Writing the book was easy – marketing it is a whole other story.

Marketing a book is like promoting a business and this sort of flair doesn’t always come naturally to someone who spends their time writing, re-writing and constantly editing what they do to make it perfect. How can a writer who constantly looks to improve their work promote a work that’s already out there at its very best? Well, there’s only one way it can be done and it may be something that’s hard to do. You have to believe that you and your work are good enough.

You have to sell yourself, and myself (an introvert) found that extremely hard. You worry you’re being pushy, or persistent and people aren’t interested. You have to chase people up and pester them and even then, people don’t care nearly as much as you want them to. It’s hard and you need to have a strong will and a thick skin – but sometimes, you just have to go back to the core reason you begun this.

What you are marketing is a book or an idea that you believe is important enough to spend time writing about. Spend time investing in. Spend time moulding. Even if no one else is interested in it, you know as a person and a writer that this book deserves every page its written on and it deserves a chance. If someone else did a poor job marketing it and it didn’t work out, you’d blame them and look elsewhere, but if you’re the one letting yourself down then its on your head. Do everything you can, even if it doesn’t work well, just so you can say to yourself that you did all you could and persistence may be rewarded. After all, its the things you don’t do that you should regret, not the things you did.

Atlantic Split is available on five separate channels, and whilst some of them perform better than others, by having a variety of platforms, I gave myself a good chance to see which ones would be successful. Now, for the sequels, I have a better idea of where the book will be published – it’s all a learning curve. I’ve learnt about what days are good for social media posts, which sites and what kinds of people to target. Next week I’m changing my strategy once again, because you can’t learn if you don’t make changes. I’ve found using my business cards is good, but following up on people is hard. However, having the visual reminder there in front of them is enough to make book sales. I’ll be distributing those more at social events.

Finally, I changed my keywords on Amazon making them as specific as I could to my book topics. Now, if you type in ‘young adult fugitive’ into Amazon books, Atlantic Split appears on the first page. If you type in ‘prejudice conspiracy’ the book comes up as the third search item. That means the people who are interested in your book topic are finding it when they search for it – even if its niche. That’s why I chose Atlantic Split as my title – no other books have the same title so my book is easy to find and now if you type it into Google, I’m the very first search option. All of this ties into marketing.

However, from what I’ve heard from other authors, the best way to sell a book is to write another, and then another and then even more. With the second book in the series waiting in the wings, I’ll be devoting much more time to it over the next few months with a release hopefully at the end of the year. So, make sure that you’ve read Atlantic Split before the next one comes out!

Atlantic Split is the first book in The Luke Bright Series and is available to purchase NOW! Please follow me on my blog and my social media links below and use the links on my website to purchase a copy if you have not done so. Don’t forget to leave a review! Thank you once again for taking the time to read this blog post.

N.A.K.