Why use professional book marketing services?
If you’ve ever published a book, you’ll know that authors are expected to take on the lion’s share of the marketing. As a result, many independent authors are forced to spend a great deal of time selling their self-published books, rather than writing new ones.
Of course, for some authors, marketing is enjoyable! It’s a chance to promote their work and interact with readers firsthand. But for others, it can be a real burden — after all, book marketing requires specialist skills that many authors haven’t had the chance to develop.
That’s where professional book marketing services come in. If you’re unable to spend hours self-perfecting your marketing strategy, you can hire a book marketer who already knows what they’re doing! This person will set up your campaigns and show you the ropes of marketing, so you can effectively promote both this book and the next one you publish.
But where can you find a knowledgeable marketer with the right experience in your genre?
Look no further, here are the professionals who can help
Tara L.
I am a children's, middle-grade, and YA book marketing expert with twenty-five years of experience in the Big Ten and freelancing.
view profileElina V.
Marketing expert w/ 12+ yrs experience in genres from nonfiction to literary fiction to children's books at Big Five & boutique houses.
view profileShannon D.
Strategy-focused marketing professional with 13 years of book marketing experience, including Random House, HarperCollins, and Macmillan.
view profilelucile C.
I'm a Big 5 marketer with 7 years of experience launching national and NYT bestselling books.
view profileVickie B.
+20 years marketing books and creating bestsellers at leading UK publishers | Former Marketing Director at Hodder & Stoughton
view profileWhat kind of book marketing services should I expect?
Book marketing professionals help you reach the maximum number of people to buy and read your book. However, a good book marketer won’t just do all the work for you — they’ll teach you the best methods and how to apply them yourself. These methods should boil down to:
- Identifying your target audience and where they “hang out”
- Driving traffic to your product
- Converting that traffic into paying customers
Your book marketer will put together a thorough plan for you that tackles all these elements. This marketing plan might include ads, publicity, and various other promotional opportunities for your book. But most importantly, it’ll break down exactly what you have to do in order to target as many readers as possible and direct them to the sales pages for your book.
You can also use book marketing services to optimize those sales pages so they’re practically irresistible to readers. For example, a book marketer can enhance your Amazon description and help you choose keywords, or spruce up your website with special offers.
Above all, working with a book marketer is a great learning experience. Just like hiring an editor will help you improve your writing more than struggling through a self-edit, working with a pro marketer will teach you more (and much more quickly!) than attempting to do it yourself.
How are marketing services different from publicity services?
Marketing services encompass all methods of getting readers to buy your book. Publicity specifically involves gaining press coverage for your book and/or having it reviewed. In other words, publicity is just another marketing channel that you can use to attract readers.
It is, however, a channel that requires a strong PR specialization — reaching out to journalists, drafting press releases, maintaining relationships with the media, etc. This is why marketers generally don’t call themselves publicists (and vice-versa), and it’s also why you can’t really perform publicity services for yourself (unless you’re already a PR professional).
Publicists and marketers are listed separately on Reedsy. So if you think your book would benefit more from press or blog coverage than, say, email marketing or advertising, make sure to check out our publicity services.
Why should I trust the book marketers on Reedsy?
Firstly, you can trust Reedsy because all our book marketers are thoroughly vetted and their qualifications verified. We fully explain our process in this post, but at the end of the day, we accept only the top 2-3% of applications — so you can be absolutely certain that the services you receive are top-notch.
Furthermore, we personally speak with every one of our applicants to discuss which book marketing strategies they use and where their expertise lies. Not every strategy is appropriate for self-published authors, and we want to ensure that our professionals can meet our authors’ marketing needs.
Finally, though our professionals are cultivated to best serve independent authors, many of these book marketers come from the hyper-competitive world of traditional publishing. They know how to market a book to as many people as possible, and they’ll strive to turn your book into a bestseller.
In a nutshell: our Reedsy book marketers are highly experienced, extensively pre-screened, and capable of going above and beyond for your book. We also have an international presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia — which means that wherever you are, you can work with a marketer in your time zone who’s familiar with your territory.
What Book marketing services do Reedsy freelancers offer?
There are four main areas where authors might benefit from professional marketing services. All the marketers listed on Reedsy specialize in one or more of these areas, which are:
Marketing strategy
Work with a professional marketer to define your pre- and post-launch marketing efforts. The objective is to make your book stand out from the crowd by determining which marketing channels will be most effective for it. Read more
Email marketing
An email marketing specialist will help you build reader mailing lists, leverage your existing fanbase, and offer valuable resources and opportunities in order to entice customers. Email marketing is especially useful if you have written/are writing a series of books. Read more
Advertising
You can also acquire readers through targeted advertising, such as Facebook ads. A marketer with this specialty will work with you to find new audiences, optimize conversion rates, and teach you how to progressively manage advertising campaigns yourself. Read more
Blurb & Metadata optimization
Having strong metadata (keywords, categories, series information, etc.) and a compelling blurb is crucial to selling your book. A book marketer with blurb and metadata expertise will help you choose exactly the right points to hit in your description, and hack your keywords and categories on Amazon (and other retailers) for greater discoverability. Read more