SECTION 1 → PART 1
Create Your Author Platform & Prepare To Market Your Book
EXTENDED BOOK CHAPTER #10 from MY SELF-PUBLISHING MANUAL by Bart Smith
INTRODUCTION & WHAT TO DO
Before spending a single dime on advertising or dedicating a single minute to outreach, you must properly prepare your author platform. Getting your digital presence and promotional assets in order creates a strong first impression that turns casual browsers into buyers. Work through the following checklist quickly so you can confidently launch your marketing campaigns and maximize your sales:
1. Register A Domain For Your Book
Is this done already? How about YourName.com ? A book-title domain is easier to promote than a long Amazon link. At least forwarding the domain to your Amazon page is better than saying, “Go search for my book.” First, have the domain redirect to your book sales page on your website. Then, create a redirect to your Amazon page for easy reference that looks like MySelfPublishingManual.com/amazon or MyChecklistBook.com/amazon . I register my domain names at my company, ReallyCheapNames.com
2. Build an author website and/or a book-specific selling website.
Yes, Build an author website and/or a book-specific selling website or
a book-specific sales page to showcase your work, host your biography,
post your upcoming calendar of events, and provide clear contact instructions
for media interviews.
To turn your platform into a high-converting storefront, your site should
feature high-quality audio samples of your audiobook, real or staged video
interviews, and an engaging book video trailer. If you need inspiration
or layout ideas to get started, browse
BartSmith.com
and
BartSmith.com/books
to see live examples, and visit
BartSmith.com/fans
to review the custom author client websites I have built.
3. Create a blog and write articles, post audio and video articles about topics from inside your book.
Launch a dedicated blog on your website to publish high-utility articles, audio recordings, and video breakdowns that showcase the core concepts from inside your book. To easily generate content without starting from scratch, simply select a single chapter and extract three to five specific topics that you can expand upon in detail. Once these posts are live on your website, repurpose those exact same articles, audio clips, and videos across your social media channels and YouTube channel to capture new audiences, establish deep credibility, and drive targeted traffic back to your site to purchase your book.
4. Create an Amazon Author Central Account Page
Be sure you have one of these (Amazon.com/author/bartsmith) so people can learn more about you and the books you’ve written. Fill it in with everything you do (related to your books, business, occupation, etc.) You can add video, blog posts, biographical information, and much more. When potential customers see a well-stocked Author Central page, that just might be the kind of motivation and excitement they need to buy your book.
5. Sign up for an eMail service like Sender.net so you can build an eMail list.
Offer a few free excerpts (i.e., written/audio/video) and start collecting the names of prospective buyers who come to your website. Build an opt-in form using that eMail service and place that opt-in form on your home page, in the sidebar on blog posts and at the bottom of every article and even in the footer area of your website. Collecting eMail addresses is a great way to build a list of future buyers so one day you have a pool of people who you can communicate with and upsell your services to and more.
6. Create and customize a complete suite of professional social media accounts dedicated specifically to your book.
To maintain a cohesive brand presence, attempt to register the exact same username across all major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and X (formerly Twitter). Don't forget to update your LinkedIn profile to document your new status as a published author, which instantly boosts your professional credibility. While it is perfectly fine to occasionally share your achievements on your personal profiles, you must keep your core book marketing separate from your personal life; avoid cluttering your personal Facebook timeline with non-stop sales pitches, and instead, build a dedicated Facebook Business Page where you can run ads, track analytics, and focus entirely on your book-related activities.
7. Prepare all your marketing and sales literature and marketing materials for and related to your book.
Before launching your outreach campaigns, assemble your professional
print-ready marketing materials and sales literature. Having a polished,
physical media kit allows you to establish instant credibility at live
workshops, pop-up vendor tables, and local bookstores. To turn any
venue into a high-converting storefront, organize your presentation toolkit
with these essential physical assets:
· Visual Signage: Order high-resolution, full-color posters featuring two prints of your front cover and one of your back cover. Mount them on sturdy floor easels to draw immediate eyes from across the room.
· Table-Top Displays:
Secure clear acrylic plastic display holders to showcase color printouts
of your book cover, reviews, or event pricing menus. Use dedicated table-top
book frames to prop up your physical book as an eye-level focal point.
· High-Impact Business Cards:
Print custom cards featuring your vibrant front cover artwork. Utilize
the backside to list clear instructions on where to buy the book, direct
contact details, and core reader benefits.
