It is not enough to write, edit, and publish a book. If you want to make money by selling your book, then it is important to put it before many eyes and in as many hands as possible. 

Marketing is often the part that authors pay the least attention to when writing a book and is arguably the most important, at least if you are looking to make money.

In the era of self-publishing, you can self-publish and not have to rely on big corporate publishing houses before you start making money from your own book.

The internet has provided access to an innumerable amount of potential buyers for your book. You just need to know how to get your product to them.

There are several online publishing and marketing platforms such as Amazon Kindle direct publishing, Smashwords, Kobo, and Scribd among others.

This article discusses various tips for marketing your book to online buyers.

Start selling even before you are done writing:

If you already have an online follower-ship that follows your works, maybe via a blog or social media, you can start advertising your upcoming book even as you write.

Talk about an amazing chapter you just wrote, and drop hints of what your new project will be about. Build up expectations, that way, you are already selling your book to your followers even before you publish.

Get your book ranking on the publishing platform:

This approach may vary based on how the platform's sale algorithm works. 

But for most platforms like Amazon, the more ratings and reviews a book has, the higher it ranks in its genre and best-selling categories.

To achieve this, you will need the help of your network; your family, friends, colleagues, clients, followers, etc.

Before your book is launched, you could get them to pre-order just right before this will count as sales for your book and will increase its ranking.

You should also send them a sample PDF or excerpt to go through, and on the day of the launch, have them leave an honest review and rating of the book. 

This will also serve to increase the ranking of your book and increase its visibility to other potential buyers.

This method is very potent but will require you constantly urge, persuade, remind and follow up on the people in your network to do your bidding.

Have a verifiable online presence:

Many times when a potential buyer comes across your book online, and they are not familiar with you or your work, they are going to immediately type your name on their keyboard to do some digging on the author first before proceeding to purchase.

So make sure you are visible online and have a professional website or blog where readers can find your author profile and access some of your other works. 

Your blog may also contain educational and fun content in the writing niche; discuss writing tools, for example, the best keyboards for writing, your favorite writing apps to use, and so on.

You may also give out free writing resources.

Employ social media maximally for your advertisement:

Social media is technology's great gift to humanity this century. In the blink of an eye, you can reach an audience in countries a million miles away from you.

You could run paid advertisements for your book on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and others to get it in front of more eyes.

Ensure that the content of the advertisement is inviting and capable of capturing attention, not just another ‘ad' to be skipped or scrolled past. Be sure to have an interesting book cover.

You can also contact social media influencers to run adverts for your book on their pages.

Appear on Book podcasts and channels:

Another way to raise awareness and potentially market your book is to get involved with the online book community.

Appear on prominent book podcasts or YouTube channels to discuss your book, you could release teasers and excerpts without putting out too much that they lose interest. 

Build the hype around it, release a book cover, and get the viewers or listeners excited for the book. 

Remember to always leave a link for your book's pre-order or purchase page, depending on whether it's before or after your online book launch.

Organize post-purchase engagements.

Create a platform to have an interactive session with those that have bought your book.

It could be in the form of a question and answer format on Twitter, Instagram Live, or similar outlets where you can discuss the book with them. They can ask questions about the book, your writing process, etc.

Ensure to do this with a hashtag with your book title to help get it trending; this will further increase publicity for the book. Remember to plug in the link to purchase your book always.

Conclusion

Writing a book is one of the ways by which you can fulfill your passion and diversify your income streams. 

Many of these marketing strategies discussed above will cost some time and money, but if they are executed effectively, the rewards will be reaped a thousand times over.