If you are are a writer or an author and need some creative ideas to help market your book, we’re here to help. We’ve brainstormed some ideas and compiled a list of what we think are some of the best ways to monetise and market your book, especially if you’re on a budget!

So without further ado, here are 17 creative ways we have come up with to help monetise and market your book.

1. Produce an audio version of your book. There is a growing appetite for audio books as more apps and services make them more convenient and accessible. Having both and audio and text based version of your book will open up the potential amount of readers/listeners, which in turn is likely to increase your overall sales.

2. Use some of the content of your book as weekly podcast, either a paid one or free. There is a growing appetite for podcasts so this could be particularly useful, and even if you do choose to go with the free model there is still an opportunity to monetise in terms of ads placed against each episode and potential sponsorship. There are a variety of services available, many of which are free.

3. Organise seminars and workshops on the subject of your book. This could be a great way of generating income and also helps to establish you as an expert or influencer in the subject area; this will not only help with current book sales, but also with any follow up books you publish on the same or connecting fields.

4. If it’s a how-to book, create video tutorials. This little hack can help you to capitalise on video views. Whether you choose to do this on a free service or not, there’s scope to reach a much larger audience, some of which may not have the time to read the entire book or who have a need they perceive to be more immediate. A lot can be done with the video content. It can be cut and edited in variety of ways to target different audiences and on different mediums, including Ads.

5. Be a coach or a consultant and offer your services and expertise, using your book as proof of your knowledge base. Offering consultancy services in your niche area is a way to build up a profile, it not only helps you to monetise the book but also to market it at the same time, as those considering your services are likely to be interested in the books you’ve written. Using your book as a way of showcasing your expertise works!

6. As a bare minimum, create a Facebook fan page for your book or use your authors fan page to engage your audience and build it further, giving people a place to come to and engage with your book that is online and searchable.

7. Use pinterest.com to create boards and pins for you book. The user base of pinterest tend to be interested in these sorts of mediums and creating boards and pins for different aspects of your book, be they characters or concepts, can help to get the ball rolling. If this is done in an effective manner you can create a fan following on the website and this will not only engage others and encourage them to read, but also show in related searches.

8. Set up an affiliate program for your book. You’re not always the best person to sell your book, you may not know the right way to sell it to each audience, and even if you are, you may not have the necessary funds, manpower or reach to do so effectively. So get some help by creating an affiliate offering. You incentivise others to do the selling for you and this can be from people who have read your book and loved it, but need an extra reason to promote it. Or it can be from non-readers who run affiliate websites or networks, and are simply there for the financial gain, either way you increase your sales. This can be done with services like clickbank.co, amazon, eBay and many more.

9. Reward your fans on all the social sites by engaging with there conversations and interactions, those who actively engage with you should receive some reward and sometimes the attention is enough and is usually well received. It can also encourage others to participate and create a buzz. Consider also giving out some free signed copies over social media dependent on a certain amount of interactions which will have the added benefit of increasing your social profile.

10. Create a website for your book or add the book to your personal website. Also optimise the site for searches regarding the topic on search engines in order to increase the likelihood of people finding the website.

11. Use twitter author hashtags like #freeebook, #Mustread and #BookGiveway to get some attention on Twitter. The kinds of people using these hashtags are actively looking for their next good read so being visible on these searches can surely lead to some more sales. In effect your marketing your book to a willing audience.

12. Do some guest blogging on websites related to the topic your book covers. This is an easy way to get more attention on yourself (establishing yourself as an influencer or expert) and get some links to the website the book is available on.

13. Organise drink ups, meetups and other events to increase the buzz around the book and to garner some publicity. The trick here is to start small and attempt to create a following that can lead to larger events that gain you publicity or marketing collateral (in the form of videos and images) to share.

14. Advertise on your sites. If you’d like to monetise book that is already selling well, then simply placing ads on your site is an easy way to do it. This can be done on many levels. An easy route is to place adsense ads and similar services on the site in order to capitalise on your traffic. This however can be detrimental to the look of your site, so if you are going to use this method, do so sparingly. The alternative route is to offer specific brands and companies the opportunity to advertise on your site, here you have more control and can make sure the ads are relevant to your book or are subtle enough not to damage the brand.

15. Give away free copies of your book to important influencers and tastemakers. This can help to create some valuable connections and if chosen correctly, the majority of them will share their opinion (hopefully a good one) to there followers and fans. In general, offering the book to them for free makes them more likely to say positive things about it, or at the least, more likely to soften any negative opinions they do choose to share.

16. Create branded souvenirs of your book. Whether you’ve sold 10 or 10,000 there still may be people interested in the souvenirs, some of whom haven’t even purchased the book itself. This is a nice way of monetising the book by expanding the options and can also offer some free marketing if the branded items get seen by others, title.This can be done with branded shirts, stickers, pens and the list goes on. Ideally try and create branded items that relate to the topic of the book. For example, for a book about web security and technology, branded webcam covers may be appealing and relevant.

17. Place ads on social media targeted at your reader base and similar types of people; you can also create some un-targeted audience ads to test your assumptions. Try this on Facebook, linkedin, goodreads and google ads in order to discover the best channel to market and sell the book.

Try out different methods, none of these are mutually exclusive, so they can be combined and changed in ways to truly maximise the marketing reach and monetisation potential of your book.

Have some more ides?

Let us know, by commenting below, and like always, Happy Marketing!