Marketing a book can be very expensive, especially for the first time authors who may not have the extra cash on hand to be able to afford all the promotional boosts to maximize their book’s marketing potential. However, through careful strategic planning, authors can achieve an effective marketing plan for their books while maintaining low costs.

The first step, for any author really, is to build a website. The costs of running and maintaining a website are relatively low and are well worth the investment. An author’s website should be a landing page where potential readers and fans can find out all about your book, as well as pointing out where they can continue following you, ie through a mailing list or newsletter. Your website should contain information about you, links to your different social media accounts, dates and information of any event you’re attending, information about your book, eye catching graphics for your book, and maybe even the first chapter available for free so potential readers can get a sample of your book to “taste”.

It doesn’t cost much to build and run a website if you can do it yourself. It isn’t too hard if you use SquareSpace or WordPress and there are many tutorials online where you can easily follow along and figure out how to craft an effective website that you’re proud of.

Once you have a working website in place, you need to drive traffic there through social media. Creating and using most social media accounts is free so take full advantage! If you are unsure of which social networks to start out with, you’ll need to do some research about who the audience you’re trying to target with your book and figure out where they tend to congregate the most. You should have at most four social media accounts you update regularly since it will be too hard on you to keep track of anymore. You should also have a Facebook and Twitter, both are the most mainstream social media networks with the biggest activity. Other social networks you should consider joining are Pinterest, LinkedIn (the social feeds are becoming really popular), Reddit, Tumblr, and Instagram.

Once you have an account on one of the aforementioned networks, it may take some time to develop a following. You’ll want to make sure you post in the appropriate place with the right tags or category, you may be ignored if you’re in the wrong spot. The key is to post regularly and build connections with people, and not advertising your book at every moment you can. You will turn people off and they will ignore you.

Social media is one of the most biggest ways people find new books to read so it is a huge advantage for you to utilize it, but utilize it correctly.

Read more about cost effective book marketing tips at BookLife.