The Problem with Book Marketing Tips and Strategies

First of all, this is not to say that all marketing tips are useless. I have read much and learned much from reading them. When I was just starting my blog, there was one tip that helped me realize my blog’s full potential. It paved the way for me to earn a living from my blog.

What I’m going to present here, are various problems that I’ve noticed about marketing self-published eBooks.

Have you read and read various tips about selling your eBook and wondered later on why you can’t make that sale?

Here are some things I’ve encountered while trying to find tips on selling my eBook:

They often talk about selling “marketing books”

When the topic of the book is about selling books, I think I can already guess what kind of market that book caters to. It’s intended for people like me, someone who wanted to know how to sell my book.

What I want to know, however, is how to sell a book from a different genre. That genre could be romance, fantasy, or children’s books.

Books about marketing seem to have no problem finding content for their blog or newsletters. They can regularly send tips on how to stay motivated, how to find the right audience or what social media to use.

However, when it comes to books about other topics such as romance novels, how do you find the content to regularly fill your blog? What would people want to read twice a week in your e-mail subscription? Aside from periodic updates about new book releases, I still can’t see sufficient content to grow my newsletter if it’s about a romance book!

They don’t give more specific steps to follow

Marketing tips abound talking about the power of social media. They talk about using Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. However, they rarely talk about how many tweets or posts you need to make every day, or how many days you have to do it until you can see some results.

In addition to the number of posts, how many fans or followers do you need to make this work? If you’re just new to social media, how do you gain those followers? How many posts do you need to make before you can make social media work for you? Are you going to compete with those who use bots that automatically follow people? Do you need a Virtual Assistant to assign a routine you can’t possibly do with your limited time?

In addition to social media, book promotion also includes making advertisements work for you. Facebook ads are suggested. Amazon ads are also mentioned. As I can see it, however, I have never seen a concrete example of a Facebook or Amazon ad (complete with keywords and other settings) that actually worked to bring sales for books that are not about marketing.

They don’t mention the extra mile you need to succeed

Although marketing tips usually mention the need for perseverance, they don’t usually mention specific actions that you need to do that would give you the “extra mile” needed for success.

They may mention the need to request reviews from book reviewers. But how many requests do you have to make before you get a comfortable number of reviews? How was this accomplished by those who have more than 50 five-star book reviews? Did they need to request from 500 reviewers before they got them?

How many years have they spent trying to test their market? How many ads have they tested before they were able to make a sale? How many changes have they made to make their book covers attractive enough?

Many people give up because they either run out of patience or they run out of the budget they need to keep things going for their book!

They don’t mention the “luck factor” in making a bestseller

Not every book that has been promoted well succeed. Not every good book becomes a bestseller. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of “luck”. Sometimes, it’s a matter of one person fully believing in your book and spreading good reviews about it until it reaches enough momentum and your book spreads through “word of mouth”.

Of course, there are also people known as “influencers”, those who already have a decent number of followers on social media. We can try to contact them and to convince them to recommend our books. In the end, however, it is up to the public how they are going to respond to what we have written.

No Secret Formula

For the sake of all the writers out there doing the best they could, working passionately on their craft night and day, I wish there was a secret formula or template for success.

The reality, however, is that there is no assurance to success. That’s why it takes a lot of guts to follow your passion. That’s why the endeavor of being a self-published author needs someone who can believe and persevere long before they could ever see the fruits of their labor.

Marketing tips and strategies could only suggest viable courses of action to promote our books. They can only give a general idea of the track we must tread to succeed. But there are so many factors that cannot be measured even by marketing experts.

I guess my problem with marketing isn’t a problem with marketing after all. Even marketing can never assure success. It can never predict the response of others toward your book. It can never tell your appetite for risk. It can never measure your tenacity and your willpower to succeed!