Top 5 Websites for Author Marketing Resources
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Over the first year of developing a press and author identity online, Free Flying Press has a few gems to offer other writers starting their journey to independent authorship. A few things are absolutely essential for the aspiring indie author: community (made up of readers and authors alike), social media (get out there and engage!), and a marketing platform. Of these, the latter always proves the most difficult. Here's a round up of the top 5 most useful advice and author marketing platforms that we've found:
- The Creative Penn
Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author. She shares her knowledge about self-publishing and marketing with monthly emails and great content on her website. If you want to know about how to start your marketing platform, build a social media strategy, and sell your first book, check her out!
2. Author Marketing Club
AMC has it all. Tutorials for beginning authors, marketing strategies, tons of great freebies, all in a centralized, easily navigable place. Great for each novel you put out. Our favorite feature is the 'review grabber' which lets you search a genre or title in amazon, and pulls all of the reviewers email's or websites from the reviews. Then you can set up your plan to email them for reviews of your own book! For every 20 reviewers I mail out to, I get about 5 responses, and of that about 2 reviews. Not bad! It's about $25/mo to join, or $129 for the year. Totally worth it.
Here's a rundown of their services:
- Book Widget Creation Tool
- AMC Buzz Team
- Amazon Enhanced Description Maker
- New Member Book Feature
- FREE Pre-made Book Cover
- Masterclasses
- Free 99c Book Promotions
- Author Marketing Academy (videos/webcasts)
- Author Success Interviews
- Author Marketing Checklist (they give this away for free)
- Book Discovery Sundays
- Author Secrets Mastermind (marketing and promotion strategies)
- Author Tales (you can upload text or video)
- AMC Bookalyzer
- Brag Board
- Help Me Choose a Cover
3. Goodreads
This is the best place for community. Goodreads offers groups, which let you build community and find like-minded readers. There are also groups for readers/reviewers, where you can get a fair number of reviews for your book. You may have to work a little to get them, but that's what this is all about--work and results! Plus, host a giveaway on goodreads and reach thousands of potential readers who will save your book in their 'to-read' file and boost your rankings.
4. Inkitt
Inkitt is a goldmine. Here you can post your own stories and get feedback from writerly readers. You can also find great stories to read and authors to connect to. They have near-constant competitions running so you can get your work noticed. It's rather new, so you have a smaller, targeted audience, and a lot of passionate writers to connect with.
5. Standout Books
With tons of cute infographics to go along with solid writing and marketing advice, Standoutbooks is a fun mailing list to sign up with. They offer a few promotional/marketing/editing services, but I go there mostly to peruse the advice blog.
Bonus: Your Guide to Social Media
If you're like me and you loathe social media, my guide for authors who hate social media will help make this necessary evil a lot less daunting and horrible.
Get your guide now !
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