The Never Heir Book Marketing Strategy

What worked and what didn't during my book marketing campaign for The Never Heir

First, let me say that my experience will be different than yours. All opinions expressed here are my own and are meant to give guidance and not used as a rulebook for effective marketing.

Social Media: Way before The Never Heir was published, I focused on setting up my Instagram account and connecting with readers and writers there. I love reading, so posting and chatting about books with others came naturally to me. I wanted to show people "Hey! These are the types of books I like to read!" Every so often, I would drop hints about the book I was writing. I increased the number of posts I did featuring my book the closer it got to release day. The 10 days before release day, I was posting twice a day about my book. Now that The Never Heir is out, I've backed off and only post 1-2x a week about my book.

My strategy here was most writers are readers, but not all readers are writers. I don't post a lot about my writing process or share tips for writing because I don't feel like that will appeal to a lot of my followers. In my opinion, unless you want to be a writing coach/editor, marketing your account as a "writing account" is not the best way to appeal to readers or fans of your book.

Result: I've made amazing connections and friends. My account has grown (albeit slowly but surely). The majority of my physical preorders (hardback and paperbacks) ordered from my Etsy Shop were from people who knew me from Instagram, which meant a lot to me. I honestly love posting about books I'm reading and connecting with others, so this is my favorite social media platform.

Newsletter: The thought of doing a newsletter pre-book release was really intimidating because what the heck would I talk about? I didn't officially start my newsletter until 9 months from my book release. At this point, I felt like I actually had something to say. I talked about my publishing journey (which you can read in another blog post too!) and took my subscribers along for the ride to reach publication. Each time I have an announcement (release dates, book blurbs, cover reveals, etc..) I share it with my newsletter subscribers first. I value my subscribers and want them to get that perk of seeing/hearing things before anyone else.

Strategy: I send one newsletter out once a month (usually the first Friday of the month). The exception to this has been when I've had something that was time-sensitive like a sale or a giveaway and I needed to get the word out before my scheduled newsletter. I try to keep these bonus newsletters extremely short.

Result: My newsletter subscriber list has been pretty slow-going. I don't have a huge list, but I still find this valuable because these subscribers are fans who genuinely want to be updated on my book news. I'm not relying on the social media algorithm to show them a post.

Cover reveal: As an unknown author, my goal was to get my cover in front of as many people as possible. They say it takes someone seeing/hearing about your book 7 times before a reader will actually look into it further or purchase it. I strongly feel like your cover reveal is one of those 7 times. I could have asked friends to help me share it on social media (and I did!), but my friends and I hang out in the same circles. We'd just be showing the cover to the same small pool of people.

Strategy: Hire a book tour company to organize a cover reveal tour.

Results: Over 80 people (basically strangers to me) signed up through this tour company to help share my book cover on the cover reveal day. The results from the tour company were that my cover reached over 10,000 accounts on Instagram. That's way more than I could have done on my own!

Expectation vs. Reality moment: I expected to get loads of preorders and new followers on cover reveal day, but that didn't happen. I did get some preorders and maybe a few new followers, but it didn't send me skyrocketing. I still felt like this was worth it, especially as a new author. Maybe if I gain a lot of popularity, I wouldn't pay for a cover reveal in the future, but I'm still planning on it for my next book. Plus, my cover reveal day on social media was such a fun way to celebrate! Seeing all the posts come in featuring my book cover was such a surreal experience!

ARC Tours: An author can shout about their book all they want, but most people want to hear what other people think about the book (the majority of book sales come from a personal recommendation). It's also a good idea to get some reviews on Goodreads before release day. The only way to do this is give out free copies of your book.

Strategy: Hire a book tour company to organize a 4-week ARC tour a month before release day to drum up excitement about the book, get early reviews, and continue exposing potential new readers to The Never Heir.

Results: I accidently booked TWO arc tours through 2 different companies (that's a long story). Between the two tours, I ended up giving out 70 ARCs (7 physical ARCs and 63 eARCs). Each host was responsible for sharing about my book 2x during the 4-week period and leaving an honest review on social media and review sites. 1 week after release day I had 77 reviews on Goodreads, 43 reviews on a Amazon, and over 420 people had added my book to their Goodreads "to-read" shelf.

Expectation vs. reality moment: It took me a while to warm up to the idea of ARC tours. At first, I thought giving away a free copy of the book meant the loss of a future sale, but you can't think about the ARCs that way. The purpose of giving away an ARC is exposure. Readers need to learn your name. They need to get used to seeing your cover over and over. They need to learn what your book is about and if it has tropes or characters they would even be interested in. While some authors organize their own ARC tours, I wanted someone else to keep track of tour hosts and follow up with making sure people left reviews like they said they would. I'm planning to do another ARC tour for my next book.

