How to Market Your Book in 2020

The difference between filing your carefully edited pages on your computer and readers reading those pages, is marketing.

Books come alive when readers read them, but in order to read them, they must know it exists. It’s the imagination that puts skin on characters and personalities in dialogue. Without readers, your book is a black and white stack of words.

One of my writing friends once said: “The brutal truth is you may have the greatest book ever written, but if you cannot pitch it, no one may ever know.”

Swap the word pitch with market, and you get a similar result.

So, how do you market your book, especially when life looks quite different now than it did a year ago?

Start with your pitch.

Online marketing can help you so much right now. You can do it from home, but still reach hundreds if not thousands of potential readers. However, just as every word counts in writing, every word counts in marketing. For someone to be willing to stop their scroll, it’s important to be succinct and catch their attention.

If you’re on Twitter, try formatting your pitch to target potential readers (and don’t forget to hashtag #WritingCommunity!). This will hopefully pique interest and if you leave it with a question, opens the door for comments.

Market your protagonist’s character arc.

Readers connect with the human side of characters, and often the humanity of characters means they have flaws. You want to keep the ending a surprise, but give enough to engage their desire to find out what happens. What’s your inciting incident, how does your protagonist respond, and what does this say about him? These can be good questions to ask when considering how to portray character arc.

Note: Keep your target audience in mind, because you want to remember not just what you’re pitching, but who you’re pitching to.

Shine a spotlight on your theme

              Your theme is what holds your book together. It’s the current that carries your protagonist, and your readers, from the first page to the last. It’s what makes them pick up your book instead of the one next to it on the shelf, or add your book to the cart instead of one in the customers-also-bought list on Amazon.

Let your passion for your book overflow as you market, but remember readers often purchase not just because of the genre, but because of the story in the genre. Your theme is what sets your story apart and your character arc helps hold up your theme, whatever it is.

Best wishes as you spread the word on your project!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

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