Marketing your first book without a budget

Congratulations! You’ve got a book coming out. And you’ve heard about that marketing thing, and the thing is, you’ve got time, but not the budget to promote. What’s a new author to do?

If you’re like many of the authors I know, marketing is really not your thing. (Really.) And when you don’t have a budget to work with, you can’t hire someone to fix your marketing woes. You’re left to figure it out yourself. I’ve seen a lot of new marketers jump in with both feet and think they can do it all–forgetting that while understanding your budget is often easy (especially if it’s ZERO), figuring out how much time you can (or should) spend can be more difficult.

If you let yourself, it can be the dish that runs away with the spoon (the spoon equaling every bit of your day.) So if you’re an author looking to promote with your time and wifi connection, only, here are a few things to take into consideration:

Be Realistic About Your Time

With a zero money budget, you need to be aware of what your time budget is.

How much time per day can you allot to promotional efforts? An hour? Two hours? Fifteen minutes? Be realistic about what your day will allow. You might be surprised at how much or little time you have. One way to finding this answer is to spend a couple of days jotting down what you do with your hours.

If you have a full-time job, that’s a big chunk of time each day that’s easy to note. But don’t forget to account for ALL your hours–lunch breaks, the hour when you get home from work, just before bed. Grocery shopping. Errands. Dinner. Kid Time. Significant Other Time. Downtime. Writing time. 

Take two or three days and a little notepad and jot every hour of your awake time. Then determine how much time you can really carve out to manage your marketing and promotion plans.  And don’t forget: the very best marketing you can do it another book, so make sure that’s time you protect.

Create A Time Budget

For purposes of this article, let’s say you can devote an hour and a half each day to promote you and your book. You need to plan that hour and a half the same way you would design an agenda for a meeting— otherwise, it will run away from you. Social media is a rabbit hole. Amazon is a rabbit hole. Everything can be a rabbit hole if you don’t have a promotion plan that creates your focus. I wrote an article on Forbes around the Random Acts of Marketing that discusses why that is such a bad idea. Creating a time budget works the same way a money budget does — where will you get the best bang for your buck?

Each day might be different. You may have an hour on Saturday, but only 30 minutes on Monday. Think of promoting yourself and your book as a marathon; it’s not a sprint.

Start Marketing Early

If your book comes out on Monday and today is Friday, you need to be realistic with your goals. Building a readership means building a community that centers around you, the author, not the specific book you’ll be promoting. Just think of any time you’ve been on Twitter, and you’ve seen an author endlessly and only promote their book. Do you read? Click? Nope, me neither.

Now consider other authors who interact, engage, provide advice, help cheer on others. If one day, they post about how excited they were for their book release day, would you click on that link? Far more likely.

Your book promotion efforts start early, and they are very often not about the book at all. They are about you. You know what this is. You’ve heard the term “Author Platform.” Yup, that’s what we’re talking about at this stage.

Build Your Author Platform

One marketing secret that has always served me well is that people don’t buy the product, they buy the person or the brand. This means that your activities need to start with building your author platform first. These are the basics that every author needs—some of which may require a little budget, but it doesn’t have to be a lot to get started. (And if you’ve got these things, check! Move to the next section.)

• Build your website ( use your author name as your domain name). You can do this inexpensively. A few simple steps: secure your domain name through GoDaddy ($12 or so per year), get website hosting for a WordPress site (Hostgator is a great option and inexpensive, $40-60 per year). You can even select a free WordPress theme to start your site. Once you’ve done that, your website should be where you drive everyone to visit. This is your place to share what your reader should expect from you. Remember: It doesn’t have to be complicated. Simple is fine to start, as long as it’s clean and professional.
• Create your mailing list. Free WordPress plugins such as MailMunch can help you with this. Make it an easy subscription on your website so people can get notified when your book comes out. Remember: we build our lists one person at a time. Celebrate every single person who joins. (And in fact, I’d love it if you’d join my list. You’ll get these articles right in your inbox and info when my upcoming books release. See the sidebar to subscribe.🙂)
• Create a blog and post consistently—whether that’s once every other month or once a week, choose a safe cadence. Blogging can be a way to bring people to your site in between books or before you have a finished book. Create content of interest to them.  Remember: Start generously with your time. It’s easy to think upfront that you’ll write more often than you will. It’s better to be consistent less often than to offer content in spurts.
• Create social media accounts on the channels you’re likely to be active. Your account usernames should be the same as your website. Be consistent and easy to find. Include your website link on each profile. Social media is part of building your brand. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have very robust writing communities and a million hashtags to find out more. Remember: Social media can be a time suck, but you have a purpose for being there. It should always be with the focus of building your community.

The 3 areas every marketing activity should fall under

You may (or may not have) heard of a “marketing funnel.” A marketing funnel is how marketers look at the journey a customer takes with them, and that journey is the same for any business, including yours. You are your business, and your books are your product. You have customers, otherwise known as readers.