· Handout Collateral:
Design and print half-page and full-page promotional flyers to market
upcoming classes or workshops. Always keep a stack of professional order
forms readily accessible to seamlessly collect offline payments for books
and back-of-the-room consulting services.
8. Order all necessary processing equipment and supplies from PayPal and Square to turn your mobile phone into a fully functional point-of-sale credit and debit card processing terminal.
While setting up an account is free, you should proactively request physical chip-readers, charging docks, and terminal supplies directly from PayPal Zettle and Square Up. Having physical mobile credit card readers in-hand ensures you never lose a spontaneous sale when connecting with potential buyers face-to-face at book signings, networking events, or random public encounters. While mobile wallets are popular, not everyone uses Venmo or Cash App, and those who do might not have them linked to their bank account or know how to operate the app on the fly. However, nearly every buyer carries a working debit or credit card. Swiping or tapping a physical card provides a completely frictionless checkout experience that lets you comfortably upsell the reader on the spot, turning a single paperback sale into a larger transaction by bundling your workbook, audiobook, or companion courses right at checkout.
9. If YOU don’t have them already, install Venmo and Cash.app mobile applications on your smartphone, connect them to your bank and learn how to use them.
If YOU don’t have them already, install Venmo and Cash.app mobile app on your smartphone so you can accept payments from your future book buying customers. Book Buyer: "How much is this?" You: "$20." Book Buyer: "Can I Venmo you the money?" You: "Absolutely. My Venmo (or CashApp user name is ... @YourName." Done, you just made $20. Really though, having these on your phone does help you accept payments from anyone who wants to pay you.
10. If you haven’t already, take the time now to get 10 copies of your book directly into the hands of friends, clients, neighbors, and trusted colleagues to secure your first batch of honest reviews.
Once they finish reading, collect their feedback and place these powerful testimonials prominently on your website and in the opening pages of your book's front matter. After gathering these 10+ reviews, update your manuscript file, resubmit it to your book printer, and re-launch your updated edition with built-in social proof that instantly validates your work to every future buyer.
11. Record a high-quality video welcome message and a short self-interview answering the most compelling questions about your book to publish across your website, media room, and social channels.
To streamline your content creation and save immense time, you can use advanced AI platforms like HeyGen.com to build a highly realistic digital video avatar of yourself. You only need to record your initial self-interview once; that single video serves as the sample clip you feed into the AI to train your custom avatar. Once created, you can instantly generate an unlimited number of updated video messages by simply typing out new text scripts, allowing you to easily refresh your content, bypass multiple video takes, and ensure you don't just launch a book—you launch you.
12. Build a professional media room on your website.
Yes, build a professional media room on your website like I have at BartSmith.com/media that provides journalists, podcast hosts, and event organizers with instant access to downloadable quick facts, your author biography, high-resolution book cover images, and a compelling list of pre-written interview questions. As you secure media appearances, systematically post links to those articles, podcasts, and video recordings directly inside your press room. This running archive of media coverage acts as powerful social proof, validating your expertise and giving future hosts the exact confidence they need to book you for their next broadcast based on the success of your past interviews
13. Write a press release, using AI, for your book by prompting ChatGPT to "think like a publicist" to help write your press release.
Using AI to craft your news angle speeds up the process significantly, leaving you with a highly polished media template that you just need to have proofread before sending out. Refer to my press releases for ideas on what to write and how to write a stellar press release. Once finalized, distribute your release through a mix of free and paid wire networks like PR Newswire, EIN Presswire, PRweb or PRLog, which systematically blast your announcement to thousands of journalists, search engines, and news sites. For a nice big list of these services, refer to these PR, Press Release Services & Distribution resources on my website. Many of these premium networks will track your syndication analytics so you can see exactly where your story lands, ensuring you maximize your media outreach with minimal friction. Also, post these press releases on your website, social media accounts and on LinkedIn.
14. Eat well, get your rest, revisit your wardrobe (do you need a few new outfits?), work out, get in shape ...
So true! Eat well, get your rest, revisit your wardrobe (do you need a few new outfits?), work out, get in shape ... you’re about to go public with your book and you want to look GREAT! Prioritize your physical well-being and personal presentation by eating well, getting plenty of rest, working out, and curating an updated wardrobe with a few high-impact outfits before hitting the promotional trail. Going public with your book means stepping into the media spotlight, whether that involves high-definition video interviews, live workshop stages, or professional photo shoots, so you want to look and feel your absolute best. Investing in your health and personal style boosts your baseline energy levels and projects instant, magnetic confidence to your audience, ensuring that your outward image fully matches the elite authority of the book you are launching.
