Looking for free ebook marketing strategies that actually work?
I’ve got you covered. In this post, I’ll show you how to promote your ebook effectively while spending as little as possible.
I’ll share a bunch of powerful promotional strategies that won’t cost you a penny but can earn you thousands of readers.
Plus, I’ll also cover a couple of paid strategies that only require a little investment. Don’t worry, you won’t need to take out a bank loan.
Let’s start with the basics…
#1 – Get your blurb and cover right
The marketing strategies we’re going to look at in this post will help you to promote your ebook (i.e. build awareness, generate leads, and so on)
But ultimately, your blurb, cover, and ‘Look Inside’ will be what sells your ebook.
So, the first step is to make sure those elements are optimized to convert as many prospective customers into readers as possible.
How do you do that?
Well, you can start by heading to Amazon and browsing the best-seller list of books in your niche.
Look at the covers, blurbs, and Look Inside pages of ebooks that have sold thousands of copies. Whatever they’re doing is working, so learn from that and apply it to your ebook.
In general, blurbs should be grabby and well-written. They shouldn’t be too long (I’d suggest around 150 words) and they should establish your story’s conflict and your protagonist’s stakes.
It’s also worth mentioning comparable titles in your blurb as a lot of people will decide to read a book purely because other people say it’s similar to something they’ve already read and enjoyed.
Your cover should be genre-appropriate and look like it’s been designed by a professional rather than an amateur. And your Look Inside should read the reader wanting more.
#2 – Build a sales funnel
A sales funnel is a visual representation of the customer journey.
It’s a roadmap that tells you each step your potential customers take leading up to them purchasing your ebook, from prospecting right the way through to conversion.
Before you start promoting your ebook, you first need to think about what your sales funnel is going to look like.
If you plan to sell your ebook through your own website (as opposed to on a marketplace like Amazon), then the top of your funnel might be your squeeze page.
A squeeze page is a dedicated ebook landing page on your website designed to collect the email addresses of potential customers so you can continue to nurture them.
Typically, you’ll need to offer the visitor something in exchange for their email address. This might be the first chapter of your ebook, for example.
The next step in your funnel might be to send those leads a sequence of marketing emails that build trust, promote your ebook, and encourage sales.
The bottom of your funnel might be your ebook sales page. You could send your now well-nurtured leads an exclusive discount code as the final email in your sequence that links to your sales page to incentivize them to buy.
This is just an example—your sales funnel might be structured differently. The point is to have a system in place to find potential customers, nurture them, and get them to convert.
#3 – Consider enrolling for KDP Select
KDP Select is a program any author can enroll in to have their ebook included in Kindle Unlimited.
This will allow you to reach more readers through Amazon and Kindle promotions, which is great and should help to boost your sales.
However, the catch is that you have to be willing to grant Amazon exclusive rights to sell your ebook only through the Kindle store. You won’t be able to distribute it anywhere else (like on your website or other marketplaces).
The problem with that is that Amazon takes a pretty big cut of your revenue. You only earn 35% royalties (or 70% in some territories), so while you may make more sales in KDP Select, you’ll earn less money per sale than if you were to sell via your own website.
You’ll have to weigh that up for yourself. A lot of authors make the vast majority of their sales through KDP, so the tradeoff is often worth it.
Tip: Don’t want to sell through Amazon? Check out our roundup of the top platforms to sell ebooks this year.
#4 – Optimize your ebook listings search
Whether you’re selling your ebook on Amazon, your own website, or anywhere else, SEO (search engine optimization) is going to be super important.
The more well-optimized your ebook listings are, the more visible it will be in search, and the easier it will be for potential customers to find it.
First, you’ll need to do some keyword research. The goal is to figure out what kind of keywords people who might want to reach your ebook are searching for.
Amazon can provide keyword suggestions based on search trends, or you can use third-party keyword research tools.
Once you’ve found some keywords, look at their monthly search volume to see how much demand there is and their difficulty score to see how hard it will be for you to rank for each search query. And use that to narrow down your list.
Try to incorporate any keywords you want to target (and related keywords) into your ebook’s title, description, and metadata—this will help to optimize it so that it’s more likely to show up in the rankings when people search for that keyword.
You should also make sure you select relevant categories and subcategories for your book so that it’s listed correctly on Amazon and easier for your target audience to discover. This is also important to maximize your chances of getting into Amazon’s best-sellers list in your niche.
#5 – Give away your ebook for free (at first…)
Hear me out here.
I know authors deserve to be paid for their work, and I’m not suggesting you don’t make any money from your ebook at all.
However, making it free for a limited time can be a fantastic ebook promotion strategy.
People are much more likely to take a chance on something they don’t have to pay for. So, if you make your ebook free for a few days and promote it based on that, it should help you to get a lot of initial readers fast.
Those initial readers serve as powerful social proof and can help you to land more sales in the future when your free offer expires, both through the reviews they leave and their word-of-mouth recommendations.
This strategy is even more powerful if you have a series of ebooks.
Because in that case, all you have to do is make the first book in the series free forever and charge for all subsequent books in the series.
