Did you pour your heart, soul, and dreams into announcing your book to the world?

And then, did you walk away from it just a few weeks or months later?

Maybe you were burned out. Disappointed with sales. Hated putting yourself out there with your book. Or dying to get started on your next project.

Stalled book marketing can’t be permanent

There are many reasons for your marketing to stall out, but it should be a temporary situation, not a permanent one.

Your book deserves the attention you can continue to bring to it. You wrote it to entertain, educate, or inform people, so you have to let readers who will love it know it exists.

Let’s fix your stalled book marketing problem now.

It starts with mindset.

Here are seven things you can do to make the essential attitude readjustment that will help you get back to it.

1. Surround yourself with positive people.

And ditch the Debbie Downers.

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They will suck the life out of you.

Truth is, the negative, whiny people in your circle are often uncomfortable with what you’ve accomplished.

They fear your success. In their minds, the higher you soar, the more likely you are to leave them behind.

I realize, of course, that you can’t always remove these people from your life. But you can certainly get some distance.

Make that a goal, because you can’t fly high with anchors weighing you down.

2. Resurrect that book marketing plan.

Your book marketing plan is your action blueprint. It details what you want to accomplish and how you’re going to do that.

If you’ve got one, pull it out now and review it.

Never created one? Fortunately, it won’t take long to fix that.

Start with my article, “Create your book marketing plan by answering these 7 questions.”

It includes a link to my free Build Book Buzz Book Marketing Plan Template with complete instructions, but you can download it here, too.

3. Make yourself accountable.

One of the best ways to resurrect stalled book marketing is to make sure you’re accountable to someone who will hold you to your commitments.

I have a goal buddy for this. In late December, we meet to review what we accomplished that year and to share goals for the coming 12 months. We follow the annual review with regular check-ins that hold us accountable for hitting those milestones, or explaining why we didn’t.

Look for someone who can do this for you – and vice versa. Another author is your best option, but it’s not necessary. All you need is a friend or colleague who also needs accountability support.

4. Get out of your comfort zone.

Nothing invigorates me like learning how to do something new, especially when I think that “something” is over my head.

Take a few minutes to list book marketing-related tactics you think would work for your book and its audience, but that intimidate you for whatever reason.

Here are mine just to give you a few ideas:

• Creating short social media videos quickly
• Creating short social media videos quickly
• Creating short social media videos quickly

(I have to get over this, right?)

Whether yours include contacting an up-there-at-the-top influencer for a book blurb or mastering TikTok, pick one and start. Just start.

I promise that you’ll love the feeling that pushing your boundaries a bit gives you.

5. Find your tribe.

Do you often feel like you write in a vacuum?

The people you spend the most time with don’t understand your publishing challenges, struggles, and successes – not your co-workers, your friends, your family.

You need to plug into a writerly community. If you’re already connected to other authors, it’s time to reconnect or participate more.

Attend those meetups in person. Join the Zoom gatherings. Engage more in the Facebook groups (and please join the brilliant authors in the Build Book Buzz Book Marketing Group on Facebook).

Start conversations. Pay attention to what group members share about their book marketing experiences. Ask them to brainstorm with you – and return the favor.

6. Create a mastermind group.

If you’re already connected to authors – if you’ve found your tribe – invite a select few to join a mastermind group.

Not already networking with other authors? Now’s a great time to get started. A small, focused mastermind group will work fine.

With a goal of helping each other keep the momentum going – and that can be for more than marketing – establish ground rules and a regular meeting schedule.

Your reward will be inspiration, insight, and priceless moral support.

7. Be analytical.

Your goal with book marketing is to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Think back to the last time you promoted your book. What seemed to contribute to awareness and maybe even sales? What disappointed you?

What did you share on social media that generated lots of engagement? Which types of posts got crickets?

If you didn’t track activity and results, scroll back through your social media posts. Check likes and comments on launch-period blog posts. Review the open rate and unsubscribes for newsletter mailings.

Invest a few minutes reflecting on what triggered the highs; what triggered the lows. All of this will help identify where to put your effort again.

What are you going to do now?

Which of these seven options will you start with? Which one speaks the loudest to you?

Do you need to surround yourself with other creative people like you to get motivated again?

Or do you need to return to what worked best during your book launch and do more of it?

Can I help? I offer one-on-one telephone book marketing coaching that lets me zero in your situation and help you find solutions that will work for you and your project. Learn more here.

