In the crowded realm of fantasy literature, where epic sagas often span thousands of pages and political intrigue dominate the narrative…
If you’re into worldbuilding, here’s a cool article breaking down the mythic layers of Globiuz — a fantasy setting full of ancient empires, cultural clashes, and non‑human civilizations that feel genuinely lived‑in.It’s compact fantasy with surprisingly heavy themes beneath the surface.
In December, we wrote an essay about how small presses still fight the good fight for risky literary fiction, even as the conglomerated Big Five publishers abandon it. In a time when companies like Meta steal books to build generative AI, then claim that individual books “are no different from noise” in terms of their contribution to AI, defending wild fiction matters more than ever. Many readers reached out to us: after too-often plunking down $30 for a well-reviewed but ultimately disappointing new release, they were clamoring for better options. If small and independent presses offered fresher, more challenging books, how could they find and read them?
It’s a more difficult question to answer than you might expect.
Books navigate a long, complex journey before they appear on bookstore shelves, if they ever do. Most people still read books as physical objects, meaning they have to be warehoused and shipped. The Big Five have their own distribution centers, but most small presses are distributed by Ingram, a conglomerate superpower in its own right. (One small press editor we spoke to described it as “The Death Star.”) Ingram’s only other real competitor is Independent Publishers Group (IPG), a distributor for small and independent presses.
There’s a romantic vision that a book becomes a hit when readers stumble upon it, en masse, and fall in love. But in the real world, most readers hear about a book from a friend, social media, or a book review, then search for it at their local bookstore or Barnes & Noble or Amazon. If it’s not there, they’re not reading it.
Before you can do any book marketing, you have to know your book's audience. Get tips on how to find and attract your book's audience.
From the useful and interesting blog at Ingram Spark.
When some authors begin the writing process, they do so with their target audience in mind and a marketing plan in place. This allows them to focus on creating and promoting the right content. Even before you begin writing, you should first be aware of what you are trying to accomplish by writing. You should also know what message you are trying to promote, who the message is for, and how the reader will benefit from reading your book. If your goal is to attract as many readers as possible in order to sell your book, here are six tips to help.
1. Who is Your Most Likely Book Audience?
Think about who would be interested in the content of your book. Visualize who they are, and what they look like. Your author brand such as your book cover, writing style, font size, title metadata, and other components will help dictate who your audience is by attracting certain people, so you should use these elements to define who your primary audience will be. When your audience feels as if you are speaking to them, you are more likely to convert them into customers.
2. Expand Your Target Audience
It’s also important to consider secondary markets. Secondary markets are those that are not the most obvious, but who would also be interested in your book. For example, a children’s book written to help kids manage anger would have a primary audience of children, and a secondary audience of parents, educators, therapists, or others working with children. As tempting as it might be to think the parent would be your primary book audience (children don't usually buy their own books), avoid overthinking this process and focus in on who will be reading the book.
Try to come up with at least five markets for your book—a primary market and four secondary markets. To help you discover other secondary markets, you can start in reverse with a broad audience and then narrow it down.
3. Identify Books That are Similar to Yours
Take the time to research other books that would be in the same category, genre, or niche. Search for ‘established’ and ‘top-selling’ books within the category and make a list of the titles and authors. Once you recognize who your competition is, it may be easier for you to pinpoint your potential readers because chances are, you share the same target audience.
4. Look at Social Media
Now that you have identified the established and top-selling books within your genre, look at who is following them on social media. Don’t be surprised how much information can be gained by looking at the interactions and posts. Keep an eye out for the demographics, trends, and other habits that might not be obvious, but can provide a tremendous amount of useful information.
Another strategy for social media is to connect with groups and online communities that have shared interests. Run a search on Facebook for groups who are interested in books similar to yours. Look for followers for your book’s genre on Twitter by searching for tweets that contain related hashtags. Carve out some time each day to work on these strategies.
5. Find Other Channels
A few simple Google searches will direct you to online communities, blogs, and networks where your target audience is already engaging in information sharing and promotion activities. Look for blogs that are within your genre. Look at the author websites of the established and top-selling book authors to see what their articles are about and who is commenting. Engage in guest posting and guest hosting activities to gain exposure to other audiences.
6. Ask for Help
If you’re having trouble identifying your target audience, ask other authors or industry professionals for help. Most authors would love to help a fellow author identify their target audiences and share knowledge. Make sure you ‘pay it forward’ when an indie author is looking for guidance from you. This keeps the book industry thriving.
Once you find your target audience, the focus shifts to building a following. There are a couple of ways to do this. First start with creating and sharing well thought-out content appropriate for your audience. Figure out the right times and platforms to post the content. Use software to automate and track your post schedule. Be generous with your time and thoughtful promoting others. Promote your message and book no more than 20% of the time. The other 80% should consist of promoting others along with tips, quotes, and content relevant to your message.
