I started hosting an author interview series a few years ago, and have interviewed 60+ authors so far. Each one of them has written and published a travel guide, travel memoir, travel narrative, or a piece of travel fiction. I pose a standard set of questions, and I find their responses enlightening, inspiring, and entertaining.

Over the years I’ve noticed that book marketing is consistently one of the most disliked aspects of being an indie author, so I thought I’d bring all of the marketing sections together into small groups in order to inspire you to throw off any concerns you have about marketing or promoting your book, and to dive right in with an activity that resonates with you and doesn’t fill you with fear or dread. There are so many different marketing techniques you can use for your book, that you have the option of picking and choosing the strategies that you’ll feel comfortable using, and have the biggest impact on increasing your book sales.

We don’t want you to get overwhelmed, so are only including feedback from ten authors in each post, to give you enough choice to pick from, but not enough to get overwhelmed. If there’s a technique you’d like to use but aren’t sure where to start, leave us a comment below and we’ll feature an article that goes into more detail about technique.

In this week’s book marketing recap, our authors mention the following marketing techniques:

1. Get active on Facebook
2. Use Facebook or Amazon Ads
3. Do interviews and guest posts on other people’s blogs
4. Acquire Amazon reviews as soon as you publish your book
5. Offer a book giveaway
6. Post on Instagram
7. Building your mailing list
8. Create an Author website
9. Maintain a Travel Blog
10. Plan a book launch
11. Send a press release
12. Take part in local radio or local newspaper interviews
13. Take part in a YouTube or podcast interviews
14. Identify relevant keywords
15. Use word of mouth

Now let’s meet the ten travel writers who have used a selection of these book marketing and promotion techniques to sell more books and raise awareness of their books to their target audience.

Gigi Griffis

I’ve been blogging since before blogging was a thing (1999, baby!), and that’s still my preferred way to reach people. Once I knew I was writing the book, I started talking about it on my blog, created a page for it on the site, etc. I’m also pretty active on Facebook and did a little promotion here and there on Twitter (though Twitter has always been less effective for me, so I use it much less than anything else).

That said, the biggest, most effective things I did were interviews and guest posts on other people’s blogs. My audience already knows me and my work – they’re easy to reach. Letting new people know about the creative new thing I’m putting out into the world was the harder task and the one I focused my energy on.

The other big thing I did to boost my marketing was to get a handful of Amazon reviews up very quickly upon publishing. I did this by reaching out to Amazon’s top reviewers and asking if they’d like a free book in exchange for their honest opinions. Several – to my surprise – said yes. I also reached out to locals and traveler groups and other writers, asking for reviews in exchange for a free copy of the guide. Having four- and five-star reviews piling up the week of launch pushed the book up in Amazon’s algorithm, which meant more visibility and more sales.

Read the Author Interview we did with Gigi Griffis

Marjory McGinn

I am not a great self-promoter by nature, like most writers. I am also not very techie or a top gun with using Twitter and accessing great author sites, but I have lovely friends who are. I tend to relate to people a lot through humour and just on a human level and I use a lot of photos on my posts and tweets as well.

On Facebook, I have joined a few writers’ groups with an interest in Greece and have found this to be very rewarding. If you can find a group of kindred spirits like this, it will help to spread the word. In terms of promotion, I still try to place stories in the local press and occasionally national papers if I can, though I admit this isn’t easy, even for someone who worked as a journalist. I don’t recommend this path really.

But you know, I find you can get across to readers just as well through writing for interesting writers’ blog sites like this one. And it’s fun as well.

Read the Author Interview we did with Marjory McGinn

John Manuel

I go in search of any opportunity, like this one, to get my work noticed. Years ago I committed “Facebook suicide” and left the social media site. I hated it, to be honest, because it’s so seldom used for the purpose for which it was originally designed. I’d had it up to here with fluffy little puppies and kitten videos. But a friend told me that Facebook was the best platform out there for indie authors to get an audience, if you know how to make it work for you.

Nowadays, I have to admit, without Facebook I’d be nowhere audience-wise. I now make selective use of Facebook ads to reach a wider audience. They’re very good value.