The hope is that your first, free book will be good enough to hook readers in and get them invested in the story so that they’re willing to pay for the rest.
Here’s an example from Lior Frenkel, who made his ebook ‘Pay Me… Or Else!’ available for free to serve as a lead magnet for his site nuSchool.
#6 – Grow your social media following
Social media is one of the best marketing channels to promote your ebook.
But the secret to success is to focus on building an engaged, niche audience that aligns with your target readership first.
Don’t just make an account and share a bunch of promotional ‘buy me’ posts advertising your ebook. That part comes later.
Instead, share memes targeting your niche. Post relevant educational or entertaining content. Interact with other authors and fans of your genre. Offer real value first and foremost.
The goal is to organically earn a ton of active, engaged followers who also happen to be the kind of people who might be interested in your ebook.
Once you have that large, engaged, niche following, you can start promoting your ebook to them.
If you’ve done it right, they should already trust you and enjoy your content by that point, so they’ll be more likely to check out your ebook when you promote it.
Tip: Social media scheduling tools can help you to manage your publishing schedule and grow your following.
#7 – Make the most of TikTok
TikTok is an incredibly powerful platform for new authors. And it should play a key role in your ebook marketing strategy.
In my opinion, it’s the easiest social network to promote your ebook on as the algorithm gives every video an equal chance of success, regardless of account size.
So even brand new creators with little to no followers have the potential to go viral and reach hundreds of thousands of viewers with one viral video.
An easy way to get started is to pick out a few of the most gripping excerpts from your ebook (that will hook the reader in and leave them wanting more) and turn them into short < 1-minute videos.
Just record a voiceover reading the excerpts out, then use a video editing tool like CapCut to automatically create captions from your voiceover recordings, add some visuals to make them more exciting, and share the video to your TikTok account.
Make sure you use niche-relevant hashtags to help your videos show up in the feeds of your target readers. #BookTok is huge on TikTok right now so that one’s essential.
#8 – Get influencers to review your ebook
Reach out to as many popular Book Bloggers, BookTubers, and BookTokers in your niche as possible and send them a free copy of your ebook.
If you’re lucky, some of them will read it and review it or share their thoughts with their audience, which would provide a ton of exposure for you.
You’ll see better results from this if you learn the art of influencer outreach.
That’s beyond the scope of this post, but I’ve already written a guide to writing outreach emails that don’t suck—I’d recommend reading that before you get started. You might also want to read our beginner-friendly guide to influencer marketing.
#9 – Host a giveaway
Another powerful way to promote your ebook is to run a giveaway competition.
You can set your competition up using a giveaway tool like SweepWidget.
First, choose a prize. This might be your ebook or multiple ebooks, a physical copy of your book, a package of author merch, or something else entirely. The better the prize, the better your giveaway will perform.
Then, select an entry method(s) that aligns with your goals. For example, you could ask people to like your author Facebook page or sign up for your mailing list (so you can nurture them with marketing emails promoting your ebook later).
Once you’ve done that, share your giveaway on all your socials to help get some traction. You could offer additional entries to people who tag their friends in your giveaway post comments—this will boost your giveaway’s reach and give it the best chance of going viral.
#10 – Target niche online communities
Niche online communities are great places to promote your ebook. I’m talking about things like Subreddits and Facebook Groups.
For example, r/SuggestMeABook is a great place to start. Every day, users on that Subreddit post very specific requests for book suggestions.
Make a habit of browsing it daily and if you see a request that you think your ebook is a good fit for, drop a comment suggesting it (don’t make it obvious it’s your own book as self-promotion is against the rules).
Or let’s say you’ve written a horror novel.
Subreddits like r/Paranormal and r/NoSleep are full of people interested in that genre who enjoy reading scary stories—so they’re good candidates for likely readers of your ebook.
Now, keep in mind that a lot of Subreddits and Facebook Groups have strict rules against self-promotion. So a lot of the time, you won’t be able to just create a post advertising your book. You’ve got to be sneaky about it.
Focus instead on becoming a valuable member of these communities and building rapport with other members.
Then, link to your ebook from your Facebook or Reddit profile so people who check out your page can find their way back to it, and subtly mention that you’ve written an ebook in your comments when you get the opportunity to do so—but never make it obvious that you’re trying to promote your book.
Other communities may be more open to self-promotion. For example, groups for new authors to get feedback. These are great places to find beta readers for your ebook in particular.
#11 – Start a blog (or guest post on other blogs)
Create your own WordPress blog and regularly publish informative, SEO-optimized blog posts around keywords that are relevant to your niche.
This can help you to earn organic SEO traffic. Then, you can advertise your ebook on your blog to monetize that traffic and turn it into paying customers.
If starting your own blog seems like too much work, another option is to guest post on other blogs.
Search Google for popular book bloggers in your niche. Then, reach out to them to ask if you can guest post on their site, and use that opportunity to promote your ebook.
Another good option is to search the web for book roundups, e.g. ‘Top 10 sci-fi novels for 2024’.