You want great stuff, for free! So here it is, the Self-Publisher’s Book Marketing Resources list. Well, mostly free. A girl’s gotta make a living.
Start Here with these Articles on Book Marketing:
In 2013, this started as an author blog, then it was about experiments in book marketing, then tips about book writing. Since travelling the realms of book design, book editing, book authoring, and reviewing, I seem to have had a lot to say! Here are some starter posts.
Start your own Author Blog – made in 2018, this will help you run through the decisions from an experiential point of view. I now use Hostinger. Busy people might decide to use a host/maintenance person or go with SquareSpace, which hosts the website for you and is still fast.
Author Newsletters Sell Books (2025) and Email Marketing Options, Ways to Use, and Costs (2023) – delve into and come to love email newsletters and autoresponders, with many tips on growing your list.
How Guest Posting Helps You to Market Your Books and Influential Author: Contributing Articles Guide (2024) – you know you should write articles to spread your wings of publicity, so these will help you with where to start.
Author Brand Cheat Sheet – help to set up a style guide.
Using Videos for Book Promotion (blog)
Marketing Resources: Why a Media Kit or Page is Needed
A media kit is a good idea to have for an author, as is a book one-sheet for attaching to your media release. Start with the free media kit template, or just have a browse on Canva in their media kit sections. They are all for influencers, so I made some into author media kits and put them into a package for other similar nonfiction authors. I call it the Author Presence plan, over at Business Author Tools, which comes with email promotion support too.
A media page on your website with your latest ‘media mentions’ and interviews is a good alternative, especially if you are trying to get onto a popular podcast or TV segment. TV and magazine editors search for this.
Book Publicity Sheet
You are launching a book soon, so you’ll also need a book one-sheet (A4, printable) to explain to all those interested what your book’s about, what your short bio is, where to buy it and what price it is.
–> Important Document – Book One-Sheet
Author brand is important too. I wrote a book on that, called My Personal Brand. The related blog posts number aplenty, here is a favourite one personal brand cheat sheet, when I first realised you could use Canva to do your brand colours, type and imagery as a mood board.
Expectations in Publishing for ROI
Return on Investment is key to our livelihood, both as a budding author and in our coaching, career, or otherwise. Sometimes that return can be in terms of opportunities opened to you afforded by a topical nonfiction book, which also should be valued.
As profit is often a focus on my writing, I have many themes on this. The latest book, Set Up as a Micro Publisher, is all about putting out books profitably over time, with marketing tips.
You may want to consider potential royalties as a first-time author. It’s no good having false dreams of it raining money, thanks to those advertisements proclaiming certain passive income.
Do it Yourself Publishing
I want you to avoid the vanity press and do your own publishing. Many of those places call themselves publishers, or hint that paying for private hybrid publishing could lead to paid publishing — which is far from true.
The first post I wrote on this was in 2014: The 360-degree view of self-publishing. And yet, novice authors are still getting snowed and swindled to this day. That’s why there’s a chapter on Publishing Myths and Assumptions in my book mentioned above.
Why Choose Kindle Select is something many Amazon-first ebook authors want to know. Kindle Select lets you put your ebook into ‘Kindle Unlimited’, the monthly offering, and enables Countdown Deals and Free 5-day eBook once every 90 days. It is an exclusionary decision.
To show you it’s worldwide, in 2022 the The Writers Guild of Great Britain & ASA came out with a report investigating hybrid (paid for) publishing services, which I summarise in Is Hybrid Publishing Profiteering? The report also talks about how few novice authors earn anything and the average losses.
However, if I can do it and create a fun sideline, if not highly profitable at least paying for itself, then you can too. The only thing you might not be able to learn is doing your own book design/typesetting (with Adobe InDesign or perhaps Apple Pages). KDP Print offer to convert it, also you can use other tools, but there is a lot more to do with a non-fiction instructional book that can’t be achieved well with these free ways.
Keeping it Safe and Legal
When doing it yourself, it’s vitally important not to get sued – as you don’t have the big publisher to step in. That’s why I dedicate a section to legal issues in my course and give some free pointers about what’s fair use and copyright laws in Australia in the post: ‘Don’t get sued after writing a book‘. In answer to the nob who Googled, can you sue someone for writing a book about you? No, not unless you’re, say, a doctor and they defamed you by saying ill about your reputation and that tarnished your career. Hurty-wurt your feelings? No.
Self-Publishing FAQs & Mini Site
This hidden underground of my website covers some basic information on production, self-publishing processes, platforms, editing, etc but things get out of date pretty fast. So bear that in mind.
Paid Book Publishing Course
Including pre-launch marketing advice, see my self-publishing course for Australians (comprehensive). Now on this site for greater bonuses.
In the Book Creation Self-Publish course, I give users a separate (Notion) ‘Writer Resources’ page, which is super easy to go back to, time after time. There are magazine editor suggestions, book review sites, how to do Goodreads Author, how to do Press Releases, etc. I also send them a handy Mega Book Planning workbook, which includes planning for a course.
It includes information for pros and cons of book printing, KDP, IngramSpark, and on-screen tutorials.
Book Trailers and Video Content
Should you pay for a book trailer to be made? For most of us: no, you should just use one of the many tools, such as InVideo (fairly complex timeline edits) or Canva (simpler, edit in scenes). It doesn’t have to be A1 quality. You can even titivate a verbal summary as you leaf through your book on a (portrait) mobile video.
Entrepreneurs like to make a splash – so they could get a videographer to film a book video ‘trailer’ with some colour and movement from an event, to build excitement in their book launch. NKCreative‘s videography service is from $430 (2 hour-minimum) + editing ($150).
Five ways to use Video promotions to promote your books are in this blog post.
Photography is something I suggest most nonfiction authors get done to look professional. It also helps with websites, social media posts, etc. Two great photographers are: Leoni Bolt Photography (Brendale, in Brisbane) and Candice Epthorp Photography (Redcliffe, Qld). Leoni did my author photos and I thank her for helping me get over myself and just get them done
How-to Guides for Marketing Books
How to use Pinterest: Step-by-Step Guide – video by Business Station. I love using Pinterest for web content bookmarking, as it’s so easy with the Pinterest extension and a few named boards.
Facebook Ads Guide for Authors – page by Place-it.net. If you’re so keen as to need a guide to Facebook Ads, aka Meta, aka making Zuckerberg richer.
Amazon Ads Guide for Authors – video by Kindlepreneur. You are going to need more than a guide but probably a course to do it right. Set those bids right and monitor – but don’t forget that more profit is made on the back-end of a business. There are other ways to outsource your ads, and I suggest these in my book Set Up as a Micro Publisher, which you’re probably sick of hearing about by now.