Funny You Should Ask: How to Market a Book: The Hilariously Detailed Guide to Author Marketing and Book Promotion

By Lori Culwell

Finished your book, but don’t know where to start with the marketing?
The answer is: here. You start with this book.
In Funny You Should Ask: How to Market a Book, Amazon bestselling author Lori Culwell provides a start-to-finish blueprint for getting your book out there in a big way.. You'll discover what goes into an ideal author platform, how to optimize your book’s metadata to show up in the Amazon algorithm, and all the steps of a perfect book launch.

In Funny You Should Ask: How to Market a Book, you’ll learn:

— How to get your head on straight when it comes to marketing your work.

— What to put on your website

— What to put on your social media

— How to claim your work on book sites

— What to look for in a competitive analysis

— Why it’s so important to be super-specific about your genre/ subgenre

— How to research keywords and categories

— How to get reviews

— How to get people onto your email list (newsletter) and what to say to them once they’re on there

— What “promo stacks” are, and how to make them work for you

— What Amazon’s “honeymoon period” is and what it has to do with your book

And so much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Mar 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869005304

Lori Culwell

Lori Culwell is the founder and president of Get Creative, an internet consulting firm whose clients include Johnson & Johnson and Apple among others. She has contributed to Salon.com and the San Francisco Bay Guardian and divides her time between New York and Los Angeles.  

Book preview

FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK: HOW TO MARKET A BOOK

THE HILARIOUSLY DETAILED GUIDE TO BOOK MARKETING AND PROMOTION

LORI CULWELL

Copyright © 2022 by LORI CULWELL

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

LEGAL NOTICE

The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this report, notwithstanding the fact that they do not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional, except that one person. That was totally intentional.

In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to rely on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly. The electronic version of this book contains affiliate links, meaning the publisher earns a small (very, very small) commission if purchases are made.

GET FREE UPDATES!

Before we get started, I want to get you set up with a way to get future updates for this book. The world of book marketing is dynamic and constantly evolving.  As such, I make frequent updates to this guide and re-publish it at least once a quarter so all of the information is the most current it can be.

Why am I telling you this?

Here’s the thing– *I* want to provide you with the most updated version of this book (whenever there is a new one) and am happy to give it to you for free, but once you buy it, I have no way to send you the update. Contrary to popular belief, Amazon (or whatever other platform you bought this book on) is not going to automatically push out the most updated version of the book to people who have already bought it.  That kind of sucks, and I’m trying to change that, one book at a time. 

So, here’s my request:  please go over here and sign up for updates.  Whenever I put out a new version of this book, I will immediately notify you that it’s time to download your updated copy of the eBook version. To further incentivize you, I will also give you a free copy of the companion guide I created for this book! 

If you bought the eBook version originally, great!  You’ll simply download the updated version and move on. 

If you bought the paperback, also great!! You’ll get a free eBook version with free updates to go along with it

So, come on over to https://loriculwell.com/htmab .  There is a ton of information coming out about publishing and book marketing all the time, and I don’t want you to miss out!

CONTENTS

1. Get Your Head on Straight

2. Get Organized

Part 1: Your Author Platform

3. Email List, Part 1: List, Landing Page, Link

4. Email List, Part 2: Now What?

5. Your Author Website

6. Social Media

7. Book Sites

Part 2: SEO for Books

8. Amazon is a Search Engine for Buyers

9. Know Your Genre/ Subgenre/ Tropes/ Peers

10. Your Competitive Analysis

11. Category Research

12. Keyword Research! My Favorite!

Your Pre-Launch Countdown

13. The Safety Checklists

14. Reviews, Part I: The ARC Story

15. Book Promotion Sites

Part 3: Your Launch

16. Get Reviews

17. Paid Advertising Overview

18. 72 More Ways To Promote Your Book

Part 4: Post-Launch Activities

19. Start a Facebook Page + Group About Your Genre/ Subgenre

20. Book Marketing: Daily Tasks

21. Conclusion: Your Big Moment

22. What Else Can I Teach You?

1

GET YOUR HEAD ON STRAIGHT

Hi! Welcome to the book that you and I both know you don’t really want to be reading.

Come on! That’s a great way to start a book. Total honesty from the very beginning.

Look, I know what’s going on here. You’ve either just released a book or you’re just about to, and you have a vague idea that you need to do something to get that book to start selling. However, you’re exhausted from writing an entire book, so you don’t really want to do anything. You want your book to organically take off on its own with no marketing push.

How do I know that? BECAUSE I WANT THAT TOO. All writers want that! I hope that happens for all of us someday! However, there is no way to control that, so eventually, you’re going to have to pull your marketing game together and do some actual book promotion to get your books to start selling.

And look, I know marketing is hard and you’d rather do anything else. Heck, everything about being an author is hard, right? Writing is hard, editing is hard, and getting your book to a publisher (or publishing it yourself) is hard. You wanted the moment you hit Publish on your book to be the end, and when you realized it was actually the beginning, you were already done and now you have zero energy to market your book.

I have good news. I have spent years compiling what I consider to be all of the best practices for book marketing, and I’m going to tell you everything I know on the subject. Here’s the thing, though: Just knowing what to do isn’t enough. The other factor is your mindset, and you need to shift that before you start learning about any of this stuff.

