How Can You Promote Books Without A Website Or Facebook?

How much of your valuable writing time are you wasting on social media and your blog?

For a lot of authors, the answer is very often, far, far too much.

Would you prefer to be writing books instead of writing Facebook and Twitter posts every day?

It is good advice to promote your books from your blog but you need a lot of traffic for it to be effective. No matter how many blog posts you write, if no one reads them it’s not going to help in selling your books.

The aim of book promotion for any author is to get a potential reader to go to their books on Amazon, Apple or B&N and buy a copy.

So is there a way to forget about social networks, your Facebook page and your blog and still get book sales? Yes, and it’s easier than you think.

The answer is to use other people’s websites, blogs, mailing lists and social networks, and let them do all the hard work for you.

Guest blogging is long term and has huge advantages

Article writing for guest posting can increase your book sales potential enormously. But you need to be very selective. You want to get your articles published on high ranking websites that have a lot of regular visitors.

You could dream of getting an opinion article published in the New York Times, but let’s get realistic.

It’s easy to find sites that have a high Google or Alexa ranking. Go to Statshow, which is a free site ranking tool. Start by entering your blog or website and check it’s current ranking.

Then enter a few of the well-known writing, publishing and book sites to check their rank. What you are looking for are sites that rank lower than 500,000. There are billions of sites on the Internet, so a lower number means a higher rank.

Now you need to check each site to see if they accept guest writers. You can usually find this in the footer of a website and it is often labelled as Write For Us.

You can also check recent posts on a site and see if there are articles by guest writers. If there are, you could use the contact page to enquire.

Popular sites that accept guest articles usually have certain guidelines you need to check. But in general, they are looking for well-written and informative articles of more than 1,000 words.

So where’s the benefit for you in all this hard work?

Articles on top ranking sites will get indexed by Google and Bing and attract readers to your article. But not just for a week or two after your article is published. Organic search traffic will continue to attract readers to your article for a very long time. For years in some cases.

Not only that. Social sharing on popular sites can dramatically increase your article reads. One of our guest writers gained over 1,000 social media shares on one article.

When you have an article published by a top site, you gain access to its marketing tools. For example, email subscribers, social media followers and directory listings.

In other words, a lot more eyes than you are probably getting on your blog.

And what about marketing my books?

Guest articles almost always offer a byline and a short bio at the end of an article.

Write your bio as your author pitch, and use the links you are offered in the byline and bio.

You can use these to add a link to your Amazon author page, or to your author profile and books on the Bookbub dashboard. You could use a direct link to one of your books, or use a universal book link.

Your content doesn’t need to relate to your books or writing, so you are free to write articles on almost any topic. But your content and writing need to be top class.

Another advantage is that you don’t need to write a lot of articles. One terrific article that ranks well can keep working for you for ages and ages in promoting your books.

Set yourself a target of guest posting just once a month. It should be enough to get you a lot of new potential readers and book buyers.

Tips for great guest blogging

Don’t restrict yourself to book and writing blogs. You can write about anything so consider travel, news, beauty, fashion or even gardening websites.

Write content that is engaging, informative, entertaining and easy to read. Above all else, make sure your grammar is impeccable.

I would recommend using Grammarly to make sure your writing is perfect, and Hemingway to check your reading ease.

Of course, you can use your articles to link back to your website, blog or social media channels. But if you want to go directly to your potential readers and save time, send them to straight to your books.

Book promotion websites will do all the work for you

You have tried posting your book on your Twitter and Instagram accounts. You used Facebook Ads and watched its expensive pay-per-clicks eat away your budget. If you are in Amazon KDP Select, Amazon Ads can be very expensive and underperforming.

How much time do you spend trying to find free ways to promote your books? If you only have a small social media footprint, are you driving your connections crazy with your book posts?

The key to effective book promotion is to get your message out to as many people as possible. Online conversion rates are very low. This means you need thousands upon thousands of people to see your book to gain book sales.

The best way to gain access to this many people is to use a professional book promotion service. In fact, using two or three is advisable.

Prices for these services cover a wide range. From a buck or two for a few Tweets up to thousands of dollars for a Bookbub deal.

The key is to find services that fit your needs and your budget. Reedsy has a comprehensive list of book promotion services so it’s a good place to start your research.

If your goal is to save time, look for promotion sites that can do all the grunt work for you. Also, check to make sure you are getting very good reach for your money.

Our sister site Whizbuzz Books offers a one-year book promotion service at a very realistic price, so it might be one option for you.

Your main consideration is your budget. Don’t spend more than you can afford, so buy wisely. Make your decision based on how many people your promotions can potentially reach for the money you plan to invest.

You should also check how long a promotion service has been in business and be confident that it will deliver in full on what it says it will do.

The advantage of paying for reliable book marketing is that once you have arranged it, you can get on with what you do best.

Writing books.

Conclusion

Can you promote books without social media, a blog and a website?

If you combine guest blogging with selected book promotion, you certainly can. You will have much more writing time and spend far less time online.

Leave it to your articles and promotional links to do the work for you.

Then while you are writing, book buyers will be busily clicking your book links.