What marketing principles remain true regardless of the tools you use? What are the different ways you can market your book, whatever your genre? In this episode, I share two chapters from my audiobook, Successful Self-Publishing, Fourth Edition.

In the intro, Pricing strategies on The Biz Book Broadcast;
What to do Three Years Before your book launch [Dan Blank]; ChatGPT GPT5; Gemini Storybook, ElevenLabs Music.

Plus, AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars in September; Gothic Cathedrals; British Pilgrimage [Books and Travel]; The Buried and the Drowned – J.F. Penn.

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Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

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J.F. Penn is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, crime, horror, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir, as well as writing non-fiction for authors as Joanna Penn. She's also an award-winning podcaster and creative entrepreneur.

• Marketing principles





• 15 ways to market your book

These chapters are excerpted from Successful Self-Publishing, Fourth Edition by Joanna Penn, available in ebook, audiobook, and print formats.

Marketing Principles

If you ask most authors about book marketing, they’re likely to grimace, shake their head, and sigh…

We became authors because we love to write, but if you want your books to sell — regardless of how you choose to publish — at some point you’ll need to embrace marketing as part of your author journey.

In this chapter, I’ll go through marketing principles that will be useful no matter how the industry changes. But first, let’s cover the question everyone always asks. 

Do I have to do my own marketing? Can’t I just outsource it all?

There are many people and services you can hire for aspects of book marketing, but consider these questions:

• What specific area of marketing do you want to outsource?





• Is it worth doing at all? 





• Is it worth paying for?





• What return on investment (ROI) are you expecting? 





• Is this service short-term or long-term and how might that affect your budget? 

Book marketing is not one thing, so you need to first consider what exactly you want to outsource. For example, setting up and running Amazon Ads is a different skill to pitching magazines and podcasts for interviews. 

You also have to consider whether you even want to start something you might not sustain. 

• Is it worth starting a TikTok channel if you hate making videos? 





• Is it worth starting your own podcast when it might be a year or so before your listenership grows to a decent size? 





• Is it worth paying a PR professional to get you interviews in magazines when you’re just starting out, you’re unsure of your brand, and there is no obvious return on investment?





• Do you want to keep paying people for months and years? Or could you spend some of that money learning new skills and building your own sustainable marketing strategy? 

If you want to hire a professional, be specific about the tasks and your budget, as well as timeframe. For example, ‘Run Meta Ads for three months to the first book in my fantasy series’ or ‘Pitch media outlets for three months around my non-fiction self-help book on dealing with anxiety.’

If you want help with book marketing, you can hire vetted professionals from the Reedsy Marketplace and find people on the Alliance of Independent Authors Partner Member list.

While I have hired specific people over the years for short-term marketing campaigns, I primarily do my own marketing. Here are some principles that will help you if you choose to do the same.

(1) Reframe marketing as creative sharing

Many authors feel that marketing and sales are negative in some way, but that attitude makes the whole thing more difficult. Whether you have a traditional book deal or you self-publish, you have to learn to market if you want to sell books. So, it’s time to reframe what marketing is!

Marketing is sharing what you love with people who will appreciate hearing about it.

Marketing is not shouting ‘buy my book’ every day on social media or accosting readers in bookstores or at author events. You should never be pushing anything to those who are not interested. Instead, try to attract people who will love what you do once they know about it.

We’re readers too and we all love to find new books to immerse ourselves in, so think about other readers in the same way.

If you’ve written a great story in a genre that you love, why would you ever be embarrassed about promoting it ethically to fans of that genre?

If you’ve written a book on gluten-free weight loss, it’s likely that you’ve achieved success with your method. You’re trying to help people, so why wouldn’t you want to spread the word?

Once you change your attitude, the whole marketing landscape shifts. It becomes far more positive when you’re sharing things you love and attracting like-minded people.

If you start enjoying marketing and make it a sustainable part of your creative life, you’ll find it works a whole lot better — and might even be fun!

(2) Focus on the reader

Writing is about you. Publishing is about the book. Marketing is about the reader.

When we write, we are in our own heads. We’re thinking about ourselves. But when we publish and market, we have to switch our heads around to the other side of the equation and consider the person who reads or listens to the book and what they want out of the experience.

Step outside your own head and ask these questions: Who is my ideal reader? What emotion or outcome do they crave? What problem am I solving, or what entertainment experience am I providing?

The answers will help you with the words and images you use in marketing to attract the right readers.

(3) Own your platform

When you write a book, you need to have somewhere to direct people so they can find out information about you and what you write.

There are many options for building your home on the internet, but an important consideration is who owns the site you build on.

If you use a free site, it’s owned by someone else, whereas if you pay for hosting, you control it. You can back it up and make sure it’s always available. This matters because things change over time.

Some authors let their publisher build a website for them, but what if you begin working with a different p