If you have been through the self-publishing process, then you know that promoting and marketing a book is essential for driving sales, but if you don’t get creative with your marketing strategy, it can get expensive. Here are some practical, low-budget ways to promote your self-published book without breaking the bank.

Build Your Author Platform:

Blog about your experience throughout the process and leading up to your book release. This is a great way for people to get to know you as an author and learn about your self-published book. 

Create an “About Me” section that is captivating, interesting, and insightful. Let your readers really get to know you and feel like you’re a down-to-earth person by establishing an online persona and a voice. Build up anticipation of your book release to create buzz by teasing the development of your book and its progress.

Offer special releases like a free eBook download or early access to the first chapters of your next release to generate buzz and fuel pre-orders.

Make Your Social Media Presence Known:

Create an aesthetic that is interesting and consistent across your online platforms and social media pages. Look at Instagram feeds that you admire and research other author pages to get a sense of what you like.

The more content you have ready, the better. Start by building anticipation for your project with progress and teaser posts. When your release date is approaching, you should have a full rollout of content prepped and ready to post.

Do a giveaway for a copy of your book on Instagram or TikTok to gain exposure and followers. The volume of engagement will also give you an idea of how much interest is out there. Was the giveaway successful? Run another one!

Join self-publishing groups on Facebook to network with other authors. Look up groups on Facebook related to your genre and post about your book in these groups!

Paid Advertising:

Promote posts on your Facebook and Instagram author pages. Start by establishing a realistic budget, whether it’s $2 to $5 daily, and create attention-grabbing posts about your book. Create video content and widen your reach by spending a little more per ad. Video content is shown to drive a stronger click rate.

Gather Reviews Early:

Generating book reviews early is an easy way to help drive sales. A potential reader can look up your book and read reviews ahead of the book release, creating pre-order sales.

Adopt an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) strategy and print a short run of books to give to book bloggers and BookTok creators.

Find Your Community & Engage With It:

If you don’t have your own podcast or YouTube channel, research accounts that would be a good fit for you to either be interviewed and talk about your book or collaborate in some way. Many vloggers and podcasters will help promote your book if you do the same for their podcast or vlog!

Create an account on GoodReads and Reddit to engage with the book lover community and see what the current discourse is and what books are trending. Engaging with the reader community can help spark creativity for marketing your book to target your audience.

Collaborate with Other Authors:

An easy way to expand and grow your audience to is partner with other authors in your genre and cross-promote your books. You can do joint giveaways, collab on a book project, share each other’s posts, collab on a special book box – there are endless ways to cross-promote and split marketing costs.

Create a Book Design that Captivates Readers:

The best free marketing tool you have at your disposal is the book cover and design itself. The first thing a potential reader notices is the book cover. The next thing they do is flip it over to read the back. It’s important to create a captivating design that stands out on the shelf, and an enticing book blurb to match.

At 48 Hour Books we have special book cover customizations to help your book stand out, like our Diamond 3D Printing in metallic foil,  Edge Printing, and Custom Endsheets. If you need help designing your cover, we offer custom cover design.

Looking for free ways to market your self-published book? Opt-In to our social sharing option when you place an order, and your book could be featured on our social media!