5 Simple Marketing Strategies for First-Time Authors

5 Simple Marketing Strategies for First-Time Authors 5 Simple Marketing Strategies for First-Time Authors Brent Jones recently  gave up his freelance career as a social media manager to pursue creative writing full-time. At the end of this past February, he published his debut novel,  The Fifteenth of June, and in  the following month, Brent has been focused on what he knows to be an equally important part of an author's job: marketing.  In this article, he  shares 5 simple marketing strategies that all first-time authors can (and should!) try, and how his efforts have already started to pay off. I had the good  fortune of hiring  Laura Mae Isaacman  to edit my book through Reedsy - she worked tirelessly to make my debut release,  The Fifteenth of June, as powerful as it could be. But no matter how great a book is, publishing it is only  half the battle. For new authors such as myself, it takes a lot of work to  market a novel and find our first readers. To quote Amy Collins, author of  The Write Way:â€Å"Writing a great book is a basic requirement for simply being allowed a chance to succeed in the marketplace.†I will be outlining in this post some of the launch strategies I used  to market my debut novel.This list is not intended to be exhaustive, and I am not an expert marketer of literary fiction. But there's a lot we can learn from  one another, and I hope to start a productive discussion in the comments below.Ready? "Publishing a book is only half the battle. The other half is marketing it." @AuthorBrentJ 1. Run a free Kindle promotion 685 people entered my giveaway, but more importantly,  300+ users added my book  to their  to-read  shelf. And when a user adds a book to one of his or her shelves, it appears as an update in their feed, meaning their friends on Goodreads  can see that they have added my book!Most of those 10 print copies have been delivered, so it will be interesting to see in the coming weeks how many of those winners read the book, write a review, or recommend it to a friend. One recipient, Denise Levendoski, has already written a glowing review of The Fifteenth of June on Goodreads.The bottom line?It's been about a month since I published my book, and  I've sold close to 100 copies of my book at regular price, not including revenue generated through the Kindle Unlimited Lending Library.As far as I'm concerned, I’m off to a great start, considering  some of my marketing initiatives, such as reaching out to book bloggers, haven't even begun to pay off. Not to mention that many who  downloaded  The Fifteenth of June  haven't read it yet.In the meantime, I'm focused on my next novel, which I intend to publish by  August. I've heard from other  self-published authors that it generally takes four titles to gain  some traction. Not true in every case, I suppose, but  a fair guideline nonetheless. "Writing and marketing is a tough balancing act, but must be maneuvered to succeed." @AuthorBrentJ It's a tough balancing act - writing and marketing - but both aspects of the job have to be maneuvered in equal measure if we, as writers, hope to be successful author-entrepreneurs.The Fifteenth of June is available in paperback from Amazon and on Amazon Kindle!Head to Brent's website  to subscribe to his newsletter, or follow him on Twitter for more!Have you tried any of Brent's marketing tips? How did they work for you? Or do you have marketing ideas for first-time authors that weren't included in the list?  Leave any thoughts, experiences, or questions for Brent  in the comments below.