Basic Decisions About PR that Every Indie Author Will Have to Make

There are numerous decisions that every single author has to face no matter what their genre or publishing preference may be. The Indie author has their own unique set of decisions to make and questions that they must answer themselves. There is not always someone around who can shoulder the burden of the most basic of these decisions. Introducing your book to the marketplace is perhaps one of the biggest challenges you will ever face no matter what your level of author experience. From start to finish, it can be a lot of hard work – well worth it in the end – but hard work nonetheless. In some author’s opinions, pursuing marketing options is more difficult than actually writing the book! There are literally hundreds of ways to promote your book and we can narrow these down to some of the most basic essentials.

How and Where the Indie Author should Spend Time and Money

It is very important to know exactly where to spend your time, money and efforts when it comes to getting your book out there. In order to accomplish this feat here are the basic areas you will want to address:

• Defining goals
• Identifying your audience
• Setting up a timeline
• Considering other PR questions

Defining Goals

Just like every arena, clear cut goals are essential to success. You will want to ask yourself a couple of questions like why you published your book to start with, what you are hoping to achieve and who you want to reach with this information. Without a definitive goal, how will you know when you have reached success? Realistically develop your personal goals as an indie author if for no other reason than knowing when you have achieved them.

Identifying Your Audience

Authors need to be aware of what their intended audience looks like. Not only does it help when developing a manuscript, it also helps with marketing efforts. It is important to place your finished book in a position to be found by those who have an interest in the content. In order to reach your audience you need to know who they are and where they hangout – both online and off.

Setting Up a Timeline

It’s not a good strategy to run a perpetual promotion. The self-published author will need to decide when, where and how long a promotion will last. They may also want to use the staggering approach so that promotions build on each other. Major holidays, anniversaries, and major events are all great occasions to use for a promotional campaign. Promotions can each be unique entities and do not have to be the same for every book. It’s really up to the author’s preferences and choice.

Considering Other PR Questions

There are tons of other questions that the self-published author may have to face. How much time do you want to devote to marketing efforts? Will that take away from writing your next book? How do you want to handle reader reviews? Is it okay or ethical to use paid reviews? How important do you think media coverage is? What do you want to call yourself: indie author, self-published author or no title at all? Will this be your only book, your last book, the first book in a series, or just your next book? Do you want to reach out to an international audience and consider translating your works into other languages using a company like Babelcube?

There are tons of questions that no one can answer but the author and these only represent a few of them. But if you can answer these general questions, you’ll be a long way toward developing a solid marketing campaign.