I’ve said it many times before: it’s waaaaayyyy easier to market a nonfiction book than it is fiction. The reasons are numerous:
1. People are searching for books on specific topics. They find those books. No one is searching for a good novel, so a fiction book has to find them.
2. Nonfiction writers have knowledge in a specific field that the average guy doesn’t have. As a result, he or she can blog about the topic and have a ready-made audience of people wanting more information on the subject.
3. Nonfiction writers have a wealth of organizations, groups, websites, etc… to reach out to about promoting their book. It’s easy to explain why such a book would be valuable to people already interested in the subject matter.
But marketing a fiction book? That’s a whole lot more difficult. Thankfully, there are people out there who have come up with some great ideas for doing so. Here are highlights from a post I read today titled 7 killer book marketing tips for fiction on Build Book Buzz … and some comments in parentheses.
1. Support your book with a good website designed by a professional. (Hint: Smart Author Sites 🙂 )
2. Use your content to identify promotion allies. (A great example is Camille Noe Pagán’s novel, The Art of Forgetting, which tells the story of what happens to a friendship when one of the friends suffers a traumatic brain injury. Pagán partnered with the Bob Woodruff Foundation.)
3. Think beyond book reviews. (Get the press to talk about your book for as long as it’s available for purchase.)
4. Use the nonfiction nuggets in your manuscript to create newsworthy material for media outlets. (Think about products, locations, services or brand names in your novel. Can you use any of those to find people with a personal interest in featuring your book?)
5. Take advantage of holidays, special occasions, annual events, and seasonal stories. (There’s a holiday for just about everything. Hitch your book to one of them and use it to get into the news.)
6. Leverage what you uncovered while writing your book. (Did you learn about a period in history or a specific region? Use this knowledge as a springboard for publicity.)
7. Get social. (Pick your favorite social media outlet — Facebook, Twitter, etc… — and master it.)
Hopefully, some of these techniques will help you turn your new novel into the next hot topic at the water cooler!