Once you’re posting consistently, reach out and follow others aligned within your target audience. With more activity on your social media platforms you should have more success with others following you back. Connect with like-minded people and promote each other. Go beyond just following or liking their profiles. Retweet or repost relevant content and connect with their followers as well.
Find groups, organizations, and associations to help you be successful. You never know who will help you reach the next level of success.
Is Book Discovery a Next Big Challenge for Publishers? Optimize Your Book on Amazon Search
Did you know that more than 600,000 books are published in the United States every year - and over 99 percent of them never see the light of day?
This is, of course, a bad nightmare for every author who has already spent months or even years in writing a book or a similar publication. Fortunately, every author can prevent this issue from happening - with the use of accurate and powerful keywords. That way, their publications will be properly optimized for the Amazon search. On top of that, the cherry picking of these magic words is proven to decrease the various promotion efforts and increases the sales of your book.
But how the use of accurate keywords can boost your book sales and where exactly do you need to use them?
The Search Algorithm That Amazon Is Using
Just like Google and Yahoo, Amazon is a search engine - however a different from the first two. Basically, people visit Amazon site with the intention of buying something. They search the items using specific keywords they already have in their mind and eventually purchase products.
Still, one of the major factors behind Amazon’s success is that it can place the right product at the right time in front of the right customers if the Amazon product is optimized with correct and relevant keywords.
So, if you have properly optimized your book’s metadata information with relevant keywords, the book description will likely show up on Amazon’s Search Engine Result Page (SERP). The more earlier pages the book appear the better will be for your book’s sales. This strategy helps you win your potential readers and is known as Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) - an online decision-making moment of possible audience who are in the condition of to buy or not to buy the product.
Some Other Tips To Have In Mind When Optimizing Your Publication On Amazon
Aside from the catchy titles and meta descriptions, every great book must have a beautiful cover, gripping description and author bio, and other relevant metadata information that makes readers buy your book. There are five major sections) of your book where you need to use the most relevant and accurate keywords, which you can change and update frequently, including:
the book title
the sub-title
the description
the reviews, and
the author name
In my brief research on Amazon books, I found that many books which are published on Amazon were with incomplete in terms of their book descriptions. Even worse, many authors had no Amazon Author Central Pages though books, making their publications empty and lacking great contents.
Luckily, Amazon allows us to use maximum number of keywords in each section - so that every publication or book becomes more discoverable on both Amazon and Google search.
How Do Readers Search For Books And Publications On Amazon
On Amazon, readers generally find your books (or any other product) in two ways:
by typing keywords in Amazon’s search bar or
by searching on Google
Book description sections on Amazon are indexed at Google, which as you probably know is a place where even 67 percent of the world’s Internet searches take place. Therefore, whenever someone types certain keywords on Google, the search query redirects them to the relevant Amazon page - obviously, if it has been optimized with the proper Amazon keywords.
In the end, there are still times when even the keywords used in the interior text—preferably in the copyright page—of the book influences the Amazon search where the ‘look inside’ feature of your book is active. Since book optimization is generally a marketing effort, collaborating with an expert who is specialized in proper Amazon book optimization and knows the book-ranking algorithm can make your book more discoverable and can bring dramatic sales.
Ram Chandra Khatri is the graduate of Book Publishing. Check his website to know more about him. http://ramchandrabooks.com/
The Thing You Want to Read Is Out There (Probably)
On reading—and looking—outside your comfort zone
by Molly Templeton
The other day I was complaining about books. This was foolish for a whole host of reasons that I will get into shortly. But I was looking at a lot of upcoming releases, looking at the rest of the year in books, and I felt—for a grumpy and absurd moment—like everything was romantasy or horror. And I whined about it.
I know better. At this point, when it comes to books, there’s everything (with certain caveats). You just have to go find it.
I am old enough that I have lived through several rounds of my peers complaining that there’s no good music “anymore.” In an earlier era, when I heard this complaint, I ran the music section for an alt-weekly, and knew perfectly well that there was plenty of good music. It just wasn’t the music my peers were automatically hearing about without having to seek it out. (Please note, of course, that everyone has a subjective and wildly different idea of “good.”) Later, when I was older and no longer anywhere near an alt-weekly, I would sometimes catch myself falling prey to this same assumption. I can still fall into this trap, even now; it will feel like I can’t find what I want, and so I assume, briefly and incorrectly, that what I want isn’t out there.
It is (almost) always out there. Somewhere.
READ MORE
“There are so many books that I don’t know what to read,”
The Book That Surprised Me Most — And What It Revealed About How I Was Reading
What’s a book that completely surprised you?
The book that surprised me most didn’t teach me what to think. It showed me the shape of how I was thinking. That’s a rarer and more valuable thing.
I thought I knew what kind of reader I was. I had a list. And, I had categories. I knew what I liked and, more precisely, what I didn’t. I had, without realizing it, turned reading — one of the most…
