Smashwords Book Marketing Guide: Smashwords Guides, #2

Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Copyright 2008-2020 Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com)

Version 2.5 Rev 12.19.19

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Smashwords Edition

Cover design by PJ Lyon

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Other Books by Mark Coker:

Smashwords Style Guide (How to format and publish an ebook)

Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (Ebook publishing best practices)

10-Minute PR Checklist – (How to Earn the Publicity You Deserve

Boob Tube (Novel about Hollywood celebrity)

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Table of Contents

Introduction

About the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Why I wrote this book

What is book marketing?

Writing is marketing

The rise of ebooks

The competitive advantage of indie ebook authors

Setting expectations

Chapter 1. The Free Book Marketing Tools at Smashwords

1. Distribution to retailers and libraries

2. The Smashwords Store

3. Smashwords Presales

4. Global Pricing Control

5. Daily Sales reporting

6. Multiple ebook file types

7. Author profile pages

8. Book pages

9. Book sampling

10. Smart shopping cart

11. Book reviews

12. Coupons!

13. Promotional widgets

14. Search engine visibility

15. Exclusive Special Deals promotions

16. Smashwords Interviews

17. Embeddable YouTube videos

18. Book tagging

19. Tag cloud

20. Other books by this author or publisher

21. Integration with social media sites

22. Smashwords Affiliate Partners program

23. Exclusive site-wide promotions

24. Promotion on Smashwords Satellites

25. Access to retailer merchandising promotions

26. Free author education resources

Chapter 2. 66 MARKETING TIPS

FOUNDATION-BUILDING

Author Brand-Building

Tip #1 – Visualize your author brand

Tip #2 – Practice ethical marketing

Tip #3 – Act professional

Tip #4 – Be a nice person

Tip #5 – Give back

Knowledge Building

Tip #6 – Subscribe to the Smart Author Podcast

Tip #7 – Join a local writer’s club or critique group

Tip #8 – Subscribe to the Smashwords blog

Tip #9 – Read The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success

Tip #10 – Check out the Smashwords Survey

Platform Building

Tip #11 – Join HARO, Help-a-reporter-online for free press leads

Tip #12 – Use Google Alerts to discover where the conversations are taking place

Tip #13 – Create a private email list

Tip #14 – Update your email signature

Tip #15 – Sign up for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, if you haven’t already

Tip #16 – Complete a Smashwords Interview

Tip #17 – Start a blog

Tip #18 – Print business cards

Tip #19 – Create an online calling card and bio at About.me

Tip #20 – Update your social media profiles and message board signatures

Distribution

Tip #21 – List every new release on preorder

Tip #22 – Distribute to all ebook retailers

Tip #23 – Distribute ebook to public libraries

Autopilot Marketing

Tip #24 – Build hyperlinks

Tip #25 – Don’t publish without editing

Tip #26 – If you can’t afford a professional editor, find an alternative

Tip #27 – Use beta readers to inspire ideas for your final revision

Tip #28 – Three essential sections for your back matter

Tip #29 – Create a discussion guide for your back matter

Tip #30 – Promote preorder books in the back matter of your other books

Tip #31 – Add sample chapters of your other books to your back matter

Tip #32 – Do a sample chapter swap with another author

Tip #33 – Add enhanced navigation to your ebook

Tip #34 – Price at least one book at FREE

Tip #35 – If you write series, price the series starter at FREE

Tip #36 – Practice metadata magic

Tip #37 – Occupy multiple price points to appeal to more readers

Tip #38 – Publish more than one book to create a multiplier effect

Tip #39 – Refresh your cover image

Tip #40 – Tweak and iterate your viral catalysts

BOOK PROMOTION

Prelaunch Marketing

Tip #41 – It’s all about the next book – get it on preorder now

Tip #42 – Run a presale with Smashwords Presales

Tip #43 – Encourage readers to subscribe to your Smashwords Alerts

Tip #44 – Write thoughtful reviews for other ebooks on Smashwords

Tip #45 – Participate in specialized communities where your target readers hang out

Blog Marketing

Tip #46 – Join the conversations on other blogs

Tip #47 – Write guest posts for other blogs

Tip #48 – Conduct Q&A interviews of other authors on your blog

Tip #49 – Invite other authors to write guest posts for your blog

Launch Marketing

Tip #50 – Promote hyperlinks to all your retailers

Tip #51 – Write a press release and promote it to your local newspaper

Tip #52 – Organize a blog tour

Tip #53 – Celebrate your ebook launch on your web site, blog and private mailing list

Tip #54 – Announce your book on social media

Tip #55 – Announce your book to friends, family, co-workers, business associates, and readers

Tip #56 – Encourage readers to leave honest reviews at their favorite retailer

Library Marketing

Tip #57 – Ask your readers to recommend your ebook to their local public library

Tip #58– Orchestrate events at your local library

Post Launch Marketing

Tip #59 – Run promotions with Smashwords Coupons

Tip #60 – Run a price promotion

Tip #61 – Participate in annual Smashwords-exclusive promotions

Tip #62 – Leverage YouTube videos to reach more readers

Tip #63 – Invite readers to become affiliate marketers for your books

Tip #64 – Upload a presentation deck to Slideshare.net

Tip #65 – Organize a multi-author box set with your favorite authors

Tip #66 – Invite other authors to join you on your indie author journey

Chapter 3 - DEEP DIVES

Social media strategies for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

How to work with beta readers

How to earn free press coverage

Also by Mark Coker

About the author

Connect with Mark Coker

Connect with fellow Smashwords authors

Connect with Smashwords

Dedication and acknowledgements

Permissions

Introduction

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About the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Since its first publication in 2008, the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide has helped thousands of writers, publishers and book marketers reach millions of new readers. The first edition aimed to help Smashwords authors take full advantage of the marketing tools and capabilities of the Smashwords platform.

