Get a Polished Author Brand in 10 Minutes or Less

by Penny Sansevieri | Jun 17, 2021 | Author Branding, Book Marketing Basics, Social Media for Authors

Reading Time: ( Word Count: )

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Establishing an author brand is a full-time job. It can take years to find the right niche, the right color scheme, the right voice for how to market your book — or it can take five minutes.

Our Book Marketing Tips and Author Success podcast has a pretty solid library of minisodes, essentially sales and marketing tips that you can soak up in 10 minutes or less.

So if you commit to spending just a few minutes a week listening to a minisode, and then a few more minutes following through with our recommendations – you can have an established author brand ready to be seen by the masses before the end of summer and learn how to market your book the right way.

Here’s a recap of just some of the minisodes you can access in our podcast library:

Save Your Failing Social Media

Content is, first and foremost, all for the reader. Post what your readers want to see — and know that that might not always be what you would want to see.

It’s common to feel like you’re getting nothing out of your social media no matter how much time and effort you put into it. We hear it all the time with our social media coaching. But what it comes down to is a lack of engagement.

Readers don’t want to see content that was solely created to sell your book. To boost engagement, you have to post what interests your audience and grabs their attention.

Social media is the greatest sales tool that isn’t for directly selling.

Put Images on Your Website

Clear, crisp images of real people do wonders for your author brand. Did you know that images of people looking at the camera, meaning at the reader, have a better response than images of people looking away?

And forget about the models. It has been proven that we want to see real people who look like us and resonate with us.

When it comes to how to market your book on your website, make it attainable. Make the images interesting and eye catching, but make them real — beautiful models don’t always sell to real people.

Don’t Get Caught in the Buzzword Trap

No two readers are the same. They may like the same genre and read the same books, but different ideas interest them. I will always talk about how important it is to know your audience, but you also have to understand that you will never fully know your audience.

Promoting a book as if it lines up perfectly with a single genre and its ideal reader limits who will want to read it. It can even make avid readers of said genre feel excluded.

When thinking about how to market your book, don’t get stuck on the idea of a popular buzzword. For example, “up-market women’s fiction.” This kind of phrasing and categorizing can really separate you from so many people who would love to read your book.

It’s important to find those niches and promote to them, but never limit yourself to a single buzzword.

Step Back From Your Author Brand and Find What’s Missing

It’s easy to get too close to your own work, to your author brand, to figure out what a potential buyer would want to see or to learn what might be missing.

This is especially true for series authors. They often forget to mention the whole series, that there’s more to read. Or they forget to mention that each book in the series can be read as a standalone. These are details a reader would appreciate knowing before they move from a browser to a buyer.

Your readers are busy. So, the best thing you can do for them is give them all the details up front, loud and clear. The description is a great place to do this.