Read the Author Interview we did with John Manuel

Matt Baxter

I find Amazon Marketing to be very useful. You can target certain readers with keywords, and after a bit of trial and error, it can really boost sales.​ Social media, and social proof, is also very important, so I post often on Facebook and Instagram, and do collaborations with other companies, such as book giveaways.

Read the Author Interview we did with Matt Baxter

Kenneth Strange

My social media consultant needed to drag me into the 21st century–he enrolled me in the social media channels. We went back through my life and pulled email addresses from all my classmates (think class reunions) family, friends and work colleagues until we compiled a robust list for Mailchimp so we could blast out the news of a new book. That was hard work but it paid off. We also created an author website, author cards and embarked upon scheduling a tour of local Rotaries and other clubs, libraries, church groups, in short anyone willing to listen to our Camino story and the book.

Read the Author Interview we did with Kenneth Strange

Nicos Hadjicostis

I have discovered three important techniques to reach my audience and attract new readers.

The first is to strategically plan a book launch with several simultaneous activities. Potential readers need to see the book multiple times via different channels to spark their curiosity enough to seek the book and, hopefully, buy it. These promotional activities range from sending a compelling press release to media outlets and developing an engaging website, to winning a book award, doing radio/ YT interviews, having the book presented on websites, and more.

The second is to create a promotional frenzy every six months or so to keep your book relevant to new readers. Let’s suppose that a popular podcast host interviewed you about the book but couldn’t publish it until six months after the book launch. The podcast’s air date is the perfect opportunity to promote the book to your audience and beyond. You can submit a press release specifically about the podcast interview, send an email blast to your community, post it on your social media channels, and do more activities to spark interest in you and your book again.

The third, and in my opinion, the most important of all, is to manage advertising campaigns with Amazon Marketing Services. Amazon does a tremendous job in supporting independent authors. With the right book description, keywords and bids, your Amazon ads can literally find you new readers from all over the world.

Set aside a monthly budget for the ads and manage these campaigns on a weekly basis. Be sure to experiment with different keywords and bids to create effective campaigns. This is both an art and a science that may take a year or two to master.

Read the Author Interview we did with Nicos Hadjicostis

Bistra Yakimova

I’ve used social media, ads, my travel blog, word of mouth, and other tools to promote my books. Sometimes I really have to be creative, because marketing is a science itself and it’s very hard to do it when you’re educating yourself by try and error. I believe word of mouth is still a very powerful tool, even in our digitalized world.

Read the Author Interview we did with Bistra Yakimova

David Tucker

I read somewhere that ‘local newspapers love local authors’ and my experience is that this advice is very true. My local newspaper gave me a double paged colour spread about my book and it has definitely raised my profile in the locality. I think it is definitely worth giving time to ‘realistic’ media opportunities like the local newspaper.

The key marketing battle I am fighting now is selling my book to people who do not know me. I have found that blogging and sending links through social media to my blogs through interest groups has helped to raise my profile, also running Amazon advertising campaigns is becoming fruitful.

Read the Author Interview we did with David Tucker

Andy Hewitt

I have already discussed social media and at the moment, this is limited to Facebook where I join discussions in biker groups, groups about Spain and the We Love Memoirs group. I have not attempted other forms of social media as yet.

I have prepared articles based on the book and sent them to magazines and web-based publications where I offer the articles for publication in exchange for a mention of the book. I am shortly to have such an article published in HOG Tales, the Harley Owners Group magazine, which is distributed to thousands of members internationally. The Harley Owners Group operates through local chapters and I have sent articles to editors of their chapter newsletters on a similar basis.

Our local radio station has a regular feature called Book Corner where books are discussed, and authors are invited to take part. I am hoping to get a spot on that shortly.

Read the Author Interview we did with Andy Hewitt

All of these book marketing ideas are based on conversations with just ten authors. Some of them are essential techniques, some are recommended, and other are nice to haves. But this list gives you plenty of scope for the activities you use to market and promote your travel book.

Which ones are you going to use?

Follow this link to read more in this Book Marketing Series