How to market books using awards (no, you don’t have to win)
Book Award Pro
Including awards in your marketing strategy is a surprising, ultra-effective way to boost your book’s success. In fact, you don’t even have to win an award to make the most of its marketing potential. Read on to learn how to market books using awards, find contests, and share your achievements.
Awards are the new book marketing
For many authors, marketing can feel like a complicated, time-consuming mess. Why? There are a few reasons yesterday’s book marketing solutions don’t work:
- It’s outdated. Old school book marketing doesn’t work anymore. With the self-publishing revolution came millions of authors putting their work out into the world. With social media, more voices than ever can be heard. Standing out in such a crowded, competitive market takes smarter, more comprehensive marketing strategies.
- It takes too much time. Creating and maintaining marketing campaigns to keep up in the competitive author landscape simply takes too much time. Many authors struggle to fit marketing into their busy schedules.
- It costs too much. If finding the time to market your book seems impossible, outsourcing to a book marketing agency can get the job done for you. The drawback? This type of marketing solution may be outside of many authors’ budgets.
This is the power that awards can bring to your book marketing strategy: they generate the type of reader interest you need to stand out in today’s literary market quickly, easily, and for less money.
How to find awards
The first thing to understand about book awards is that there are thousands of them, covering hundreds of genres, author backgrounds, and stages of publishing. The trick is to find the best ones for you. Often, this feels like finding a needle in a haystack.
Even on the free version of Book Award Pro, you’ll receive a list of awards for which your book is most eligible. The heavy lifting of finding awards is done for you inside the app. No digging, sorting, or sifting.
Alternatively, you could roll up your sleeves, research awards, and organize them in something like a spreadsheet. The idea is to cast a wide net of possible award programs before submitting to the ones you think you’re best positioned to win.
How to use awards to market your book
What’s better than winning a book award?
Winning another one, of course! But, before you apply for your next book award, take some time to review strengths and weaknesses from your last submission. Make a list of things you could improve for next time. Could you have used video anywhere in your submission? Graphic design? A better synopsis?
If you’re a Book Award Pro user, we’ll continue to match you with new and targeted awards every week, so you’ll always have more awards, more opportunities to win, and more ways to market your book.