Self-Promote and Succeed

I was very familiar with Julie Broad, from both her YouTube channel Book Launchers and previous book “Self-Publish and Succeed”. When I heard she was doing a book specifically focused on marketing, I was absolutely delighted... so delighted in fact that I read “Self-Promote and Succeed” in one sitting.

The book offers a wealth of useful information for authors and probes some truly revealing questions... Do I need to be a bestseller? What does success look like to me?

I liked the fact that marketing being a long game was acknowledged, and that what works for one person might not be at all applicable to every author's journey. This is especially important for nonfiction authors, who so often fall into the trap of applying marketing techniques which are tried and true favourites in fiction spaces - and super ineffective in nonfiction ones.

Having watched many of Julie's YouTube videos, I wasn't at all surprised that a great deal of focus was placed on using one's book as a means to brand building through courses, public speaking opportunities, etc. Depending on one's goals and (especially) nonfiction genre this may or may not be every author's greatest focus, but what I loved about the book was that it offered helpful suggestions for almost every marketing path imaginable.

One of my favourite messages in the book was, “Your book is not for everyone, and if you try to make it for everyone, it will be important to no one.” Julie stressed the importance of writing (and marketing) for your ideal reader - which is something we all need to keep in the forefront of our minds with every marketing decision we make as authors.

I found the chapters on library marketing and ARC readers particularly enlightening. The tangible facts and figures in the chapter about bookstore marketing was great food for thought and set reasonable expectations about how ‘worth it' pursuing that avenue was. My favourite chapter was the one about launch day - I loved the analogy of a book launch being like a birth. It was extremely validating to hear that an author who's had as much success as Julie has faced the same challenges that I have (as a very niche blogger turned author) and how she overcame them.

This book succeeds because there's nothing abstract about the advice it offers. Julie deals in facts and solutions and clearly wants to help set people up to succeed in the fabulous (but always challenging) world of self-publishing.

I received a free advance copy of this book and I am leaving an honest review.