Marketing Your Book While You’re Still Writing It

It is never too early to plan how you are going to launch your book. You might think writing the book is where all your effort goes but that is nothing compared to marketing it. The good news is, you can get a head start on this. You don’t need to have your book published and ready to buy. You can implement your marketing strategy while you’re still writing it. Here’s how.

Start telling people about your book

You can start telling people about your book as soon as you have a basic outline of who it is for and what it is about. By talking about what you’re writing you will start to get the word out and get potential readers interested. People will start conversations by asking you about how the book is going. This gives you an opportunity to tell them more about it and ask them to help spread the word.

Give people regular updates on social media about the writing process or write blog posts about it that you can share with your email list. Be open and transparent about how you are getting on with your writing, what you’re struggling with, where you are writing, even what you are writing with. Are you tapping away on a keyboard or busy making notes with pen and paper?

Perhaps you have gone to interview someone, or you are busy doing research. Show people the work that is going into creating your book. Make it engaging. People in your audience might be thinking of writing a book themselves and will be interested in the process as well as the content. The more discussion you can generate on your social media posts, the more people will see information about your book.

Your community will start to get excited about what you’re doing and want to get involved. Give them sneak peeks and early order incentives so you hit the ground running with your sales when the book is published.

Build relationships with journalists and leaders in your industry

If you don’t already have connections with journalists or influential people in your industry, then you need to start building these up. This is something you should be doing anyway as part of your personal brand business. Go to industry events and get talking to people. Make connections on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Be an active member of your favorite podcasters’ communities.

Remember to make every interaction about them and their audience. This is about serving others, not promoting yourself or your book. You’re developing lasting relationships.

Create a promo page on your website

Create a page on your website about your book. As well as telling people about what you’re writing, put an author bio on there and photos of yourself. This will build up to become a promo kit for when it comes time to selling your book.

As you get further along with your writing, you can add to this page. Give people sample chapters, answer questions about your topic. You can put early reviews here from people you have given advanced copies of your book to.

All of this information is useful to podcasters, bloggers and journalists when they are researching you as a guest. When they feature you, they will need a bio and professional photos so having this ready to go makes everything easier.

The added bonus of your marketing efforts

The added bonus of your marketing efforts is that you will get that book written. When you are writing a book there are times when you ask yourself why you are doing it. Now you have one: an audience of people who can’t wait for your published book so they can read it. They are talking about it already. You want to get that book finished and published because you do not want to disappoint your eager readers.

Chris Ducker

Chris founded Youpreneur® in 2015. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author of the bestselling books “Virtual Freedom” and “Rise of the Youpreneur”. He hosts our podcast, live events and coaches our clients inside the Youpreneur Incubator. Chris is based in Cambridge, UK.