Now, if you’re someone who’s just trying to get your books out there so you can see them in print, or so your friends and family can enjoy them, that’s fine! You don’t need marketing. But I suspect you bought this book because you realized you wanted a little more out of your writing career. If that’s you, let’s begin by asking ourselves a few fundamental questions.

How Do You Define Success?

Before you enter into this whole book-marketing game, I’d love for you to really think about this for a moment. Yes, you write because you love writing, but how many copies would you like to sell? Do you want to do press interviews and readings? Are you looking to replace your job and write as a career?

Because here’s the thing— if you want to actually make money from your writing (and by that I mean if you want even one person you don’t know personally to find your book and buy it), it is imperative that you shift your mindset over from thinking of yourself solely as an author to seeing yourself and your writing as a business. That means committing to learning and implementing business skills and practices.

If you do not make this shift, it makes zero sense for you to have any expectation of making sales. And I hate to break it to you, but that also means you no longer get to complain or be disappointed if and when you don’t make any.

I’m sorry! I know! I wasn’t trying to be all tough love, especially in the very first chapter, but some things need to be said. Are you still with me? Good! Let’s continue.

What’s Your Why?

In one of my previous books (on how to make a website), I have an exercise where I ask people to identify the why of their website, and it’s proven to be a pretty powerful tool. Because when people actually take the time to really examine why they want to do a particular thing, it unearths enough passion and energy to get them up and over any challenges they might face along the way.

I seriously believe that if you get in touch with your why—why you want to get your book out there, or even why you want to write in the first place—it will give you the proverbial fire in the belly you’ll need to push through all of the technical hurdles and general discomfort of author marketing. You’ll have a clear reason for doing what you’re doing.

So, as we did with the question on success, I’d like you to now take a minute and really think through why you want to get your book out there. Seriously, take the time right now. Is your book a work of non-fiction that is going to help a lot of people with a problem? Is it an entertaining novel that will be a fun distraction? Do you just want to make a lot of money? Any answer is right. WHY do you want people to know about your book? You’re a writer, so write down your reasons. I’ll be here when you get back.

Did you do it? Are you clear on your why? Great! Keep that firmly in mind, because we’re now going to sharpen it a bit by talking about some of the reasons writers often try to avoid doing this work, so as to eliminate any excuses you might be tempted to make going forward.

Myth #1: Marketing is Not My Job.

I honestly believe that the overall lack of success of most authors’ books is due to one simple reason: They think that the process is over once they turn in their final manuscript, when in reality, that’s just the beginning.

Just to briefly touch on the myth that marketing is the publisher’s job, it is true that if your book is with a big publisher, they’re going to have a publicist on staff, and that person will do some work on behalf of your book. However, (and this is nothing against you, you’re awesome, you wrote a book!) that publicist works for a big publisher, and most of their job is probably spent on authors like Dan Brown and David Sedaris, who have name recognition and who will sell a ton of books just by appearing on talk shows.

No, it’s not fair, but this is the way publishing works.

Myth # 2: I’m Going to Hire a Publicist, So I Don’t Need to Be Involved.

If you have the resources to hire someone, fantastic! But be warned that you will still have to do the vast majority of what’s in this book (like setting up your website, email list, and social media) in order to make your money back from that expenditure. The ultimate goal of a good publicity campaign (from your perspective, anyway) should be to grow your audience, not just to make one-time sales of your books. Also, in case you didn’t know this, publicists will take your money even if you don’t get any sales or new readers.

Myth # 3: Marketing Is Scary and Will Push Me Out of My Comfort Zone.

Something else I hear a lot is that writers are terrified of marketing. They’re introverts. They don’t know how to do any of this stuff, and furthermore, they don’t WANT to do it. They majored in something creative like English or comparative literature, and therefore didn’t learn many of the requisite business skills to one day become a marketing expert.

If any of this sounds like you, I have good news. Despite what you might have heard, marketing is not NEARLY as difficult as writing a book. It’s actually much easier, especially if you’re a writer, because guess what? It’s really mostly just writing, but with a specific purpose and intention, directed at people who a) are in your target audience and who actually want what you’re marketing; and b) can help spread the word about your work, become your fans, and help with your career.

This can really be as simple as chatting with people on Twitter every day, writing blog posts, or sending your book out to reviewers. Or it can take the form of being an expert on radio and TV shows, and who wouldn’t like that? In fact, marketing (this might shock you) IS ACTUALLY ENJOYABLE, once you get over your misconceptions about it. Plus, watching your book sales go up is fun when you know that your efforts made that happen. Likewise, when a total stranger contacts you to tell you they stayed home from work because they simply could not put down your novel, or when a group of people is reading your book for their weekly book club and wants you to come and speak to them about it, it’s all going to be worth it. Trust me.

And no, not every effort you make will pay off. But you want to grow and nurture the ones that do. You can think of marketing like planting seeds every day: Some of those seeds are going to go nowhere, and some of them are going to take root and grow into flowers. You don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen with each seed, but you spend time every day tending the garden, right?

Besides, I think you need to give yourself some credit here. You wrote a whole book and are an expert in your field (even if that field is a specific type of fiction), so you clearly know how to absorb and repurpose information. Because you now have this handy step-by-step guide, I am crowning you honorary marketing expert. You