There are simple stages that every person takes when we decide on something new to buy, including books. And for the marketer (yes, that’s you!), each stage needs something different from us. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll break that funnel into three areas: awareness, consideration, and purchase. Your goal as the author marketing your books is to move people from 1 to 3.

1. Awareness – I have heard of this author and this book.
2. Consideration – This author writes things I’m interested in, and this book is something I may like and want to read.
3. Purchase – I am ready to read this book.

Everything you do should aim at one of these areas. Where do you start?

If you’re a new author with a first book, gaining awareness should be the goal of your marketing focus. What does that mean? Every activity right now should help your reader be able to say, “I have heard of this author and this book.“

You’ve prepared for this stage. Your book cover and description are genre-perfect and spot on. Your author platform is built and ready for readers. You’ve built it, so they can come and find out more. Now, your efforts should drive people to think about you and want to find out more. 

Consistency Is Key

Once you’re ready to start promoting your book, all of your efforts for this stage are about repetition. As a marketer, I can tell you it takes multiple impressions for someone to make a purchase. The same is true of your reader. Potential readers need to see your name, your book in various places—and they need to be able to recognize that they’ve seen it before.

This does not mean spamming your social media channels daily with your book cover and buy-me-now links. Here, you are casting a wide net. Think of the funnel shape — the top of the funnel is the widest, and you’re throwing out into the wild to see who you catch. To catch your readers and build that memory, what they know about you needs to be consistent across each medium.

That means that your fonts and colors should be consistent in ads, in social posts, and they should complement your genre and the tone of your book. They should be consistent everywhere you post.

Budget-Friendly Promotion Ideas

And here are some of the activities you can use to build up your awareness with readers:

• Claim Your BookBub Profile. Bookbub is a site where readers are plain and simple. So be sure you’ve claimed your profile (even with just one book). Get the details here and then check out how else you can use Bookbub to promote.
• Claim and build your Amazon AuthorCentral page. You can customize this page to be what you want to share with your readers. And I don’t know about you, but I visit author Amazon pages often. This is digital real estate that is yours to claim as an author. You can link to your blog as well.
• Connect with your audience. It’s not just about putting your content out there; it’s about connecting with readers and letting them connect with you. One example: writing recommendations on the Bookbub site. You can gain followers on Bookbub, and whenever you add recommendations, they are alerted. You also earn the chance of being included in a Bookbub weekly digest of recommendations.
• Show off Your Book Cover everywhere. Because book covers are how we recognize and remember books, this is the perfect place to start your marketing efforts. Put that book cover everywhere, from your website to your social media page header images to the header of your email newsletter, to pinned posts on your social channels.
• Share social posts of your book. Focus your posts on areas that excite you. Share excepts. Share behind the scenes of your writing. Share something of yourself. Be sure to include the details of your book. If you’re sharing more personal elements, this doesn’t feel like a sales ad to a reader.  
• Free Book Promotion Options. There are a million resources that can take you deeper into what’s available and what works for you. Here’s a great one from Kindleprenueur of 127 Book Promotion resource sites or search the Reedsy site here.
• Consider Book Blogger Tours. Cover Reveal tours are often the most cost-effective and can get your name and your book on dozens of book blogger sites. Here’s a great article from Bookbub on what to do.
• Guest Blog Posts & Podcasts. Find the people who have blogs or podcasts where your readers might listen in and reach out to see if you can be a guest. In fact, you can start with my blog if you want. I accept guest blogs, and I’d love to host yours. (Contact me here.)
• Facebook ads. This is something you can start off with a budget as small as $5-$10 to try out. But don’t go it alone. There is an art to a Facebook ad, so here’s a course from Reedsy to help you get started.
• Take advantage of Amazon. For a new author, Amazon offers a variety of ways to start getting noticed. From Amazon KDP promotions and free promotions to your keyword strategy, this is a really key area of focus. More on keywords here on the Reedsy blog.
• Reviews. If gaining reviews is one of your key strategies, then you can look at sites like Reedsy Discovery to submit your book to multiple reviewers. These have a cost — Reedsy is $50. Netgalley is another, but going straight to their website can be expensive. You can look for less expensive options through the IBPA Program.
• Your email signature. This is an often overlooked but very easy way to let people know that you’re an author and you have a book out. For your personal email and your author’s email, be sure to add in a signature that notes your website, your book title, and the release date or “available now where books are sold.” Keep it very simple — less is more. But it’s your real estate to use, so use it.

These are just a few of dozens of ways you can focus on getting in front of your readers before spending hundreds of dollars. Be aware that they will all require time, so you need to consider that budget as well.

Happy marketing and remember: celebrate 🎉 every new reader 👩‍💼, every new follower 😸, every new fan 👸. Building a readership takes time, and you are now on your way.