Book Marketing: How to Lighten the Load with a Checklist

Eating the book marketing elephant one bite at a time (Photo by Max Straeten at Morguefile.com)

When the task of marketing your self-published book feels unmanageable, it can help to “eat the elephant one bite at a time”.  ALLi author Glenn Ashton describes his technique for serving up the beast in bite-sized portions. 

Indie author Glenn Ashton

Do you feel overwhelmed by all the marketing ground you'd like to cover, but have only so much time each week to allocate to marketing? I did, and that's why I devised for myself a weekly checklist using 120 small steps, on  the “small steps, small wins” principle.

• Your chances of success are better if your plan has small steps so that they are more easily done.
• Gaining small successes sustains your level of enthusiasm for promoting your own books.

My checklist is flexible as well: I can change it as and when I wish.

Sample Small Tasks

Below are seven sample tasks from my own checklist. (The full 120 points are listed on my website here.)

1. Dip into blog stats to check the blogging process
2. Check how to improve your Facebook presence
3. Post pictures on Pinterest
4. Prepare a video or podcast
5. Prepare a newsletter
6. Check your Twitter lists to see if they need revising
7. Polish your Google+ circles

Each author's checklist will be different, and yours should incorporate your author marketing plan.

How to Start Using a Small Steps Checklist

• 

  You can read more about Glenn's technique is his book

  Prepare your weekly engagement checklist, and discuss it with your team of advisors, if you have one. Later on, as you develop a clan of followers and your own brand ambassadors, you could consult them too. Revise it every time you and your team decide on new or better social media engagement methods.

• Every week, go through the checklist and decide just how much work you want to do to market your books.
• Then, just carry out the small steps in it that you have decided to do that week.
• Next week, go through the same process – and the next week and the next week…

Don't let the fact that the checklist has so many steps fill you with dismay.  Be easy on yourself, and choose a handful each week to start with, with more in later months.

Not every task will need to be done each week. Some tasks need only be done every few weeks. And some will not be done by you at all, if you choose!

What if you haven't yet published a book?

If don’t have a book but are active on social media networks and forums, you can still use the checklist to inject a bit of easily-managed discipline into your outreach efforts. The checklist can also help you products or services other than books, including other writing-related activities – freelance journalism, talks, seminars and online courses.

OVER TO YOU If you have top tips to share about how to make the book marketing tasks of an indie author more manageable, we'd love to hear about them!

ANOTHER GREAT POST ON HOW TO AVOID FEELING OVERWHELMED