You made the book. Now you have to sell it.

That second part can feel just as daunting as the first, especially when the internet tells you to be everywhere at once. Social media. A newsletter. Ads. A launch event. A podcast tour. It adds up fast.

In a recent Blurb workshop, Stefani Sloma cut through that noise. Sloma is a marketing leader with more than a decade of experience helping creators turn great work into bestsellers, leading campaigns across children’s books, cookbooks, photo books, graphic novels, and fiction of every genre. 

Her message: You don’t have to do everything. You just have to do the right things, in the right order.

Below, we’ve gathered the key principles from the session. Read the recap, or watch the full replay.

First, a mindset shift

Marketing something you created is hard. Marketing yourself can feel even harder. But before diving into strategy, Sloma wants you to reframe your thinking.

“Marketing is not bragging,” she said. “Readers want to connect with real human beings, not cold brands. They want to connect with you.”

Take a deep breath before getting started. You don’t have to do everything in this article, and not everything will make sense for your book. The foundations ahead are a starting point, not a prescription.

How book marketing actually works

One of the most useful things Sloma shares is also one of the simplest. All book marketing, regardless of genre or format, follows the same pattern: Awareness. Interest. Trust. Action.

Awareness

“Awareness is not supposed to convert immediately,” she says. “Awareness’s job is visibility.” This is when someone first discovers you or your book exists, via a social media post, a friend’s recommendation, or a bookstore display. 

People who see your book for the first time are likely not ready to buy yet. They’re just thinking, “Oh, this exists.”

Interest

The next step is when interest is piqued, and they want to know more. They visit your website, read your book description, skim reviews. This is where positioning becomes critical. If your cover, description, and messaging clearly communicate who the book is for, interest grows. If not, they drop off.

Trust

Trust is where most book sales are won or lost. It’s built through showing up consistently online and in person, earning social proof through reviews and news features, and establishing authority in your niche. 

“Very few readers buy from someone they’ve never heard of,” Sloma says, “especially if you’re a first-time author.”

Action

Action is the bottom of the funnel. This is when the person buys your book, leaves a review, shares your book with a friend, or signs up for your newsletter. But action only happens after the earlier stages. Skip them and go straight to “buy my book,” and conversion becomes much harder.

Different marketing channels support different stages. Social media builds awareness and interest. Email builds trust. Ads amplify awareness. Launch campaigns push action. When you’re putting together your plan, ask yourself: Which stage am I strengthening right now?

Foundation 1: Know your audience

“Everyone is not an audience,” Sloma says. Not everyone will want your book, and that’s completely fine. The more specific you are about who your buyer is, the easier every other marketing decision becomes.

Start by answering three questions: 

1. Who is this book for? 
2. Who is it not for? 
3. Where do those readers already spend their time?

To figure out who your reader is, Sloma recommends starting with comparable books. Ask yourself: If someone finished your book and loved it, what else is on their bookshelf? 

Next, look at how readers interact with those books and how those authors market. Are there common trends or conventions in the genre? Why do readers read these books (for escape, learning, comfort, identity)? And how do they buy these books?

The answers shape everything: your messaging, your platforms, and your budget.

One question Sloma gets a lot is whether this changes for photo books, cookbooks, or children’s books. Her answer is no—visually-driven books and text-driven books are fairly similar. The only change is that children’s books have a different reader and buyer. So marketing should speak to parents, educators, and librarians, the people actually making the purchase.

Foundation 2: Position your book

To Sloma, positioning is the most important thing you can do, and it should start before your book comes out. Before you design the cover. Even before you put the pages together.

“Positioning affects the cover, the format, the description, and how you market your book,” she says.

Start with the comparable books you identified in the previous step and build your first positioning statement from there. 

The formula is simple: “Readers who love [book title] and [another book title] will love mine.” 

From there, make sure your cover, format, and description all fit the expectations of your genre. “As much as we’d like to say not to judge a book by its cover,” Sloma says, “we all know that all of us do.” Readers make fast decisions, and those decisions start with the first thing they see.

This is also when you’ll write your book synopsis. Sloma knows firsthand how hard it is to summarize a book without losing what makes it special. Her approach: Focus on the core message, the experience it offers readers, and why they should read your book rather than another.

For creators whose books cross genres, like travel photography that’s also personal essay or a cookbook that’s also a memoir, Sloma sees this as your strength, not weakness. “It gives you more people and more channels that could be right for you,” she says. The challenge is making sure your cover and positioning make it clear that the book is more than one thing.

Foundation 3: Build your own brand

Your brand doesn’t need to be aesthetically perfect. It needs to be authentic.

