by Penny C. Sansevieri
Marketing a book is hard work, and your efforts can seem fruitless if you don’t get positive feedback in the form of reader engagement. Engagement should always be the goal, no matter what strategies you’re using to market your book.
Before you start any marketing, however, you should fully flesh out what you aim to achieve. And no, sales isn’t allowed as your primary answer. As authors, we all want to sell books; you’ll get farther and see more success if you pull sales off the goals table. Real goals, goals that focus on reader engagement, aren’t only more lucrative, they’re more rewarding psychologically, and they’ll push you to keep going.
Given the times we’re currently living in, we all need to gravitate as often as we can toward strategies that give us that kind of endorphin push! Today I’m offering a roundup of fun and fabulous ways, large and small, to help you target reader engagement in your book-marketing plan. As we head into 2021, I challenge you to try just one of these each month. If you feel pressed for time, swap out a book-promotion strategy you’re currently using that isn’t doing much for you. Be brave enough to stop doing what isn’t working and try something new.
Run a Fun Q&A Contest
Marketing a book means pulling fans into your world. Running a Q&A contest is a fun way to get them involved and get some insight into what they find most interesting or fascinating about you and your work. Consider it a great strategy to increase reader engagement while also getting some free market research!
Ask fans to submit questions by email, on social media, using a special hashtag; there are lots of options. If you have them use a contact form on your website, you can build your mailing list at the same time. At regular intervals, select a few of the submitted questions and answer them in your newsletter, on social, or by video. When you make this a regular part of your book-marketing plan–weekly if you have enough fans, or monthly if you’re super busy–people will start to look forward to it, questions will get submitted pretty regularly, and you’ll soon discover that you have actually built a fountain of content for your newsletter, blog, and/or social media posts!
Create More Video
I can’t say it enough; the future of book promotion is video. Why? Because video is super-personal and it’s something very unique to you and your brand. If you choose to answer fan questions in video format when using my first suggestion, your relatability will skyrocket! People love getting an actual visual glimpse into your world. Plus, you can’t knock the statistics; Wordstream reported that 33 percent of online activity is spent watching video. As a format, it’s undeniably a powerful way to boost reader engagement. Even video beginners can easily add clips to a blog or a social media account. If you love being on camera, a YouTube channel is probably in your future!
Ask for Fans’ Opinions
Turn the tables and ask your fans questions. I recommend soliciting fan opinions on a combination of book-related and fun or interesting trivia or topics. When it comes to your books, it can be especially fun to create polls around cover designs you’re considering, minor character names, or even your lead’s loveable furry companion! Give fans a chance to weigh in, and you’ll for sure see reader engagement expand.
As for non-book topics, keep in mind who your readers are and what other interests they likely share outside of your genre. Do your due diligence and complete a reader profile; it will help tremendously in this area.
Let Fans Tell the Story
Once you’ve gotten comfortable asking your fans’ opinions, you can take their involvement and engagement to the next level by asking them to create offshoot ideas for you and send you pitch ideas for upcoming books! Make sure you let fans know you’ll credit any ideas you incorporate by thanking them in your acknowledgments. If you’d rather focus on books you’ve already published, ask followers to create fun and exciting alternative endings; let’s be honest, we can’t make everyone happy, and it’s really exciting to see how some fans would have wrapped up their favorite stories. Marketing a book should also inspire you, and that inspiration comes much easier with quality reader engagement like this!
Invite Fans to Submit Images
The truth is you probably have some pretty creative fans who are skilled with paint, pencil, marker, digital tools, etc. Asking followers to submit images is a great way to increase engagement and tap into their mindset. You can also let fans make celebrity and actor recommendations for your characters for the big-screen version of your book! Just be sure, as with all the fan-inspired content, you have a plan for praising those who participate. Give them love on social, share in your newsletter, add shout-outs to a blog post: people love to be recognized for their unique insights and hard work.
Use Your Back Matter
The back matter of your book can be a gold mine for creating reader engagement. Picture your ideal reader swiping to the last page of their eBook, sighing with contentment, and also wanting MORE of your content. You can use your back matter strategically to put those feelings to work for both of you. Update it to include a link to leave a review while they’re still in your thrall and before they move on to the next thing they have to do that day. Other strategic uses of back matter include a link to join your mailing list, an insiders’ discount code, or a free preview of another title. All of these pieces will make your readers feel special and will serve you well.
Start a Trivia Contest
A lot of times we get tunnel vision and focus on creating new fans while forgetting to do special things for the ones who have been with us the longest. A trivia contest is a terrific way to increase reader engagement for dedicated fans. Set up trivia questions pertaining to titles you’ve already released and have gift cards or some other swag ready to go for those who get a perfect score. Make participation easy; while an interactive quiz on your website is one option, you’ll likely get just as many entries if you include the trivia contest in your newsletter and ask fans to hit reply on your email to participate.
Design an Exciting Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunts are like trivia on adrenaline. They take it a step further and are a great way to introduce your fans to everything you have going online; when you’re marketing a book, killing two birds with one stone is always a winner. Design scavenger challenges around identifying things on your social media accounts, on your website, in your books, in your last newsletter. This is a lot harder for fans, so start small with things that are public access, like social media accounts, before you progress to trickier ones.
Start Building Your Super Fan Group!
It’s an author’s dream come true to have a tribe of Super Fans; just the thought of them warms my heart. Building a Super Fan group is a strategy that can be a good fit if you’re established enough to have access to at least a small handful of return readers. That’s all it really takes to get started. The bonus with Super Fans is that not only do your interactions with them create reader engagement, but they in turn generate more engagement with their activity on your behalf. This is priceless because 95 percent of books are read and purchased by word-of-mouth recommendation.
And there you have it! Nine ideas for nine months of reader engagement, enough to give you a jump start into a successful 2021. May this be the happiest of book-marketing new years for you!
Penny Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. (AME) and an adjunct professor at NYU, is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns.
