If you are self-publishing, it is you who is ultimately responsible for growing your audience, which means that you have to do all of the marketing yourself. I already have blog posts about this here and here, but what if you are a bit more ambitious? You may well decide to go global with your book, which is becoming more and more possible as time goes on.
There are quite a few special tactics you can use for this kind of marketing, which we will take a look at in this blog post. However, we will start by considering what the benefits of global marketing are for you – why you would want to do this.
Why Market Your Book Globally?
Naturally, the main benefit to you of marketing your book globally is the increased readership and sales that come with this. Having readers from different countries can also help you as an author, giving you a new perspective on your book. You can then keep this in mind for future writing.
Not only do more sales mean more profits for you, but they also bring recognition of your work on a greater level. Maybe your book will be eligible for some awards in other countries, especially those aimed at foreign authors. These are an excellent marketing opportunity in themselves, as well as recognising your achievement.
How Do You Market Your Book Globally?
The first thing to do is decide which countries you will be targeting. There are several factors that will influence your decision here, one of the most important being language. Translation is expensive and not always that easy to get right, so you may well decide to stick to the original language for now and work from there, dealing with additional languages as necessary further down the line.
Another point to think about is the culture in different countries. Your book will probably not be suited to all of these and what is popular in your own country may not be elsewhere. There are also other country-specific questions you should ask, such as what the current book market is like there. If books are not selling anyway, there is no point going to the time and expense of getting your book ready for sale.
Remember that each country is different and will need a different approach, from each other as well as the country you originally published in. Taking every country as an individual means that you can create a unique, tailored plan for each one and give your book a better chance of selling well.
This need for creating a new publishing and marketing plan for each country means that it is best to just target one country at a time so that you can give it your full attention. Spend some time researching your chosen country.
Take time to consider what is selling well there and what authors and genres are currently popular. How does your book fit into this market? Is it in one of the popular genres, while still bringing something new to the table? What sort of marketing works well in this country? Try to build your sales plan around all of these things and your book should do well in your chosen market.
Once you have got your publishing plan, implemented it and your book has started selling, you can then try selling your book in another country. This will require you to start from scratch at the research stage and build a new plan around the second country before you release your book, then repeat this process with each extra country you will be selling your book in.
Make sure you still keep checking back in your original countries as you expand, so you don’t keep using a marketing plan from years ago. Update these as necessary, taking advantage of changes in the market to release new books or update old ones.
One thing to pay particular attention to is what sellers you will be using. If you already have an Amazon account, it is easy to just transfer your book to the appropriate version for your chosen country, so this is a good place to start. However, consider what the bookselling market is actually like in this country. Amazon (or other big sellers) might not have that much of the market, so you will need to research what other, smaller sellers there are that you can work with to distribute your book.
You will also need to think about what prices you will use. You can’t simply use the exchange rate to work out what your book would cost in the foreign country; instead, you need to do a bit more research. Check what price other books in your genre are being sold for and determine what cost is considered reasonable for a book in this country.
Wrapping Up
I hope that this helps you get started on some global marketing! In my next blog post, we will be looking at how to deal with any translation required and how to engage with your new audience, so come back in two weeks for that.
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