How Can Self-published Authors Find and Keep an Audience?

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Gone are the days when you needed to go through a publisher to print and distribute your book.

Gone also are the days when you had to fork out thousands of dollars to get your book printed, only to lose the corner of the living room as storage space while you figured out how to sell it.

And although there’s some friction with people making books with AI, self-publishing is a pretty good deal at the moment.

But how do you build and keep an audience when you self-publish?

If you have a publisher they (hopefully) do a lot of the marketing for you.

When you self-publish, you’re on your own.

To find your audience, you will probably need to work on multiple strategies.

Amazon Ads

This one may or may not be an option depending on your current income. But if you’re selling on Amazon, the best place to advertise is where your audience is already looking.

I’m not a master in Amazon advertising, but I have had some success after joining the 5-day Author Ad Profit Challenge. It’s a free challenge that takes you step by step through setting up ads effectively for your book. You can read about my experience with the challenge here.

Social Media

There are so many social media platforms to choose from. I believe it’s good to have a presence on two, but work on one to begin with. Once you understand how it works and start getting followers and interaction, then choose a second to focus your efforts on, while still building the first.

The platform you choose is completely up to you. There is no right or wrong answer here. I find choosing the one you enjoy the most is a good starting point.

There are authors on all social media platforms, and it’s good to find out where others in your genre hang out. Other authors aren’t your competitors, they all help each other to find more readers.

A Place to Write

You may want to have a place where you can put some of your written work online so people can get to know your style before they buy your books.

There are a few options.

Your own website: A good option if you want to keep everything together, but more work to get new readers.

Medium: A platform where people publish their writing. The bonus of Medium is there is already an audience looking for things to read. You can also join the Medium Partner Program and get paid a small amount when other members read your work.

Patreon: Another platform where you can publish your writing and news. In Patreon, you can set up various subscription tiers to access your work. You may have a free tier, and multiple monthly payment tiers to access more behind-the-scenes previews or even a story in multiple parts.

Your Book

Other than Amazon Ads above, this is the one place that you know your audience already is. They’ve bought your book, let them know in the front or the back, the link to your website.

Even better, put the link on your back cover, so when someone looks at the book preview on Amazon they see your website link even before they buy your book.

Website

You do need a website.

And when I say website, I don’t necessarily mean a full-blown website with multiple pages and a blog.

If that’s what you want, go for it.

But a one-page site with an area to subscribe to your newsletter, books available, and all the places to find you on the net (social media, email, blog, links to upcoming signings, etc) is perfect too.

This keeps everything in one place so when you promote yourself you only have to give out one link, and your audience only has to remember one link.

Also if you add or delete social media, change your newsletter platform, or publish a new book, you just update your one-page site.

Two sites you can use to easily make a page of links are:

Link Tree – https://linktr.ee
Carrd – https://try.carrd.co/bpkc3xv3

This is also important.

Even if you don’t do any other online promotion, start a newsletter.

Send your newsletter on a regular basis. It isn’t a chore, it’s a link to start a conversation with your readers.

And start sending before you get any subscribers. This will help you get into the routine, and people who are interested in signing up can preview what they’ll be receiving.

When someone signs up, they want to hear from you. They want to know what you’re working on next, when your next book launch is, and an inside look into what you’re working on.

They’ve given you permission to talk to them directly. Rather than putting up a post and hoping the algorithm shows your message followers, you know your words will get directly to their inbox.

Link It All Together

Everything should end up working together to lead your audience back to your newsletter and your book.

Your book leads people to your website with links. And your website leads people to where they can find you.

Confused?

Here’s a graphic I made earlier:

It can feel overwhelming at the beginning. And it does take time.

But if you take small steps, and slowly pull in extra elements when you’re ready, you’ll be able to find your audience and have a good foundation to keep them informed of your upcoming works.

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