts, and you’ll see some results. Can I tell you what to post specifically? No. That is another aspect of this that relies solely on your shoulders. Find what works for your audience, and create advertisements around it. I’ve seen TikTok’s that advertise self-published stories before. If anything, making short (cringy) advertisements on TikTok has been rising in popularity as a useful method of advertising. Sacrifice your morals, and make a TikTok, you’ll only be selling your soul to our digital overlords. This leads me to my next topic of discussion…

Garnering a Fan Base through Social Media

Another aspect of self-publishing that is required in today’s market, is an online presence. Even for traditionally published authors, having some sort of social media presence is almost required for success. Let’s look at Taylor Swift as an extreme example. If she were to announce that she wrote a book, it would not only become a New York Times Best Seller within seconds of its announcement, but she would have millions upon millions of guaranteed sales. The same applies to everyone else, though to a much smaller extent. We will never have the fanbase that Taylor Swift does as an author, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t use that to our advantage. 

When writing, people often want to make their books as appealing as possible to everyone. This is impossible. You will never be able to write a book, story, or poem that appeals to everyone. The same goes for the audience you garner. You will be required to have a social media presence, and what you output will set an expectation for the future of what you work on. If you want to garner a fanbase for poetry, then go to poetry communities and spread some of your work, get involved with the community, and help others with their work. Once you have eyes on you, you can begin advertising your self-published work. So long as you have that community backing you, it helps not only with support, but it can guarantee sales. Now, if you were to go through with this poetry community, and then advertise a fiction story, then you might not get as much support because it’s not what the readers want. 

I’m not going to delve too deeply into this particular topic because it can get quite extensive, but it is still something I believe those who pursue a career in self-publishing need to be aware of. There are several ways of going about doing this, all of which you need to figure out for yourself and determine what works best for you. This is simply an example to give you an idea of what you will be in for.

Cover Design

The saying goes that you should never judge a book by its cover. WRONG. We judge books by their covers all the time. A great cover will be the difference between someone looking at your book, or passing it by. Do all the advertising you want, but if you don’t have an appealing cover to go along with it, you’re screwed. When you get published with a literary agent, usually the publishing house has you covered (pun intended) in designing a cover. When you’re self-publishing, however, you’re on your own and have to design your cover. This can be the determining factor in the success of a book for many self-published authors. Designing an eye-catching cover is more difficult than you think though. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. The target demographic, art style, themes, font size, font style, etc. The cover needs to not only be able to convey what the book is about but also have something substantial that draws in a reader’s eye compared to the books around it. Sometimes the cover you want won’t market your book the best, so it requires research into your particular genre for you to determine what the best cover is for your book. You can commission a cover from artists online, on Fiverr, or Reedsy. You could also put on a hazmat suit and go to the depths of DeviantArt to commission a cover if you’re brave enough. Depending on what you want, and the artist you pick, a cover will cost you a bit of money. So you need to find an artist who’s right for you. I’ll give some extra advice though. Forking over some extra money for a better cover will pay off in the long run. I’ve personally paid around $180 for a decent cover. You can always make a cover yourself though, so if ‘graphic design is your passion’ then save yourself some cash.