99 Virtually Free Marketing Ideas For Self-Published Writers

Self-published authors embrace the freedom to write, package, and release books on their own terms. But with that freedom comes lots of responsibility, including the cost of book promotion. Lacking the budget of a traditional publisher’s marketing and sales department, self-published writers have to be creative, flexible, and innovative when it comes to book marketing ideas. At Self-Publishing Relief, we know an author website is an absolute necessity, as well as a social media presence — but this infrastructure is just a start. So how can you kick your book up in sales rankings and still stay within your budget?

99 Practically Free Marketing Ideas To Help Self-Published Writers Boost Book Sales

1. Include hotlinks in the back matter of each of your self-published e-books to promote additional book sales.
2. Include a teaser chapter for another of your e-books at the end of your new release.
3. Include a “to the reader” letter in the back matter of your books to thank readers and encourage them to check out your other work.
4. Use Canva to make free graphics for posting on social media.
5. Use short quotes from your own book superimposed on graphics to share on social media.
6. Rebrand all your social media headers with images from new releases before a launch.
7. Set up an Amazon Central Account before your book release to harness the power of Amazon’s New Release email alert on your book birthday.
8. Set up a BookBub profile before your book release date to take advantage of BookBub’s New Release email alert on your book birthday.
9. Start a Facebook Business page for your author name so that you can “boost” important posts in order to expand your reach. Boosting costs start at as little as $5.
10. Schedule a Facebook launch party and invite fellow authors in the same writing genre to offer giveaways.
11. Use your Facebook Author Page insights tab to determine the optimum time to post your content to reach the most followers.
12. Do a live video Q&A on Facebook specifically about your book or something related to the book.