Book Marketing Basics

One of the perplexing issues with book marketing is the sheer plethora of ways to spend money -- and in many cases, waste it.

Before embarking on marketing your book, you have to ensure that it has a solid marketing foundation. This foundation consists of three pillars: the landing page, the author platform and targeting. 

This article will discuss all three pillars


Landing page


Your landing page is where the sale is clinched or lost. Social media marketing is designed to only deliver visitors to that landing page. That’s all it does. 

So, it stands to reason that the landing page is where you have to invest your maximum creativity. If you have a publisher, it will create a landing page for your book. If you self-publish, the landing page is your job. You have to write the page elements before you upload the book to the packager. You can also revise and strengthen it after it is published. 

Landing page components

The components, in the order an Amazon visitor sees them, are:

  • The cover
  • The ratings
  • The price
  • The blurb
  • The description

Any one of these components can drive a visitor away. If the components all mesh together, the visitor may be convinced to buy the book.

Covers

A unique book cover is an important element in getting your book noticed. Studies have shown that many readers are initially attracted to a book by the cover. Consequently, a shoddy cover won’t attract potential readers. Look at a book page on Amazon. The first thing you’ll see is the cover image. This image can go a long way towards attracting a buyer’s attention. My advice is to hire a competent cover artist to create a cover for your book.

Ratings

Ratings are an important landing page element, but they are devilishly hard to acquire. It is not unusual for a book to be published with no ratings or reviews listed. One solution to this dilemma is to send a copy to friends and colleagues before publication and ask them to write a review. There are many, many websites that will offer to get you a review — for a price. Some of these sites are scam artists. If the site “guarantees” a number of reviews (or ratings), flee. They will deliver the goods, but the reviews will be shoddy and probably written by an AI program.

Price

How do you come up with a price for your book? I’ll answer that in a moment. First, a few words of advice. Don’t let your ego get in the way of making a rational decision on this subject. It’s true you may have spent years producing this masterpiece, and you think the book’s value is enormous and that thousands of readers will be happy to pay a premium price to get a chance to own their very own copy. Well, you’re wrong. You are an unknown author, and unknown authors can’t command premium prices. It’ll be hard enough selling your book without the added burden of an unrealistically high price.

An example of this issue is a first time fantasy novelist pricing an ebook at $9.99 instead of $2.99-4.99.

How do you determine the price? Research!

Print books price. 

The best place to do this research is on Amazon or some other major book site, although you can do this in a bookstore or even a library. Once on the site, search for books that are similar to yours. If your book is non-fiction and covers plumbing repairs, search for other plumbing repair books. Note the price for the ones that have similar subject matter and a similar number of pages. That is the target price of your book. If your research reveals four similar print books and their prices range from $15.99 to $24.99, your book should be priced somewhere within that range. You can also make a pricing decision to make your book available at a lower price if you wish.

If your book is fiction, search for other books within your genre. This may be a tougher job than with nonfiction books. Genre books have superstar authors who command premium prices. Ignore them. You don’t have the clout to demand a premium price — yet. Your search should be for lesser-known authors in your genre. If your book has three-hundred pages, you should search for other similar genre books with approximately three-hundred pages.. Comparing your three-hundred-page book to a six-hundred-page one isn’t very productive. The six-hundred-page print book will cost more to produce because of the larger number of pages and subsequent production costs, so that book will require a higher price than a three-hundred-page print book. Set your price to get the best possible sales at your current status as a new author.

Ebook price

A complicating factor here is the presence of best-selling authors. Their ebooks come from the major publishing houses. Their price will be closer to $10.00 or even higher. Here again, the premium price is due to name recognition and clout. If you price your ebook close to $10.00, you won’t have to worry about tracking sales; you won’t get any. A first-time self-published author simply can’t expect to use premium pricing and sell any books, no matter how great the content is.

Fiction ebooks are very sensitive to price. The books are selling entertainment, and readers will compare prices before making a buy decision. That’s why your ebooks can’t compete with well-known authors on price.

Nonfiction ebooks are not as sensitive. Most nonfiction books provide a solution to a problem. If the reader sees the book as a way to solve her problem, she won’t be as concerned about the price.


Author platform


The landing page is about the book: the author platform is about the author. The landing page is about your book. The author platform is about you, the author. The platform is how you introduce yourself to the world and consists of a number of components that have to be developed and kept updated.

Platform components

Your author platform, at a minimum, consists of the following components. 

  • Signature (Sig) files
  • Author website
  • Media kit
  • Social media accounts

Sig files

Sig files, short for signature files, are a cute way to remind people about your website and your books. It’s part author platform and part marketing. A sig file is a series of links that follow your name (signature) on an email.

Sig files aren’t hard to create, but you’ll have to do some digging because every email program does it different. Look under the general information tab or search for signatures on the email program.

Author website

You need a website of some sort. It’s a place to post blogs and have a second landing page. It can also host your media kit to be downloaded. It can use Wordpress or some other app and it doesn’t need a lot of sophisticated features.

It provides a second landing page for your book, so don’t skimp on this aspect of the website. Make this landing page as great as the original one.

Media kit

The purpose of a media kit is to let folks in the media and other interested parties know about your writing credentials. If the book is your only writing project so far, there won’t be a lot of material, but start it anyway. If you have published short stories, articles or other content, add it to plump up your résumé. The media kit lives on your website or blog and must be available to anyone who wants to download it. For that reason, you may want to consider not putting personal information in it like your home address or your phone number.

So, what goes into a media kit? Here is a list of items that make up your kit: 

  • Bio.
  • Press releases.
  • Website links.
  • Body of work.
  • Book descriptions.
  • Book reviews.

Make sure the media kit is a docx or pdf file so it can be downloaded and opened by everyone. You don’t need all of this material on day one. Start with what you have and add it to over time. 

As long as we’re discussing the media kit contents, it’s a good time to write your bio. Write two bios, a long version of one or more pages and a short one, a single paragraph or two. The long one goes in the media kit, and the short one can be used in guest posts on blogs and in other places.

Bios are written in the third person, not first person. Include your photo in the bio and make sure it’s a good picture. Preferably, you should be smiling. Don’t use a picture in which you are frowning, glaring, snarling or otherwise looking unfriendly or hostile. You don’t want to scare away potential customers.



Targeting


Another issue is targeting, an important ingredient in marketing. Promoting a book to the general population is a waste of money since around 98% or more of this population has no interest in your genre or product. To be successful, a social media promotion has to be targeted to the tiny sliver of the population that reads your genre, such as romance or fantasy or mystery. But it is extremely difficult to target that sliver using popular social media ads. Consequently, the money spent on the ad is wasted on people who will never buy your book. 

To be effective, a fiction promotion must be targeted at your specific genre. For non-fiction, it must be targeted to the problem the book is solving, such as plumbing problems or modernizing a kitchen.


Note: The content in this article was taken from my book; Beginner's Guide to Basic Book Marketing


Published on 7/22/2026


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