In the years since, I’ve expanded the scope of the guide with dozens of updates as the industry developed, and as I identified new book marketing opportunities for authors. Today the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide has evolved to become an essential resource for all authors and publishers, even if you’re not yet working with Smashwords.

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide provides practical, proven book-marketing advice. You won’t find gimmicks or shady tricks here. I teach, preach and practice ethical marketing.

Most of the ideas presented here cost nothing to implement other than the investment of your time.

Some of my tips require only a couple of minutes to implement; yet will reap you dividends for years to come. Other tips require a greater ongoing investment of your time and attention. Do the easy things first, and then refer back to the guide as a brainstorming checklist whenever you’re ready to do more.

You’ll find I use the terms self-published author and indie author interchangeably. They’re the same.

Although this book focuses on ebook marketing, many of the recommendations I’m about to share apply to print book and audiobook marketing as well.

This is the 2020 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which includes minor updates over the 2018 edition which marked the most significant revision since the first edition was published in 2008. This new edition includes new book marketing opportunities enabled by the December 2019 launch of our patent-pending book launch tool, Smashwords Presales.

The 66 marketing tips that follow are organized in sections under logical categories that map closely to how you’ll plan, launch and sustain your book marketing.

This edition includes chapter titled "Deep Dives," which was first introduced in the 2018 edition. The Deep Dives chapter offers in-depth sections for developing your social media strategy, how to work with beta readers and how to earn free press coverage.

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide will continue to evolve over time. Many of the marketing strategies and tactics you’re about to learn were pioneered by your fellow indie authors. I welcome your suggestions for new tips to share in future editions. I also welcome your corrections. Write me (Mark Coker) at first initial second initial at smashwords dot com.

Why I wrote this book

Context is important. Who am I and how did I come to write a book about book marketing?

I’ve been practicing marketing my entire career. I received my degree in marketing from UC Berkeley in 1988, but my best learning has come from real world experience.

My first job out of college was as VP of Marketing for my father’s garage startup. He gave me a big title and zero marketing budget for our little two-man company. Out of necessity I learned how to get free press coverage for our software.

My next big job was working at one of the largest PR firms in Silicon Valley. After a couple of years there, I left to start my own firm. For over 15 years I ran an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm where I provided strategic communications counsel to – and was mentored by – some of the brightest CEOs and VPs of Marketing from around the globe. It was an amazing educational experience.

Then around 2000, right before the dot com bubble burst, I met my wife, Lesleyann. She’s a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly Magazine. She told me head-spinning stories about her experiences reporting on the wild and wacky world of daytime television soap operas. She shared how the soap actors she met were more over-the-top in real life than their fictional soap opera characters. I suggested she write a book about her experiences. She suggested we write that book together.

Ever since I can remember, I dreamed of writing a book. I always assumed I’d write non-fiction about one of my various passions such as gardening, entrepreneurship, stock market investing, or marketing. But a novel about soap operas? I decided why not. I was getting burnt out on the daily grind of running a PR agency and was ready for something different.

The rest is history. I took a sabbatical from my PR agency to research and write the novel with Lesleyann. It was an incredible experience. We explored the dark underbelly of Hollywood celebrity. The book is titled Boob Tube.

Despite representation from an awesome agent at a top literary agency in New York City, we couldn’t get a publishing deal. Previous novels targeting soap opera fans had performed poorly, so publishers were reluctant to take a chance on us.

The experience opened my eyes. I realized that despite their good intentions, publishers are unable to say yes to every author.

I imagined the millions of writers who came before us whose dreams of authorship had been crushed by the benign neglect of publishers.

I thought it would be really cool if someone would create a publishing service that could say yes to every writer in the world. This was in 2005, the early days of blogging and YouTube. I thought if anyone could have the freedom to publish a blog post or video online, and have their work judged by their audience as opposed to a gatekeeper, then why not a book?

I decided to solve the problem myself. I wanted to democratize publishing for the benefit of all writers and readers.

In 2008 I founded an ebook publishing company called Smashwords. Smashwords makes it fast, free and easy for any writer, anywhere in the world, to self-publish an ebook. We created powerful publishing and marketing tools, and we put these tools in the hands of writers for no cost.

In 2009 we broke down the distribution barriers by opening up multiple major ebook retailers to self-published ebooks. Once our authors’ ebooks hit retailers’ virtual shelves, they started selling. We also opened up public libraries to self-published ebooks.

In the years since our founding, Smashwords has grown to become the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks. Throughout our growth and all the ups and downs of this rough and tumble industry, I never lost sight of the fighting spirit upon which I founded the company. We’re here to democratize publishing for the benefit of authors, publishers and readers. That fight continues.

Today we help over 140,000 authors publish