Studying how best to self publish involves a repeated cycle of reading and absorbing. I’m much more familiar now on how to make a book, either ebook or pbook (aka paperback). Unsurprisingly the more daunting aspect is figuring out how best to get noticed. BookBub, an ebook marketing group with great clout and a superb business model, just issued its teaser “how to,” namely a blog post titled “Why (and How!) to Reach the Right Readers [Book Marketing 101].”
What strikes me right away is that a self-published author is now expected to act like a mini corporation or business. BookBub’s advice can be summed up as follows: define a narrow target audience by researching the most suitable reader profile; research how such a reader searches for books; nut out comparable authors; identify my book’s most appropriate categorisation on sites such as Amazon; optimise my “metadata” to aid discovery of my book; run ads (of coursing including on BookBub) often with price promos; find and pitch to the bloggers who might best review or feature my book; and pursue free PR (paid PR is too expensive and mostly useless).
Each of these steps involves work. Each involves time away from the pen. Each is scary.