Only you know what will help you eliminate that deadly stalled book marketing. But whatever it is, just do it.

I’ll be cheering you on.

Are you suffering from stalled book marketing? What are you going to do about it? Please tell us in a comment.

Do you remember Yogi Berra’s famous quote on the importance of planning? He said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up some place else.”

His wisdom applies to book marketing, too. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish with your book, you won’t know if you’ve done it – or how to do it.

That’s why you want to create a book marketing plan, even if your book is already published and available for purchase.

What’s a book marketing plan?

A book marketing plan is a document that outlines:

• What you want to accomplish with your book
• How you’ll do it
• What you will need to spend to make that happen
• When you’ll do the work involved

If you want to sell books, creating a book marketing plan isn’t optional – it’s essential. Even so, if you have no marketing experience, you might find the idea of creating a book marketing plan intimidating.

CLICK TO GET YOUR FREE BOOK MARKETING PLAN TEMPLATE!

It’s not as hard as you might expect, though. It takes thought and effort, for sure, but it’s really just a matter of answering the right questions.

Here are the seven questions you want to ask and answer.

1. What’s my situation with this book?

Answer this by briefly describing your book and what makes it different from the competition.

Include what makes both you and the book marketable. Perhaps your book is on a timely topic or uses a new way to tell a story.

You might have unique credentials that qualify you to write the book, including professional experience. Maybe you’ve won relevant awards.

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Address your publishing situation, too, by noting your publishing model and anticipated publication date. The latter is particularly important because it helps determine what tactics are available to you.

For example, if your book is already published, certain tactics – engaging your audience by requesting their input on your cover design, for example – aren’t an option.

2. Who did I write this book for?

This is your target audience, your ideal readers. It’s who will appreciate and buy your book.

It’s especially important to understand your target audience because the more you know about who will love your book, the better able you will be to reach them online and in the real world.

Need help with that? My short training program, “Who Will Buy Your Book? How to Figure Out and Find Your Target Audience,” will help.

When you know as much as possible about your ideal readers, you can research the social networks they use, the media outlets they pay attention to, even the types of activities they prefer.

You can have more than one target audience, but one will probably rise to the top as the most interested in your topic or genre.

For example, the primary audience for a self-help book about how to live with or help a hoarder might be friends and family. A secondary audience is therapists and other counseling professionals who can recommend the book to their clients.

3. What do I want to accomplish with my book marketing?

This is all about goals.

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A goal is a broad statement of direction that is determined by your needs. In this case, your goals are related to marketing your book.

With good goals in place, you can look at each marketing tactic and ask, “Does this step help me achieve my goals?” If the answer isn’t “yes,” the tactic should be removed from the plan.

Goals are well-defined. They tell you which direction you want to go. Examples include:

• To develop a fan base that will lead to increased sales of subsequent books in my fiction series.
• To help position me as an expert in a way that will generate more clients.

4. What’s my book marketing strategy?

A strategy is your over-arching approach to promoting your book. It’s a “big picture” view that summarizes the thinking behind your marketing efforts.

Examples include:

• To use my large fan base to generate massive buzz during the first few weeks of my book launch.
• To focus on public speaking because I’ve learned that I sell a lot of books when people hear me speak.
• To put most of my time into creating fun TikTok videos because my audience is there, my following is growing steadily, and I’m good at it

Your strategy helps determine what you’ll do to market your book, and when you’ll do it.

5. What tactics will I use to reach my goals?

Tactics are the things you’re going to do to get exposure for your book.

Tactics vary from book to book – it’s not a “one-size-fits-all” situation – but tactics to consider (among others!) include:

• Soliciting reader reviews
• Creating a Facebook group
• Doing podcast interviews
• Optimizing your Amazon sales page
• Creating an image quote campaign

If you’re new to book marketing, don’t try to implement too many tactics. Start with two or three that will help you reach your target audience and learn to do them really well. When you’ve mastered them, add another tactic.

6. How much can I spend to promote my book?

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This is your book marketing budget. Your tactics can determine your budget, or your budget can determine your tactics.

There are lots of things you can do to market your book that don’t cost anything, but if you’re serious about getting your book into the hands of the people you wrote it for, you’ll need to spend some money.

A typical book marketing budget might include training program fees, website design and hosting, tools, and advertising costs.