“You are the brand,” Sloma says. “The consistency and trust that you build with your reader makes them want to read your book.” 

Start with your author bio. Who are you? Why should a reader trust you? Where can they find you? Those are the building blocks of your presence online.

Sloma also recommends starting well before your book comes out. Building your brand early establishes your voice, grows an audience, and means you’re not starting from zero on launch day.

One important note: Building a brand doesn’t mean you have to be a public person. “Many authors do a fantastic job of promoting themselves and their work without ever showing their face,” she says. What matters is that your personality and authenticity come through, whatever form that takes.

That authenticity, Sloma says, is what keeps readers coming back. And it’s what turns first-time buyers into advocates.

Foundation 4: Plan your launch

Before you build your launch plan, remember that your launch is a moment, not your whole marketing strategy.

“While you should definitely plan something to celebrate the release of your book,” Sloma says, “it should be part of an overall strategy that continues well past launch.”

Start by defining your goal. Do you want to presell 300 copies? Host a launch event at a local bookstore? Grow your email list to 500 subscribers before the book comes out? 

Once you know what you’re working toward, build a plan that works backwards from your release date.

Sloma walks through an example: Say your book comes out on July 31. Five months out, you can reach out to a local bookstore about hosting an event. Three months out, you launch your preorder campaign. Two months out, you start posting heavily on social media. Two weeks out, you run ads to boost the preorder campaign.

“This is a fake example,” she says. “It’s not a prescription on what you should be doing.” The point is to have a plan laid out in front of you, whatever form that takes.

Your goals should also match your resources. If you only have time and energy for one marketing channel, that’s okay, just be realistic about what you can deliver and what results you should expect.

Choose the right marketing channels for you

Not all marketing channels make sense for every book or every creator. The right ones for you depend on four things: where your readers already spend time, what you’re comfortable doing, what feels realistic given your time and budget, and what will actually help you sell books.

Sloma’s top piece of advice for any channel: Share your process. “Readers really love seeing you writing, shooting photography, drawing, whatever your process is,” she says. That includes both successes and struggles. A time-lapse of an illustration that went wrong and got fixed. A behind-the-scenes look at your layout process. The moment you realized your cover wasn’t working. 

“Be relatable,” she says. “Readers want to connect with real human beings.”

Of all the channels available, Sloma is most emphatic about one: a newsletter. Unlike social media, where an algorithm decides who sees your content, newsletter subscribers have opted in specifically to hear from you. “It’s a trust signal,” she says. You don’t need to send it weekly. Monthly works. Even quarterly works. What matters is consistency, so subscribers know when to expect something from you.

On publicity and influencers, Sloma says they’re amplifiers, not foundations. “If your positioning and audience clarity aren’t solid, amplification is not going to convert,” she says. For most first-time authors, she recommends skipping both until you have social proof behind you. If you do pursue influencers, engagement and audience fit matter far more than follower count.

Post-launch: the marathon begins

One of the biggest misconceptions in book marketing is that everything hinges on launch week. It doesn’t.

“If you remember nothing else from this workshop, remember this,” Sloma says. “Books have very long lives. Marketing doesn’t end after week one.”

After launch, you’re still introducing your book to new readers every day. Post-launch marketing is about steady, consistent awareness building. That can look like continuing to post about themes from your book, sharing reader reviews, pulling quotes or excerpts, or running occasional pricing promotions. “It doesn’t have to be loud,” Sloma says. “It just needs to be consistent.”

When authors feel stuck after launch, it’s often because they think they’ve already said everything there is to say. Sloma pushes back on that. Your book can have multiple moments: a seasonal tie-in, a sales milestone, a giveaway, a one-year anniversary campaign. Each one gives you a fresh reason to talk about your book without repeating the same message.

Post-launch is also where you deepen relationships with your earliest readers. Encourage reviews, photos with the book, and testimonials. Feature them in your newsletter or on social media. 

“When readers feel seen, they become advocates,” Sloma says. “Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful tools in marketing.”

Finally, Sloma asks creators to reframe what success looks like. Very few books explode immediately, especially in self-publishing. “Sustainable careers are built on consistency, iteration, and continued audience growth over time,” she says. “Not one week.”

Launch is a spotlight moment. What comes after is the marathon.

The foundations are just the beginning

Marketing a book you made takes courage. But as Sloma says, you don’t have to do everything—you just have to start somewhere and keep going.

Watch the full workshop replay for even more tips, and if you want to see these foundations in action, read how 16 bestselling Blurb creators built audiences and sold books on their own terms.

Sloma is also hosting a part two on May 28 at 4 p.m. PT, going deeper on positioning and branding. Follow us on social media to get the invite.

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