Locally Marketing your Books

Think global, act local.An age old phrase but it’s always relevant. In this age of internet where social media is part of daily life, the phrase becomes even more relevant. Book marketing in national media has increasingly become competitive. There has been a dramatic increase among indie authors where they leverage their communities and local media for marketing their books.

It’s easier to get carried away with the way successful authors market their books. As an indie author, a major part of your focus should be local. Building a local audience is easier and a one-on-one relationship can be built with your readers. In my last article on marketing tips, I mentioned about how you can talk to local colleges and universities for book reading events. Moreover, teenagers nowadays share everything in social media and it will boost your marketing.

You must establish yourself as a must follow local indie author in your part of the world. You must develop a consistent interaction with your readers as part of your marketing plan.

Knowing your reader

It’s very important to know your reader. Try to understand their behaviours. Knowing the behaviour of your reader, you can pitch your book in the way they will accept it.

Jot down the list of activities your reader is interested. Where does your target reader hang out locally? Do they shop at particular types of stores? What activities or groups might they be apart of?

Answering these questions will help in understand how to reach your reader. Look for unique places to hold author events.

Marketing in Events and Activities

Look for events in your locality. Facebook can be a great tool for finding events and activities in your local area.

Go to events and interact with new people. Take part in activities and immerse yourself together with your book in your community. People in your locality should know about your latest works. You should be known as a very accessible person. This will help in the long run.

 Competitor Analysis

Look out for other identically placed indie authors. Everyone is doing something uniquely to promote his/her book locally. Together with your ideas, you should try some of their ideas but with a better execution. While marketing your books, it is equally important to beat your competition.

Over the years, I have stressed on the importance of social media. Still, I would say that the RoI in social media is surprisingly low compared to the number of follows.

It’s your personal connection that will give you a strong foothold in the market.

To summarise, I strongly urge you to start local marketing and grow a strong fanbase locally. Correspondingly, getting a national fanbase won’t be difficult to achieve.

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