7. What’s my book marketing timeline?

Use a calendar for this. Build your timeline around:

• When you will start marketing
• How long you plan to continue (think long-term – I encourage you to market your book as long as it’s available for purchase)
• When you will implement each tactic in your plan

For example, if you want to get reader reviews onto your Amazon sales page immediately after your publication date, get those review copies out to readers several weeks before the book goes “live.”

If you’re planning a virtual book tour, start building relationships with key bloggers at least six months before your anticipated tour dates. You want them to be familiar with you and your work before you ask them to participate.

Consider using a “reverse calendar” approach. This is one where you start with your end date in mind – the day your book is available, for example – and plan backwards from there.

Creating your book marketing plan

You can answer these seven questions with bullet points or paragraphs – whatever works for you. What matters more than word choice or format is that you capture this important information in writing.

When you’re clear on what you want to do to reach your book marketing goals, determine how you’ll get the work done. Can you do it yourself? Do you need to outsource any of it?

Remember to create that calendar detailing who will do what and when, complete with deadlines. If you don’t schedule the activities in whatever time management system you use, they might not happen. (Voice of experience talking here.)

Your plan is your marketing success blueprint

To make it easy for you, I’ve created a free book marketing plan template that you can download and use immediately. It includes:

• Instructions
• Examples
• Links to how-to information online
• A fill-in-the-blanks form

CLICK TO GET YOUR FREE BOOK MARKETING PLAN TEMPLATE!

Once you complete that template and start implementing your tactics, track your activities and outcomes.

Do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

Success takes time

Use your book marketing plan – your blueprint – as an evolving document that changes as you learn more about book marketing, your ideal readers, and how to reach them.

Finally, remember that everything takes time. Most books don’t become best-sellers as soon as they’re launched. They succeed over time because the author created, followed, and adjusted their book marketing plan.

And that’s what you need to do, too.

Do you have a book marketing plan? Please tell us how it helps you in a comment!

You’ll find a lot of good advice online about what you should do to prepare for your book launch. Several sources offer checklists and timelines.

These book launch prep to-do lists are generic, of course, because they can’t take individual author situations into account.

Most, for example, will tell you to email your list. Many authors haven’t built an author email marketing list that’s separate from their personal contacts directory, though.

Still, there are several book launch prep must-dos that make sense for most authors. Here are five of them.

1. Create a book marketing plan.

You know what Ben Franklin says about this, right? “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

A book marketing plan is your blueprint to success. It will help you think through and identify your ideal readers. You’ll also determine the specific steps you should take to get your book title in front of them.

To make this process easy for you, I walk you through the process with my free fill-in-the-blanks template and accompanying instructions. Simply download your Build Book Buzz Book Marketing Plan Template, then use it to get organized and take action.

2. Determine which social network your ideal readers use the most and expand your presence there.

If you’ve written your book marketing plan, you’ve done the work to figure out who is most likely to buy your book. (Need help with that? I’ve got an affordable training program that helps you identify your ideal reader.)

Next, match your reader demographics — age, gender, income level, geographic region, etc. — with social network demographics. You can do this by selecting two or three social networks you think are popular with your readers and adding the word “demographics” to a Google search. You might search for “Instagram demographics” or “YouTube demographics,” for example.

If you’re an active social media user, you probably have a good sense of where you’ll find your readers.

Once you know which platforms they use, work to increase and improve your high-quality connections there. Consider taking a course on how to use the best network for you effectively so you maximize your time on that platform.

3. Create your book’s marketing materials.

Again, there are a few basics that every author needs in place before a book launch. They include:

• Book announcement press release
• Online press kit
• Quote cards
• Images that include your book
• Email announcement to your personal contacts, independent of an opt-in email marketing list

If you’re planning a virtual book tour (also known as a book blog tour), write a few of your proposed guest posts ahead of time.

4. Recruit a street team.

A book launch street team is a group of readers, like-minded authors, and/or friends who agree to support your launch.

Typically, you ask them to read an advance review copy, write an honest review, and stand by to post that review on retail sites and Goodreads during launch week. You’ll want to create a plan that includes other strategies for generating reviews, but your street team should be a big part of that.

You’ll also ask them to promote the books to their networks. To help them with that, give them quote cards and images that include your book (see above) along with a selection of tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram messages they can use. Include hashtags for each social network, too.

