Promote Your Backlist

It’s true that the best thing to do after launching your book is to concentrate on writing your next one, but that doesn’t mean that shortly after launch your book should be ignored other than a tweet now and then with buy links. The thing with traditional publishing, unless you’re one of the most popular writers in the world, your book won’t always be in the limelight. Even if it’s lucky enough to be moderately successful, it will still have to make way for the latest bestsellers, and eventually it will officially be backlist and have zero promotion from the publisher. Too many other shiny new books to see to.

The nice thing about being Indie published means that you can give your book a new party anytime you like. I like the idea of doing something every three months or so. As time goes by all of your online sites will grow with new followers. Followers who weren’t around when you launched your last book, and who might quite like it if they knew a bit more about it. Most people don’t inspect every link in the sidebars of blogs that they follow unless they’re looking for specific information, or if your words have impressed them so much that they simply  must have more of them immediately.

Every couple of months, have a look at your backlist, and think of your next promotion. If you have more than one book published consider having them all at the party. You could make one or a couple free as incentive, and then set the particular book that you want to promote at ninety nine cents, either as a Kindle Countdown or manually set the price for however many days you plan on promoting it. You could ask your fellow bloggers to participate in a blog tour, or you could simply announce your special deals on your own blog. Many of your community friends will share posts like these, and with Facebook, Twitter, and shares on other platforms you’re very likely to find at least a couple of new readers. You can run some advertisements on promotion sites, either paid or free, depending on what you can afford too.

Don’t be disappointed when your first book launch only yields a few sales to begin with. As you grow and write more books and gain new readers, all new promotions of them are going to be new to new fans, so dust off your backlist, consider new covers or rebranding if they’ve been languishing for too long, and give your older books a new lease on life.

Author: jorobinson176

South African writer. View all posts by jorobinson176