15. Take new pictures and videos of yourself if you don’t have any.
Schedule time (i.e., 2-3 hours) for a dedicated photo and video shoot (with a few different wardrobe changes) to capture fresh, high-quality media assets if your current gallery is outdated. Ask friends or family for help to avoid costs. They can take 100 pictures of you, for free (or in exchange for lunch), and all you need is 5-10 good ones out of the bunch. That won’t cost you $300-$500, for sure. ALSO, once you have those photos, use AI (or ChatGPT) to take those nice photos of you and create new photos of you in different outfits, holding your book, on location, etc. and they’ll instantly create flawless, professional photos of yourself. Once generated, strategically sprinkle these clean, high-energy visuals throughout your website, social media profiles, and book sales pages, as well as archived as high-resolution downloads inside your online media room for journalists and podcast hosts to use. Investing time to create clean, modern portraits and high-definition b-roll footage elevates your digital brand overnight, ensuring that the first visual impression potential buyers have of you matches the premium value and elite professionalism of your book and leaving potential book buyers saying, “Wow, I’d like to get to know that person and buy their book — I’m incredibly curious to see what it is all about!”
16. When you’re confident you’ve edited your book enough times to warrant a purchase of 50-100 books, do it now before you kick off all your marketing and promotional activities.
You don’t want to have to wait 1-2 weeks for the printer to mail you a new batch of books when demand is hitting you. Let’s say someone wants to interview you this week and they want a book in hand to go over it. That’s my point. Have books on hand for just the right occasion. Also, you’ll want to always keep 50-100 copies on hand for event invitations and for sale at your own events. When the marketing gets going, you’ll thank yourself that you ordered books ahead of time and on hand and not have to wait 1-2 weeks for their arrival when you need them NOW!
17. Budget – Do you need a budget?
There’s always a cost to sell anything. Promoting a book could include a few hundred dollars for print materials (i.e., posters, postcards, bookmarks, business cards, etc.), paid media publicity (e.g., $1,000-$5,000+/month), etc. I don’t recommend you break the bank , but you will need to make on-going investments in your marketing campaign. This is why I tell people to start small and hone your skills for marketing, selling, publicity and start at the local level. Practice in your community with book signings, local TV and radio, and anyone who will listen to you. Maybe you could pull together a marketing team among a few friends/others who can support you with brainstorming and how to get the word out that there is a new author in town -- the kind of marketing team that can usually be compensated with good snacks and a copy of your book.
18. Enthusiasm/Entertainment – Don’t be boring. Don’t be predictable.
Don’t talk language/words people have heard before. Be unpredictable, be dangerous, be exciting, be entertaining, be funny! Hook them on YOU first, and they’ll want to take you home with them in the form of books, audio, action figures, etc. Inject unstoppable energy, humor, and unpredictable entertainment into every single interview, presentation, and social media clip you produce to break through the digital noise. Avoid the dry, predictable industry jargon that audiences have heard a thousand times before; instead, speak with bold candor and dynamic flair that keeps people hanging on your every word. When you focus on being dangerous, exciting, and memorable, you effortlessly hook potential buyers on your unique personality and brand identity first. Once an audience falls in love with you as an entertainer and authority, they will naturally want to take a piece of that magnetic energy home with them, converting instantly into loyal, long-term fans who eagerly buy your books, download your audio, enroll in your courses, and purchase your merchandise.
19. Fulfillment
While direct fulfillment is not technically a marketing strategy, setting up scalable order processing is essential to ensure that a major wave of publicity does not leave you trapped on your living room floor manually packing thousands of envelopes. If you are planning a large-scale media push, establish automated distribution workflows from day one by syncing your sales channels with Amazon KDP or a professional third-party logistics (3PL) fulfillment company. Outsourcing the warehousing, packing, and global shipping of your bulk or individual inventory protects your personal time, eliminates logistical bottlenecks, and allows you to scale your sales seamlessly while you focus entirely on your next high-impact marketing campaign.
20. Get Media Savvy
No doubt, this might be a very weak area (in your marketing/promotion pool of activities) that you need to do more research on and get “media savvy!” What media companies are in your local town or area? What’s it take to get to know the people who work there and get some media attention? This goes for print, newspaper, magazine, TV, radio and online media. Who, what, where, when, how … Get those questions answered in regards to all the potential media outlets available to you. Don’t be afraid, timid or hesitant. You are an investigative journalist working for (yourself). Start by mapping out every print, newspaper, magazine, television, radio, and digital media company operating directly in your local town or region. Uncover the exact logistics of how these outlets operate by identifying the specific gatekeepers, what types of stories they prefer, where they are located, and how to pitch their production crews or news desks. Adopt the aggressive mindset of an investigative journalist working on behalf of your own publishing brand; pick up the phone, make direct inquiries, and confidently compile a master media contact sheet so you can systematically pitch your book to local reporters who are always hungry for compelling, homegrown human-interest stories.