5. Update your social media profiles.

If you’re like most of us, you set up your social network profiles when you created those accounts and haven’t updated them since. (If you aren’t like most of us, I’m very impressed!)

Bring them up to date with a current author head shot, an updated description with a website URL,  and a header that promotes your new book.

(Pro tip: Don’t use your book cover for your profile photo. People connect with people, not books.)

What’s on your book launch prep list?

Your book launch prep list might include other tasks, as well. There’s so much you can do!

What do you do before every launch? Why? Please tell us in a comment. 

You just have to have them.

Images serve several purposes on blogs. First, they make each post much more attractive and readable. They draw the visitor’s eye to your content and, with long posts, break up the text so it’s less overwhelming.

In addition, they help your blog post get found by search engines when you have the right keywords in the image title and the “alt text.” The “alt text” option in WordPress gives you another opportunity to add the keywords to your image.

They also draw more attention to your post when you and others share links to your content on social media.

Quality counts

Your images won’t help if they aren’t top quality, though. And I say that knowing that the best-known stock photography sites charge more than the typical author wants to spend on blog post images.

Fortunately, several sites offer quality stock images for free. I only discovered them when my favorite paid image source, DollarPhotoClub.com, went out of business. I started researching affordable alternatives, fully intending to pay for access, when I stumbled upon several sources of top quality free images.

Why pay $100 or more a year when there are so many quality options that don’t charge?

Free stock image sources

Here are a few of the best free stock image sources. Use the search box on each site to search for the types of images you should be using in your blog posts (for example, I typed “books” into each search box). That will help you determine which site might be the best for your blogging and social media image needs.

1. Gratisography

Photographer Ryan McGuire adds new photos every week but with just one photographer, the selection is more limited than it is on other sites.

2. Kaboompics

This free photo site has a particularly impressive selection of images for a wide range of topics. The home page alone inspires me to find and use more images.

3. Pexels

I found Pexels.com when a service I write for recommended it as an image source. I like that it prompts me every once in awhile to donate to the photographers via PayPal. I’ve been using this site the most but I’m about to try Kaboompics next to see if there are more image options.

4. Picjumbo

Photographer Viktor Hanasek lets you search his vast library of free images, opt for premium membership ,or even purchase the All in One Pack of every image from the site. An email subscription will get a selection of new photos sent to your inbox weekly.

When searching on this site, use the search box in the upper right of the screen. Don’t use the DepositPhotos.com search box if you want free images — that search box will take you to a paid image site.

5. Pixabay

Pixabay offers photos plus illustrations and videos, which makes it even more useful. You can also filter search results by type, color, category, size, and more.

6. Unsplash

With more than 50,000 free images, you’ll have plenty of options here. You can also subscribe to get an inspirational collection in your email each month.

While these free stock image sites offer all types of photos, you can also use a search engine to find sites that provide photos for specific niches that include food and travel.

4 tips for using images in your blog posts

These six sites will help you find exactly what you need for your blog. Before you start downloading images, though, make note of these tips for using them effectively. (These are the kinds of things nobody tells you when you start blogging.)

• Read this helpful guest post on this site, “How to pick the right images for your blog posts.“
• Check the rules on the image sites to make sure you understand the terms. For example, some might require you to provide source attribution.
• Resize the images. Big images cause pages to load slowly. You can resize in Microsoft Paint (a standard accessory on Windows computers) or with the tools at online sites that include BeFunky.com.
• Keep your author brand in mind when selecting and editing images. The mood evoked by images should match your website’s mood. And, when adding text, use colors that are compatible with your site colors.

Before you start adding quality images to your blog posts, check your Google Analytics account to see how many people are visiting your site. Check again a couple of months after you’ve started adding images. It’s quite likely that you’ll see an increase in traffic.

You will probably see a boost in your social media shares, as well.

What’s more, you might even enjoy the process of searching for — and finding! — just the right image for each post. I know I do.

What are you doing that’s working for your blog? Please tell us in a comment. 

Tip of the Month

I always share a “Tip of the Month,” a free resource or tool for authors, on the last Wednesday of the month.

This month it’s the free “Build Book Buzz Book Marketing Plan Template” you can download and use immediately.

This easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks template comes with complete instructions for filling it out. Available in PDF format, this document has everything you need to create your blueprint for book marketing success.

Plan ahead for your book’s success by downloading and using your free “Build Book Buzz Book Marketing Plan Template” immediately.