After publishing

After you publish your book

The work continues for those who seek to sell or promote their books either as self-published authors or for those with a publishing house. No matter your situation, you can succeed either way. 

 

For self-published authors, you should know that your books need a home online. It doesn’t matter where you choose to send people to, as long as you stay consistent and don’t promote ten or more different places at the same time. If your books can be found in all bookstores, then you don’t have to list them all.

 

WEBSITE

A website is a commodity nowadays and might not be convenient to have if you don’t have the funds to create it and maintain it. As long as you have the time, you can create a free website where others can learn more about you as an author and about your books. You can list your books on Amazon and create an author page, or a bookshop.org author store. There is a “website section” with a few more details on this.

 

SOCIAL MEDIA & ONLINE STORES
You don’t necessarily need a website for promotion, you can use your social media platform. For example, you can sell on Facebook marketplace, Bookshop.org, Amazon, or your publisher’s website and refer others there. By the way, you don’t need to be on every social media platform, use the one you feel most comfortable at and promote yourself and books there. Promotion means that you will do continuous posts every week. Continuous posts about general topics you support and some that lead to the topic of your book. No need to post everyday. Consistency is more important.

 

PROMOTION SHEET

Authors need to develop a one page promotional sheet with contact information and details about the book. This will be a physical flyer that you can hand out to others or a digital one that you can share online. A bookmark or postcard can work just the same. Include the following:

  • contact information and short biography
  • list details of the books such as ISBN, price, publishing date
  • short description about the book
  • quotes about the book
  • website, social media, or QR codes
  • key message from the book
  • images of the book and photo of the author

Not every piece of information needs to be included if space does not allow it. Be selective and put yourself in the shoes of your audience.

 

BOOK VIDEO TRAILER

It would be beneficial to create a book video trailer. Nowadays there are mobile apps that can facilitate production of videos all in one place. For technology savvy people, it might just be the best option. A video doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to be clear, simple, and short. You can take clips of your books, do voiceovers and take photos. For MacOS users, iMovie can be a free option. Youtube has its own editing system. Filmora is a simple to use location, the paid option if better. Canva is free and is wonderful to use as well. The newest free video editing tool simple to use is Tiktok (create and download short videos with music, voice overs, and captions). You can always invest in a video creator if you would like a professional video.

 

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Prepare a one page sheet with information for others specifically to be prepared for interviews with you as the author. This piece is optional, but serves a bigger purpose. The key goal with this sheet is to facilitate others with all the details and the potential questions that they can ask you beforehand. This means that you and the interviewer will be prepared on the spot no matter the location. Included in the website page, there are more details on this at the ‘Author Interview’ section.

 

Many big publishing houses include all the described options above as part of the contract. They have their own team of editors, illustrators, designers, public relations people, website developers, and marketing professionals. Keep in mind that you need to read and understand any publishing house contract.