You know that growing your author platform is paramount to selling more books, but did you know this goes beyond social media? Even beyond your newsletter? By gathering followers on other sites, you can expand your reach when you have a new release and special promotion. Also, the larger your author platform across multiple sites, the more doors of opportunity will be opened to you. Traditional publishers, movie and TV producers, and foreign rights agents all love to see an author with a big following.
We share a few main sites where you want to gain followers below, but first let’s discuss why it’s important and how to grow your followers.
The Importance of Gaining Followers for Growing Your Author Platform
It’s important to grow your followers across multiple sites – even when many may be the same people on each one – because doing so maximizes your touch points. You never know which email, post, or listing will be the one that leads to closing the sale. Traditionally, marketing experts say a person needs to see (be touched by) a marketing piece seven times before they really pay attention to it. In today’s fast-moving and media-bombarded world, it may even be more.
We also pay attention to certain channels and messengers more than others – as do our service providers. Some readers may open every email from Amazon and see every message on Goodreads, but emails from other senders may be overlooked or their email service sends those messages into the promo folder and the reader never sees them. Or the social media platform’s algorithms choose to share one post to more people but not another.
Most importantly, however, is that each platform that offers the ability to gain followers has a reason for doing so, and the more followers you have, the more benefits you receive in the form of promotions. For example, did you know Amazon sends out new release emails to your followers when you put up a pre-order or release a book? Did you also know that the more followers you have, the more likely they’ll invite you to share a personal message to go in that email?
Finally, follower numbers are social proof. When readers check out your profile on these sites and see that you have a lot of followers, they’ll be more likely to see what others love about you and your books.
The more places you grow your followers, the more opportunities you have to connect with readers. Be sure to offer a way for these followers to sign up for your own newsletter, so that no matter what happens to any other site, you still have your own email list as an asset.
How to Gain More Followers
You may already be thinking that it’s hard enough to grow social media followers, do I really have to do this, too? First, no, you don’t have to do anything when it comes to book marketing. You always have a choice. That said, this marketing strategy takes minimal effort – all you have to do is ask.
Won’t my readers get sick of me asking them to follow me everywhere, though? Again, no. With as many messages as they receive from all the places they’ve signed up (not just other authors but for life in general), they probably won’t even notice. Additionally, they might have seen a request before and forgot to follow-through when they really wanted to, so by asking again, you’re doing them a favor.
Some ways to ask readers to follow you:
- Include a request and links in your books’ back matter .
- Be sure there are links to each site in the header or footer of every newsletter/email you send out to your list.
- Include icons with links in your email signature.
- Highlight one site a month in your newsletter and social media, showing your readers how the site and following you benefits them, too.
Growing Your Author Platform by Gaining Followers on These Sites
Here are some sites where you can grow your followers and expand your reader base:
- CraveBooks – Grow your followers on CraveBooks to announce new releases and sales and to unlock extra promotional benefits.
- Amazon – Followers receive emails from Amazon when you add a new book for pre-order or release. Although Amazon doesn’t specify this, it’s rumored that the more followers you have, the more likely you are to be invited for special promotional opportunities, such as Daily Deals.
- Goodreads – Avid readers gather on Goodreads to track books and authors, including books they’ve read and ones they want to read. When they follow an author, they receive updates on books and other news that’s posted to Goodreads about that author. They can also see what authors other readers with similar reading preferences follow, discovering more authors to read. You can be one of those!
- BookBub – Your new release and special sales deals can go out to your followers on BookBub.
Whether self-published, indie, small press, or published by one of the big legacy publishers, today’s authors carry a lot of the weight for book marketing. Growing your author platform across various sites and marketing channels not only means more sales for current books and new releases, but also opens doors to more opportunities. It’s never too early or too late to start growing your author platform, but the best time is always right now.