After release tour: I was nervous that after the book came out, I wouldn't have anything to share anymore. I had exhausted myself sharing on my own account, plus sharing all the reviews and cover reveal posts coming in. It was so fun and I loved it but felt like I needed to keep the momentum going after release day. Hard truth: after release day, most people don't care anymore. That's a little exaggerated, but readers are always looking for their next great read. Once your book is read, readers are moving on and shouting about what's next on their endless TBR pile. And that's fine. I'm guilty of doing the same thing.

Strategy: Hire a tour company to organize a 7-day post-release tour. This is different from an ARC tour. Hosts weren't required to read my book. They just took the cover and created a unique post plus posted the book blurb or list of book tropes in the caption.

Results: I have mixed feelings about this tour. On the one hand, it did indeed give me something to post about after the release day buzz had died down. On the other hand, I'm not sure it led to any results. I scheduled this tour a week after release day and if I choose to do it again, I might schedule this type of tour even farther out--a month or more to remind people that it still exists.

Quick note about book tour companies: I didn't share any names of book tour companies in this post, but I did use 3 different ones for my different tours. The strategy behind it was that I wanted to reach as many eyes as possible and using different companies seemed like the best way to do that. Each tour company had a different cost and had a different way of handling their tours. Be sure to do your research before booking with a book tour company.

Amazon Countdown Deal: The Never Heir eBook is exclusive to Amazon (meaning it's not sold on any other platforms or websites), because of this, I can choose to lower the price of the eBook every 3 months as part of a "countdown deal"- you select a sale price and the duration of the promotion, then a little countdown clock appears next to your ebook listing. It alerts buyers that this book is on a limited time sale. Ebook buyers can also find your book on Amazon's "countdown deals" section of their website. This is free to set up.

Strategy: I scheduled a countdown deal during Amazon's Prime Day sale in July. I had heard some conflicting advice about doing this--some people said that books didn't do well during Prime Days because people were too busy buying other things. I did it anyway and advertised the sale in my newsletter and in some graphics I made to post on Instagram.

Results: I was so happy with the results of this sale! I got more downloads than I expected, and my eBook was #18 in the fairytale retellings category, which is a huge category on Amazon and has a lot of popular mainstream books in it. The countdown sale is a great way for readers to take a risk and try new books, so I'm hoping I got a few new fans who will continue to read the rest of the series. This cost me nothing to set up, so I will definitely do this again.

Street Team: A street team is a group of readers who want to help support you and your book. Typically this group has a private chat space (like an Instagram group chat) and whenever you have announcements or information about your book and need help spreading the word, your street team will share the information to their stories or create their own posts. They are an author's biggest cheerleader, and in my opinion, they are essential to your marketing strategy.

Strategy: create a street team to help share information/be excited about my book

Results: I created a street team application and opened spots up to my newsletter subscribers first. I honestly didn't know if anyone would even apply. I was shocked when people did! In fact, so many people applied that I didn't feel the need to open it up for the public on my Instagram page.

Each author uses their street team differently. I supplied my street team with a free ebook (they got it even before ARC readers did!) and I mailed them an envelope full of character art and a bookmark. For several months, my street team helped me share posts and reels about my book (some were things they created, some were things I created). These extra shares really helped my stuff get views on Instagram. My street team answered questions for me, helped cheer me on, and became good friends of mine. I even thanked each of them by name in the acknowledgments section of my book. You can't do all the work yourself and it was so nice to have the extra help.

Tik-Tok: I created a TT account a month or so before release day. Honestly, I don't love it over there. I feel like it's hard to create connections and build relationships.

Strategy: Post videos to TT about my book to reach a new audience.

Results: I know I've gained a few new readers from posting about my book, but it's been exhausting creating new content. I have pretty low views on most of my videos (around 200-300 usually) but I tell myself, maybe those are new people who are discovering The Never Heir for the first time. I probably need to change up my video style, but I just haven't had the time.

Finally, the biggest takeaway I want authors to get out of this is: You have to be your own biggest cheerleader! No one will love your book as much as you do, and that excitement should show up in your social media feed and stories. There's definitely a careful balance of being too salesy and turning readers (and your current followers) off, and I try finding new and creative ways to talk about my book. I have to remind myself all the time- no one can buy your book if they don't know about it. So, while you might feel like you're being annoying and repetitive, there are people out there finding your book for the first time, and it's all new information to them.

About the author: Courtney Millecam is a fantasy author who writes books about magic and kissing. She loves connecting with other readers and writers. You can find her on Instagram @CourtMillecam