Methods of Book Promoting: Volume One

When I published my first book, I had no idea that the marketing was going to be tougher then publishing, especially since I took the route to go through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Now I have my work cut out for me to push my book for someone's interest but to showcase the interest in unique ways.

I tried to take many online courses for marketing, but unfortunately, there wasn't an option to just market one item, it had to be for a real business that was verified. I couldn't put down "Marketing a book for Amazon".

I've found some unexpected suprises in my marketing testings on certain media outlets that I'll be mentioning throughout this article. So far there has been some steady success with the time and patience I've put into carefully crafting a marketing idea, and I wanted to share some of the ideas I've experimented with that could benefit anyone that is struggling to market or showcase their literary work.

I'm gonna be publishing this as volume one because I know there is bound to be more ideas I'm going to try or tactics I'm going to learn. It's still a learning experience for me in my ways to market myself as an author with simple ways without marketing classes or paying for marketing.

Making A Video Of Reading In An Unique Way

This was an idea I had when I was entertaining myself to think how a certain celebrity would read my book in their distinct voice. Then that idea became my first gateway to doing a good marketing tactic. By doing something that was engaging and entertaining. I made a video for my YouTube channel (a channel that I designed to be accommodated to my books, I'll get into that later). The idea had been easy to edit, it was comfortable to convey casually and professionally, and it was something entertaining that would entice someone with a keen interest without feeling pressured to buy the book.

You don't have to do in the same exact way I did if this wouldn't be a comfortable tactic to do if humor isn't your forte.

Some of the alternative ideas to ponder on could be-

• Reading the book while dressed as one of the characters from your book
• Making a pop quiz to make it more interactive to entice the viewers to be attentive to the remember the material
• Reading the book with subtitles at the bottom with fun facts about how you made the book

There are effective and simple ways to produce a marketing way to your style and speed. It's just trial and error and nothing can go wrong because everything was learned on how you'll find your style with sharing your story.

You can do this on YouTube like I did, or on TikTok to use their video edits to how you want to edit the video for the phone screen. It all depends on where your audience is at or where you want to try out first to find your audience. I've been doing YouTube for twelve years so their system is what I'm used to for algorithms and analytics. TikTok is also great for getting a video out faster then YouTube, but keep in mind its a cesspool of ongoing videos so be creative with your tags and remember it fall into the video void.

This video where I read four pages of my book, Inglorious Ink, while doing a celebrity impersonation per page. I chose specific and distinct voices that I felt would be fitting to narrate or just odd to hear someone like Carol Channing narrate a book like mine that covers dark topics or crass language. Videos like this have been a good start to doing marketing because of the fact that it’s very casual, and it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to really push a purchase it’s just offering interest .

It’s basically marketing with the style of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Can’t go wrong with a little humor

Making a Playlist Post

This has made a trend on tumblr for certain characters to have a created playlist of songs that are parallel to their character. It was a unique idea for something so simple and I thought I would try that out with my own characters from my book Inglorious Ink. Because of the book making numerous references to music, it gives an insight to what kind of songs the characters listen to as well as the songs I referenced in the book.

I started posting this on Instagram, and it's been a casual introduction to who these characters are by what songs they listen to. I found it to be something simple to start out with before I get into major details of biography.

If you have modern characters, it would be an interesting insight to show what these characters would listen. A way for them to learn by minor little things. It's a way for an audience to learn more about these characters.

Between tumblr and Instagram, those are your best bets for giving trivia bits for your characters in your book.

Here is an example of a playlist post I made with the set up with Instagram's story tools. I made a list of songs that a character from my book would listen to. It's small, but it gives an idea to learning about the character Jules Wilkinson.

See how I made it just a simple little snippet? Just a few songs to make a casual bit of knowledge to what this character listens to. It's a small piece you can put together to intrigue people. You can do that with any part of biography for your characters of your book for engagement and entertainment.

Designing for Insight

If you take the YouTube route, here's how made the structure of my channel work for marketing. I designed my YouTube channel to feel like the special features you'd like to see on a DVD from a movie or TV Show. When you watch a series, you'd like to learn more on how this process happened or what was the inspiration or giving insight to characters that the viewer doesn't know about. When people have made an interest in my book and they'd like to learn more, there will be plenty of information and commentary to view through and select.

I've made these videos for my channel that could be of use to you when you make content for commentary or sneak previews for your book.

• A Channel Trailer
• The "Inside" series where I have various topics to cover about my book from characters to plot details
• Audio/Visual book - I set it up with the entire manuscript from the first two chapters are available to listen to with my voice acting for the characters or if they want to read along, I provided backgrounds to help the imagery as well as noises to create the scene as vivid as possible.

Making A Trivia Section

This can be done on Facebook, tumblr, Instagram, or YouTube in any format you choose to start to spread the snippets of your story.

As any new story comes up that people can't get enough of, you can tell some pieces of trivia. You can tell them how the story was made, what are some the inside jokes, what was the inspiration behind the plot of the story.

Daron Nefcy, the creator of Star vs. The Forces Of Evil, made a tumblr with various previews of characters, scrapped designs, and put anything that pertained to what she was in the process of making. It enticed people to want to learn more knowing there would be a lot more to learn about the characters she has created.

You can defiantly do this on Instagram or tumblr where it would be easier in an app thay would have the audience that loves to learn about a fandom or any piece of media.

When people start really getting into your stuff they’re liable to want to explore all different types of media to be able to find anything else they can learn about your book. So if you have already made this available for people to find, it’s really gonna engage the audience to know that they are going to get to learn more beyond the book.

I'm always experimenting with marketing ideas, feel free to pop on over to my Instagram @parrishpassages to see what other ways I've made some small marketing for my book.