21. Make It Easy To Buy Your Book!
Make it effortless for readers to buy your book by removing all navigation friction from your author website and utilizing global distribution networks. Ensure your "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons are large, vibrant, and positioned above the fold, while locking a persistent "View Cart / Checkout" link to the header of every single page on your site. You can even record a quick, 30-second screen-share video showing visitors exactly how to complete their purchase seamlessly. Beyond your own storefront, make your book available across as many external retail channels as possible by opting into Kindle Direct Publishing’s (KDP) Expanded Distribution service. This automatically injects your title into global wholesale databases, allowing thousands of brick-and-mortar bookstores, libraries, and online retailers worldwide to easily locate, order, and stock your book for their customers.
22. Over Deliver
To maximize customer satisfaction and drive long-term loyalty, you must strategically over-deliver so every buyer feels they received ten times the value of the book's cover price. When a customer completes a purchase, instantly surprise them with high-utility, unannounced bonuses delivered straight to their email inbox or hosted inside a private download portal. Consider bundling your paperback with actionable resources such as companion PDF checklists, access to a private video training module, or a downloadable audiobook version of the first chapter. Providing these unexpected digital extras transforms a standard transaction into an unforgettable customer experience, leaving readers thrilled with their purchase and eager to buy your higher-ticket backend products, courses, and coaching services.
23. Partner Up & Get The Help You Need
If you need help scaling your book promotions, consider partnering up with another author who wrote a complementary title to yours so you can double-team your marketing efforts. In addition to peer collaboration, you can outsource your tedious promotional chores by heading to Fiverr.com to find freelance experts who can execute both simple and complicated marketing tasks at highly affordable rates to help you get the word out about your book. When sourcing talent on the platform, use precise search phrases like "book promotion specialist," "podcast outreach manager," "KDP book marketing," "press release distribution," or "social media manager for authors." Using these targeted keywords will lead you straight to experienced gig workers who can build your promotional graphics, pitch hosts on your behalf, and automate your campaigns, allowing you to multiply your daily reach for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing agency.
24. Spy On Your Competition
Actively spying on your competition (i.e., other authors, etc.) is one of the fastest ways to uncover highly profitable marketing strategies that are already proven to work in your specific niche.
Dedicate time to researching how rival authors are successfully launching and selling their books; if you see them executing a brilliant promotion, utilizing a unique landing page layout, or running a high-converting social media campaign, don't reinvent the wheel — ethically adapt their best ideas for your own book launch to drive your own sales higher.
To master this process step-by-step, pick up a copy of my book, 21+ Ways To Spy On Your Competition, which I wrote specifically to give you the exact framework for legally tracking competitor traffic, ad campaigns, and sales funnels. I don't just teach these advanced intelligence-gathering methods; I actively follow the exact advice inside that book to keep my own publishing business thriving, and you should too. I wrote it for you, but I follow the advice and what’s inside too.
25. Turn Fans Into Marketers
Turn your most passionate fans into an active, outsourced marketing force by getting them excited about sharing your book with their friends, family, and networks. Provide your brand advocates with physical promotional materials — such as custom business cards, postcards, flyers, and copies of your press release — so they have the exact tools needed to hand out to their personal connections and spread the word on your behalf. Beyond passing out literature, specifically mobilize these loyal supporters to leave honest, positive reviews and statements about your book and services online. Building this wall of authentic five-star feedback from real readers acts as a powerful shield to combat and drown out the occasional unfair or negative reviews left by cynical internet users who don't even know you. By empowering your dedicated fanbase to actively defend your reputation and champion your message, you build an unstoppable, high-credibility word-of-mouth engine that continuously drives new sales.
CLOSING THOUGHTS & YOUR EXECUTION PLAN
What else comes to mind when you brainstorm ways to promote your work? Every book project is unique, and as you read through these strategies, you will undoubtedly spark custom marketing ideas tailored perfectly to your specific niche and audience. Do not let those flashes of inspiration fade away—make note of them immediately in your marketing plan, build an execution strategy around them, and jump on them with massive action to maximize your sales!
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