#2 How Do I start with Book Marketing?

In episode #1 of Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er) we looked at what marketing is, what the difference is between marketing and selling and how you are actually serving your readers, and not annoying them, by marketing yourself and your writing. If you listened to that episode, you’ll know that the definition of marketing is simply connecting with people who like the same things you do.

If you haven’t listened to that episode, take some time to do so because understanding what marketing is is essential to cultivating a positive mindset toward the tasks you’ll be doing when marketing. It can make the difference between you feeling uncomfortable and hating every minute of it to you actually looking forward to it and having fun.

I promise, that’s true.

Now today, we’ll be focusing on three practical steps you can take to start your marketing journey. These three steps are important because they define the base of your marketing strategy. But before we jump in, I’d like to talk about how important it is to have this base, and why, before you begin marketing.

Marketing children’s and young adult books

If you’re a children’s author who is new to marketing, it can become very overwhelming, very quickly. Why? Because the kidlit community is a very engaged one on social media and there are a lot of websites, organisations, contests, groups and memberships where everyone congregates and shares information. It’s also a small community and if you have been a part of it for a while, you’ll start to recognise names and get to know other authors fairly quickly.

While it’s great to have such a cosy community of like-minded people to speak to and learn from, everyone in that community is at a different place in their author journey. What’s working in terms of marketing for one person may not work for another because of the different children’s book categories they write for (one may write middle-grade while the other writes picture books, for example), if they write nonfiction as opposed to fiction, if they’re traditionally published or self-published and if they’re well-known or a newbie… and because of all these variables you can’t blindly follow what someone else is doing to market themselves and their book because you see that what they’re doing is working well for them and hope that it will work for too.

So, you need a base that is tailored to you, the category of kidlit you write in and your specific journey. What does this base look like? Well, it involves taking the three practical steps we’ll be talking about in this episode and applying them to yourself without looking at all the things that all the other people out there are doing.

Defining your ideal target audience in kidlit

The first step in your marketing strategy is to define who you’ll be speaking to when you market your books. In kidlit, you have to remember that children don’t buy their books – their parents, teachers and librarians do. So, basically you have two groups of people in your target audience to keep in mind compared to other authors;

• your ideal customer who are the adults in your readers’ lives and
• your ideal reader who are the children reading your books.

This can be different in young adult fiction though, especially the upper end of the category where readers are 16 or 17, and who might be buying their own books, making them both your ideal customer and reader. So, all children’s authors won’t be speaking to the same customers when they market their work but they’ll all be asking themselves the same questions to define who their ideal customer or reader is.

You need to get down and dirty with this first step. It’s not enough to have a vague idea of who your ideal customer is because then you’d only have a vague idea of what to say to them. Imagine that you’re at a party with someone the host has carefully chosen to introduce to you because they enjoy the same sports as you and have the same breed of dog as you. And then the host leaves you together. What do you do? I know what I’d do… I’d ask about their dog. That’s me! I have loads of stories to tell about my Golden Retriever and I know that I can hold up my end of the conversation for hours if I have to talk about her. I also know that if this person is anything like me, they’d want to speak for hours about their Goldie too. And if they don’t, well, then I have our love of a shared sport to fall back on.

But now imagine that your host absentmindedly introduces you to someone who just happens to be passing by without telling you anything about that person, other than their name. What do you do? Maybe you ask how they know the host. Or you stand there awkwardly and wait for them to say something. Then you both start talking at the same time and then both stop and invite the other to continue…ugh. Awkward. It’s tough trying to connect with someone you know nothing about, isn’t it?

So, how do you define your ideal reader and customer? With kidlit, you automatically know the age range of your ideal reader because it depends on the category of book you’ve chosen to write:

• board books (0-2)
• picture books (3-8)
• chapter books (6-9)
• middle-grade (8-12)
• young adult (13-17)

But here’s the thing: you still need to know their exact age within that category because there’s a vast developmental and cognitive difference between a three-year-old and an eight-year old who both fall into the picture book category, for example. Then, you need to know how they identify, what they like, what they don’t like, what sports they prefer, what their hobbies are etc. And once you have a handle on your ideal reader, then you have to think about the gatekeeper they’re attached to which is your ideal customer. While a specific child might love the idea of your book, you also need to know who their parent, teacher or librarian is.

• What’s important to them when choosing a book for your ideal reader?
• Are they looking for educational or entertainment value?
• Do they think children need to be challenged or mollycoddled?
• How do they choose books to buy – do they ask the child in their lives what they want or do they decide for themselves?

Choosing your social media platform for book marketing

Once you’ve defined who your ideal reader and customer is, your second step is to think about the social media platform you’ll be using to connect to that customer. As a kidlit author, the chances are you won’t be speaking directly to the children reading your books on social media; you’ll be speaking to their parents, teachers or librarians. So, you need to find out where these people spend their time online.

• Do parents prefer X or Facebook?
• Do they watch TikTok videos or Instagram reels?
• Are librarians fans of Bookstagram or BookTok?

Once you’ve found them online, you’re golden, right? Hmm, not yet. Why? Because you have to ask yourself whether the platform they hang out on is one you’ll be comfortable marketing on. If you find that your ideal customer is mostly on TikTok but you don’t enjoy the platform, then you need to choose one you do enjoy. That may sound counterintuitive but if you have fun on Instagram and enjoy your marketing there, your message will shine brighter and for longer and will make more of an impact and be more successful with a smaller audience than if you market to a bigger audience on TikTok with a dull, half-hearted message that doesn’t engage anyone.

What is your book marketing goal?

Last, the third step in your marketing strategy base is you have to be very clear about what your goal is in marketing. Why are you marketing? Is it to sell as many books as possible in a year? How many books does that mean? Maybe selling 500 books in twelve months is important to you? Or maybe you don’t want to sell anything yet because you’re still writing your book, but you want to start building an audience? How many followers would you like to get on your chosen social media platform? And how many subscribers do you want on your e-mail list… Why is it important to define your goal? Well, quite simply if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how are you going to know when you get there? How will you measure the progress you’ve made and how will you know what your next step needs to be?

The three steps to creating a successful book marketing strategy

So, to sum up, the reason you need to take these three steps seriously is because they form the base of your marketing strategy. They’ll define who you need to be speaking to, where and why. Without defining these steps, you’ll be wandering aimlessly speaking to everyone everywhere and getting nowhere. The three steps are:

• Figure out who your ideal reader and customer is
• Which social media platform you’ll be using to connect with your ideal customer
• What your goal is in marketing to your ideal customer

Getting started with book marketing

And now, it’s time for your marketing mission, if you choose to accept it:

1. Take a pen and paper and think about who your ideal reader and customer are. You need to do this for the children who’ll be reading your books and for the adults who’ll be buying them for those children. This is easier to do if you can imagine one specific person. What do they look like? What’s their name?
2. Then, if you don’t already know, do some research on social media and choose just one platform to focus on. Make the choice today.
3. Last, get very honest with yourself about your goals. You need to know what you’re aiming for, so write it down in a clear sentence. Don’t be shy – if you want to become the go-to name for middle-grade verse novels, write it down and shoot for the stars.

Links

• Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er)