Book Marketing for Indie Authors

Discoverability, the Right Reader, and Sustainable Visibility

Marketing and promotion are often used interchangeably, but at ALLi we separate them for a reason. Marketing is the ongoing work of helping the right readers discover you and understand what your books offer. Promotion is a time-bound sales push with a clear start and end point.

This page focuses on marketing: the foundations you build once, improve over time, and use across every book you publish.

What Book Marketing Actually Means

Book marketing is how you make it easy for the right readers to find you, recognise what kind of writer you are, and understand whether a particular book is for them.

In publishing terms, marketing is about discoverability (sometimes called findability). It includes the assets and signals that help readers decide, quickly and confidently, “Yes, this is for me.”

That usually includes:

• your author platform (website, social channels, reader-facing presence)
• your covers and branding
• your book descriptions and metadata cues
• your review strategy and reader requests
• your email list and reader funnels
• physical assets like bookmarks or postcards (where relevant)

Marketing is mostly ongoing. You may refresh your look and feel occasionally, but the system continues rolling along, supporting each new reader and each new release.

A useful aim is to standardise and automate what you can, so marketing becomes consistent and manageable, even when life is busy and writing time needs protecting.

The Core Principle: The Right Reader

Marketing is your promise to your reader. Every time a reader encounters your book or your name, they are asking an implicit question:

“Would I like this? Is it for me?”

The clearer your marketing is, the easier it is for them to answer.

This matters because not everyone is your reader, and that’s fine. Even bestselling books leave some people cold. The goal of marketing is not to appeal to everyone. It’s to connect strongly with the people who are most likely to love what you write.

New authors often say their book is for “pretty much everyone,” or “not for any particular type of reader.” It’s understandable, but it makes marketing harder, not easier. If you try to speak to everyone, the message usually becomes vague, and even the readers who would love your book may pass by because they can’t tell what it is.

The right reader principle is simple:

• aim your marketing clearly at the readers most likely to love your micro-niche
• let that clarity shape everything: your cover, description, tone, and visibility strategy
• accept that you are not trying to win the whole world

Ironically, going narrow is often how you grow. When your marketing is specific and confident, other readers are more likely to take a chance too because they can immediately understand what kind of reading experience you offer.

Getting Specific: What You Need to Know About Your Readers

Knowing your readers at a granular level helps you:

• write better descriptions and ads
• choose effective categories and keywords
• design covers that “signal” the genre clearly
• build email magnets and funnels that actually convert
• decide which platforms and communities are worth your time

If you already have an email list, even a small one, you can learn a lot simply by asking. You can also learn by reading reviews, joining genre groups, and studying comparable authors.

Here are three useful angles to explore.

1) Outer attributes

• Age, life stage, education, occupation
• Interests, hobbies, lifestyle
• Where they live, how they spend time
• How they tend to discover books

2) Inner attributes

• Values, goals, beliefs
• Worries, frustrations, fantasies
• The emotional “pull” your genre satisfies

3) Reading attributes

• What they want from reading (escape, comfort, learning, thrills, laughter, tears)
• Format preferences (ebook, print, audio)
• Buying patterns and price sensitivity
• Other authors and genres they also read

These don’t need to be perfect guesses, but they should become more evidence-based over time. Marketing improves as your understanding of your readers deepens.

Creative Book Marketing: Make It a Relationship, Not a Broadcast

Many authors say, “I love writing, but I hate marketing.” One helpful reframe is that in a digital publishing world, marketing is largely communication. It’s words, images, and storytelling, expressed through descriptions, posts, emails, ad copy, and the overall “world” you build around your books.

Uncreative marketing often looks like repeated requests for attention: buy my book, review my book, follow me, share me. It’s understandable, you’ve worked hard and you’re excited. but most readers are not waiting for your announcement. They’re wading through noise.

Reader attention is earned. That starts with:

• understanding your book’s value from the reader’s perspective
• communicating that value clearly and creatively
• focusing on the people most likely to care

You don’t have to do everything, and you don’t have to do anything that feels completely unnatural. But you do have to do something. Books don’t sell themselves.

Three Broad Approaches to Marketing

Different authors thrive with different marketing styles. Most successful careers use a mix, but it helps to know the main modes.

1) Relationship-led marketing (ACCESS)

A structured way to attract and nurture the right readers until they’re ready to buy, and stay.

2) Algorithm-led marketing

Using advertising, retailer systems, and platform dynamics to gain visibility.

3) Influencer-led marketing

Working with people and channels that already have trust and reach: reviewers, booksellers, librarians, journalists, event organisers, and other authors.

This page focuses mainly on relationship-led marketing and the foundations that support every other approach.

ACCESS Marketing: A Reader Journey You Can Build

ACCESS marketing is about deliberately guiding the right readers through a journey, from discovery to trust to purchase, using content and connection.

ACCESS stands for:

• Attract: help the right readers find you
• Captivate: give them reasons to stay interested
• Connect: create a channel where you can reach them directly
• Engage: build genuine interaction and community
• Subscribe: invite them onto your email list (often via a reader magnet)
• Satisfy: deliver value consistently and deepen the relationship

A well-built ACCESS system becomes a quiet engine under your career. It doesn’t rely on constant launches or shouting into the void. It rewards consistency, clarity, and reader value.

It also becomes easier over time because you can automate parts of it and reuse assets across multiple books.

Algorithm-Led Marketing: How Platforms Amplify Signals

Algorithm-led marketing focuses on how books are surfaced inside retailer platforms, subscription services, and social networks. These systems use reader behaviour to decide what to recommend, promote, or quietly ignore.

In practice, this includes advertising tools, category and keyword choices, pricing signals, and engagement data. Algorithms tend to reward clarity and relevance: when a book is clearly positioned for a specific audience, platforms are better able to show it to readers who are likely to care.

What algorithms cannot do is compensate for unclear marketing. If your cover, description, genre signals, or audience focus are vague, automated systems struggle to place your book effectively.

For that reason, algorithm-led marketing works best after your foundations are in place. Strong relationship-led marketing and clear positioning give algorithms something to amplify, rather than something to guess at.

We cover time-bound algorithm activation, such as advertising and promotional campaigns, in Promotion 101.

Make It Distinct: Resonance Beats Noise

In a crowded publishing landscape, attention is earned through resonance, not volume. Marketing works best when it doesn’t feel like generic selling, but like a clear signal to the right people.

Ask yourself:

• What’s distinct about your work, your voice, or your promise?
• What do your readers come to you for?
• What do you do that comparable authors don’t, or do differently?

Your job isn’t to disappear into the crowd. It’s to become recognisable to the readers who will care most.

In Conclusion

• Marketing is the ongoing work of discoverability: helping the right readers find you and understand what you offer.
• The right reader principle makes everything easier, clarity beats “appeal to everyone.”
• Strong marketing is built from repeatable assets: covers, descriptions, platform, email list, and consistent reader communication.
• Relationship-led approaches like ACCESS create long-term momentum that supports every new release.
• The most sustainable marketing is personal, creative, and evidence-led, a real relationship with readers, refined over time.