Guerrilla Marketing for Authors: How To Market Your Book When You're Broke

Saturday Writing Notes | Advice and prompts for new authors

Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

I remember while I was writing my first book a seasoned author shared with me, “Writing your book is the easy part, selling it is the hard part.” And boy, were they right! As a self published author, I quickly learned that traditional marketing wasn’t going to work for me and my budget of zero dollars. I had used every dollar that I had to publish my book and I had to make that money back because my then husband was not impressed with my new hobby and that I had ended my seven year career as a photographer to now write books. I didn’t have a big marketing budget, publicists were expensive as hell to work with (and still are), and my marketing team consisted of just me - a team of one telling the world they needed to buy and read this book.

It was 2007 and social media was in its infancy stages. Most people were apprehensive about using it, unlike today. My only option was to use what they call guerrilla marketing - non-conventional advertising methods and techniques.

So I guess you’re wondering how did a no name author make a name for herself in the publishing industry and become a best selling author. Here are a few guerrilla marketing methods that helped me: