3 | Book marketing secrets
1. Run the cheapest Goodreads giveaways on repeat, alternating ebook and print. Skip the upgraded tiers; the basic package is roughly $100–140. You can’t run an ebook and a print giveaway at the same time, so alternate them, up to about two a month.
- Ebook: Amazon sends the 100 copies, and right now they seem to count toward Kindle sales rank. Each round also brings in a few Goodreads reviews.
- Print: you get winners’ addresses and ship the books yourself, so you can tuck in a personal note. That makes it a more direct way to get reviews.
- Keep whichever format is producing reviews.
2. “What would you do to ensure book marketing failure?”
A recent question a client asked me. My response:
Don’t build 4–5 systems that run every month for two years. The fastest way to fail is “random acts of marketing.”
Instead…pick channels that move books on a schedule and put a system behind each one. Examples:
Send a copy to every new client.
Give partners a box of books to hand out.
Keep Goodreads giveaways running on autopilot.
When you ask readers for reviews, send them your direct Amazon review link, not a general “please leave a review.”
3. Make your website your first AI agent.
Authors hate updating their websites, and it’s the one task where the AI knows more than they do. Agents like Grokbot, Claude Code or Codex can log into WordPress or plain HTML and make changes from a plain-English request. This week’s podcast guest, Thomas Umstattd Jr., has a step-by-step tutorial for updating your author website with an AI agent in the useful links below.
