How Do Authors Grow Their Readership?
You've heard all the ways, but you're still asking...
How do authors grow their readership? You’ve heard all the things:
- Start with compelling, high-quality work.
- Grow and continue to grow your own email list that you contact on a regular schedule with fresh, relevant content and great offers.
- Connect with readers directly on social media. Engage! Participate! Choose all the best hashtags. Try giveaways and other promotions.
- Collaborate with influencers, bookstagrammers, book bloggers.
- Connect with potential readers through suitable online communities and forums, such as those on LinkedIn, Goodreads, Reddit, and Quora.
- Repurpose all of your content for maximum leverage.
- Build your author presence and brand with a fully-developed author website and consistent brand-focused marketing. Think of a brand as a promise…what can readers count on you to deliver every time?
- Try paid advertising with FB and Amazon ads.
- Do lots of events and a range of events—readings, panels, signings, Q&As, lectures, webinars, workshops, book clubs, tours. Sell books after events. Collect names for your mailing list and sign up new social followers. Use calls-to-action.
- Pursue book reviews, star ratings, and awards.
- Pitch stories about yourself and your books to the media. Contact the media on a regular basis. Issue press releases on a range of subjects. Exploit all of your books’ themes and angles. Niche publications and outlets can often deliver results better than larger, miore general ones.
- Partner with other authors for cross-promotions, guest posts, joint events, contact swaps, and more.
All of the above? True. True. True.
But you’re still asking…
There are many things we authors want. More readers. More visibility. More book sales. More income. More working less. More marketing less.
The terrifying truth about sales and marketing is that the most successful businesses out there spend at least 60% of their time and resources on these activities (the other 40% is typically split evenly between producing the goods and services of the business and the operation/administration/maintenance of the business).
Whatever you want and whatever you do, try, attempt, experiment to get there, there are two simple formulas almost any kind of author can use to get the things they want over time.
You've heard me say them. And repeat them.
I do because they work and so that it sinks in.
The first is "Do 5 things a day, every day, to promote your books, expertise, experience, and/or authorship/author business." Sounds simple, but most people will not commit to that and do it, day in and day out, over time.
What things should you do? Anything and everything. Keep a running list of ideas you research, invent, observe, or copy from others.
The second is the outreach formula I've used to build up my small businesses in the past. It’s this:
- If you need to replace a full-time income, spend four hours a day reaching out to others;
- To replace a half-time income, spend two hours a day;
- To replace a quarter of your income, spend one hour a day; and
- To maintain a business, spend 15–30 minutes a day or reach out to at least one person.
Reaching out is any manner of connecting, re-connecting, asking for work, asking for referrals, setting up a call, setting up a meeting, making offers, making proposals. Whatever’s appropriate for the person you’re reaching out to and your own goals. If you want something other than income—readers or exposure, for instance—the formula’s the same.
It sounds obvious, but we can overlook it: Everything we need and want as authors comes from and through other people (income, reads, exposure, opportunities).
You grow your readership with all the things you know and see other authors doing + the formulas + the knowledge that more marketing than you want to do is the big, fat, ingored secret of business and that all the things you want come through other people.
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