Book Marketing Tips from 10 Travel Writers #5

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:

Schedule Amazon and Facebook Ads
Invest in Book Promo Websites
Leverage Social Media and YouTube
Communicate with your Mailing List
Write Blog and Guest Posts
Become active on Goodreads
Send out press releases to local, national and international organizations and news media
Create a Book Trailer
Take part in a Book Tour

John Weiler

Right now, it’s almost 100% Amazon ads. Though I’ve experimented with close to a dozen different book promo websites similar to BookBub (though not BookBub itself). Unfortunately the book promo sites have never once turned a profit for me, which is why I’m doing them far less. But the last promo I ran in November did gain me an Amazon bestseller tag for a few days as I hit number 1 in an Amazon category.

Read the Author Interview we did with John Weiler

Alexandra Holovitz

I’m still learning and experimenting with social media. Before my travels, I haven’t used any of the platforms, so I am still learning and mastering the art of sharing the experience. I found fascinating that some pictures and writings work so well on one platform ( gets lots of shares and likes) don’t have any impact on other platforms. Personally, I love the visual effect, and I have reached the most success with my Instagram account. It is also crucial that you as a writer feel right about the promotion.

Read the Author Interview we did with Alexandra Holovitz

Jon and Mia

The one thing I realise is that you can have a great product that people will buy but if you don’t market it correctly you won’t find your audience.

When we first published our book, we thought we could make hundreds of sales purely based on the fact that our YouTube channel gains over 30,000 view per month (mainly due to our Southeast Asia videos). We believed people would buy the product instantly. However, that was not necessarily the case. People need to justify each purchase and that was something we did not think about. At the beginning when we did not hit our sales goals we felt slightly disheartened and knocked back. We had this great product yet not everyone was buying?

Since then we have invested in online marketing courses and done research on how to get our product out there. I can now say, looking back I don’t know what we were doing just selling through YouTube.

Social media is an incredible platform that I would highly recommend utilising and really leveraging your product through. I am a big fan of Instagram. I think it’s a great visual tool to use to promote your product.

I have also started learning about Facebook ads. Facebook ads allow you to really target your audience but just requires some testing to find out where they are.

The advice I would give is to really learn about the social media platforms because Jon and I made so many mistakes from just guessing and I would also suggest not trying to master every social media platform. Choose one and truly invest your time in learning about it, because you only need one good platform to sell and promote your band.

Anyone can buy your product, you just need to find the right people and market to them. Remember, if people don’t purchase the first time, keep retargeting them.

Read the Author Interview we did with Jon and Mia

Valerie Alexander

For me, Facebook and my mailing list. I also had a very active blog for a while, but that became too hard to keep up with and it’s also really hard to cut through the blog clutter these days.

Read the Author Interview we did with Valerie Alexander

Jennifer S. Alderson

Before publishing Down and Out in Kathmandu, I wasn’t active on any social media networks. When my first book came out I focused all of my attention on Goodreads, with positive yet limited results. Two months before The Lover’s Portrait was released I finally created Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts.

I have not yet mastered any social network, but am slowly learning. Like most authors, I’ve discovered the hard way that “buy me” posts don’t work on any platform. What’s surprised me most is how the same post will be ignored on Twitter, yet on Instagram and Facebook is shared and liked by many. Short excerpts of reviews work best for me on these platforms. On Twitter, a snippet from a review accompanied by a pretty picture of one of the locations my books take place in spread like wildfire, as do posts I retweet from travel blogs and adventurers. These seem to appeal most to my travel fiction fan base.

I did write and send press releases to local, national and international organizations and news media before The Lover’s Portrait was released yet all were resolutely ignored.

I have also created a book trailer for The Lover’s Portrait that has been well received and viewed often. It was quite low budget. I rode around Amsterdam on my bike one sunny afternoon and shot short videos using my smartphone then edited it together with a free program already loaded onto my computer.

Honestly, I’d never watched a book trailer all the way through until I decided it was important to make one. I personally haven’t bought any books that way. However, I know some potential readers do enjoy them, meaning my trailer may help to reach a slightly different audience than Facebook or Twitter. In this crapshoot called marketing, I’m trying everything once!

Read the Author Interview we did with Jennifer S. Alderson

Edie Jarolim

I have a blog – well, three, but I’ll get to that — but mostly use social media for promotion. I have 15K followers on Twitter, which I should try to capitalize on more. I find myself most comfortable with Facebook these days. I had some fun campaigns, like getting people to post pictures of my book cover with their pets or in unusual places.

Recently, I went on an old-fashioned book tour – as opposed to a virtual one — in order to get into marketing mode and to meet readers. It was a fun experience, if not a remunerative one.

I don’t do nearly enough marketing, so I’m always thrilled to be asked to do interviews with sites like this.

Read the Author Interview we did with Edie Jarolim

Emma Higgins

Lots of social media – it’s travel, so it’s picture-driven – and connecting with similar brands to my own. So there are a few publications I will happily guest post for because I know I reach my target audience via them. Knowing who you’re speaking to, and where else they hang out on the internet, is essential.

Read the Author Interview we did with Emma Higgins

Amy Scott

This is where I’ve really slacked off, to be honest. I assume most readers find my books through my websites, though I hope random people also find them on Amazon occasionally.

Read the Author Interview we did with Amy Scott

Jill Dobbe

In order to market my book I write interviews, such as this one. I also join travel memoir websites and scope out other travel memoir writers. There are many blogs out there whose authors want input from other authors and I also look for reviews wherever I can find them.

Read the Author Interview we did with Jill Dobbe

Jody Robbins

All the usual social media suspects and my blog. I’ll also tap the publications I write for to see if they’ll do an excerpt. I’m a regular guest on TV, so you can bet I’ll ask to be referred to as the author of 25 Places in Canada Every Family Should Visit as well as bringing copies to be shown on the segment.