Christina Kaye
You’ve poured your heart and soul into your book, and you want to share it with as many readers as possible.
But if you’re like most authors, you feel stuck every time you try to think “outside the box” and come up with ideas for ways to spread the word about your book.
Sound about right?
Well, believe it or not, there are tons of ways you can and should promote yourself, your brand, and your book from collaborations to publicity to attending events and so much more.
But one super effective strategy I see authors overlooking more often than not is getting their books listed on websites where readers frequently look for books just like yours.
So, in this post, I’m going to help you find websites where you can list and promote your book for free or low fees and how to increase your chances of nailing those features.
Make sure your book is ready to share with the world first!
I could teach you all day long every effective book marketing strategy and share all my best tips, and if you followed what I shared with you, you’d likely see higher book sales during launch week than you thought possible.
But if your book is not really ready for readers, then once those readers get your book into their pretty paws, read it, and realize it has major flaws and wasn’t ready for the market quite yet, guess what would happen?
Not only would sales almost immediately drop (and drastically so), you would be at an alarmingly high risk of receiving less than pleasant ratings and reviews.
And that, my dear author friend, can kill your career before it even takes off!
So, make sure you hire professionals and invest in their expertise, especially book editors and book cover designers.
Also, there are three things I refer to as “The Three Gateways” we must have locked down to convert Amazon scrollers to buyers and readers, and they are:
If these three “Gateways” are not locked down, you’ll lose readers before they even think about putting your book inn their cart, let alone buying it or reading it.
And while readers can be forgiving of the occasional typo (found even in Stephen King’s books), if your book is not professionally edited by an experienced and highly skilled editor and that is blatantly obvious to readers, they will share their displeasure in their ratings and reviews.
Not to mention, many of these types of websites that allow book promotion will clearly say in their guidelines that they reserve the right to refuse to list any book based on quality, cover design, and other factors!
Write a simple but effective email pitch to send each website host!
Again, preparation is key!
Even if you reach out to tons of great websites and submit your book for listing, if your email pitch is either a generic, copy and paste job or falls flat and fails to impress, none of your efforts will matter.
The website hosts, like those I’m about to list for you, receive tons of pitches daily from authors hoping to promote their books on their sites.
Your pitch must stand out, grab their attention, and make them feel like fools if they were to choose not to list your book.
So, before you begin the process of submitting to these website hosts, take a moment to write a well-thought-out pitch email template you can personalize for each host you pitch.
I’ve taken the liberty of providing you with an example pitch email template, which you can copy and paste into a Word doc, then edit to make it your own.
Here’s that template:
Hey, there, NAME OF HOST (or “HOST OF X WEBSITE”)!
I love your website, and I’ve found many great reads from your listings. Specifically, I recently found and loved TITLE OF AN EXAMPLE BOOK! Thank you for what you do to support indie authors. It is incredibly thoughtful and helpful.
My name is FULL NAME/PEN NAME, and I have a book coming out on LAUNCH LIVE DATE called, BOOK’S TITLE. It’s a YOUNG ADULT/ADULT/NEW ADULT, GENRE book/novel featuring (talk a bit about the key features of your book, like “mermaids and pirates set on a ship sailing the Northern Sea in 1254 seeking a buried treasure.”
I’ve attached my Media One Sheet for your review, which gives you all the relevant information about my book, and I hope you’ll consider listing it on your website, preferably during the period of (LAUNCH WEEK DATES).
I look forward to hearing your decision, and in the meantime, keep up the amazing work you’re doing to support indie authors and help us connect with readers everywhere, so we can share our books with the world!
SIGN OFF WITH YOUR NAME.
Be sure you personalize that first line of every email pitch you send.
If you recognize any books listed on their site already, all the better, and you should mention that book when personalizing.
If not, I don’t recommend being dishonest, so you might want to download (even on Kindle) at least one book in your genre you find listed on their site and then use that after you read it and love it, so you can honestly compliment them on their efforts.
And of course, be sure to support that author by leaving them an amazing but honest review, and follow them on social media to help them grow their readership following.
Create your Media One Sheet to send with every pitch!
What’s a Media One Sheet?
It’s a super important PDF document all authors must have prepared and ready to send out when pitching their books to sites like these, to get featured in the media, to get your books listed in bookstores, etc., and any other type of pitch you send as part of your marketing campaign.
It features all the pertinent information anyone would need to learn about your book in one concise PDF document, and you can create it easily and for free in Canva!
It looks like this.
Better yet, use my Media One Sheet Canva Template, which you can FIND HERE in my Etsy shop.
All you have to do is open the page you download after purchasing (for less than $5), create your own copy in your Canva account (which you can access FREE HERE for 30 days), and make it your own by adding your own cover, headshot, and relevant information.
Save the final version as a PDF to your computer file and always attach it to every pitch email you send moving forward.
Find websites that feature books by indie authors!
I never recommend you pay more than a nominal, small fee to list your books on any websites.
And honestly, in my 15 years of industry experience, I’ve rarely found “book tours” or similar online launch parties to be worth all the time and effort you’ll put into them.
Finding websites like those I’m about to list for you to get you started and having your books listed in places like these is just as effective, if not more so, and it requires way less of your valuable time.
This is not an exhaustive list of websites, but I’ve given you some of my favorite sites for this purpose, and it’s a great place to get started.
Here are my top choices for websites where you can promote your book for free or a very small fee:
LibraryThing.com: a free, library quality catalogue to track reading progress and your whole library
BargainBooksy.com: with over 725k users, a listing here could drastically drive sales to your book
BookSends.com: sends email alerts to users with great deals on books like yours
ManyBooks.net: list your book if on 50% sale or more (great for pre-order promos)
BooksButterfly.com: guarantees book sales of 50+ for each listing period
TheFussyLibrarian.com: one of the more popular book listing sites for e-books
BookRaid.com: list your free and half-priced books so readers can find you easily
BookAdrenaline.com: sends out daily email alerts with limited-time free and discount books
BookDealio.com: features your limited-time discount and free book offers for e-books
FreeBooksy.com: allows readers to discovery your eBooks via their email inbox
I’ve also prepared a PDF listing of many more listing sites for you, which you can download for FREE BY CLICKING HERE!
Create a spreadsheet and track all your website submissions!
Before you dive into pitching these sites, I highly recommend you create a simple spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets.
Create columns with these headings:
- Name Of Site
- Link To Site
- Name Of Host
- Email/Online Form Link
- Submitted Date
- Response (With Drop-Down Options)
- Uploaded Date
- Notes
Here’s how a spreadsheet like this may look.
It’s always important to track all types of pitches and submissions you put out there, so you don’t lost track and also so you can make note of which sites seem to work the best for future reference.
Conclusion
Once you have your spreadsheet completed, add the sites above and those in the free document I’ve sent you, as well as any others you may find on your own, to the document.
And then, you’re free to begin pitching your book to websites, so you can get even more exposure on your book during launch week and beyond!
Finally, be sure to pay close attention to each site’s guidelines for submission.
Some may ask for you to email them, and in those cases, use my pitch template and paste it into emails you send, but be sure to personalize before sending and change the name ALWAYS!
But some may require you fill out the submission directly on their website using a form, and in those cases, you can also copy/paste the body of the pitch template where applicable, and if they allow you to upload anything, always upload your Media One Sheet.
With all of this in mind and your ducks all in a row, it’s time to start pitching your books to these amazing websites!
And if you have any other websites to suggest, or if you land any website listings you want to brag about, please leave a comment below.
I love hearing from you!
