Why Writers Need Multiple Practical, Marketing Strategies to Build Success
Book marketing works like a platform. When one plank is missing, everything feels unstable. Here's what to do...
Key takeaways:
No single marketing tactic sells a book. You need multiple, working together.
Your platform is a foundation, not a quick fix. Remove one plank and visibility wobbles.
Sustainable book success comes from layered, consistent effort, not from a single viral moment.
When I published my first book around 2012, I heard this analogy, and it made so much sense. Imagine standing on a wooden platform where one board is missing. Pick the light blue board above - gone.
You can still stand there for a moment, maybe even balance if you shift your weight just right, but every movement takes effort. You’re always aware of the gap beneath your feet.
That is how marketing feels for many authors and content creators. This post is written with readers in mind, but applies to all creators.
💥 Gratitude to my exclusive advertising sponsor, the always-free universal link tool, Booklinker, and the paid tool, GeniusLink. I love both💥 (affiliate link).
Most writers are not doing “nothing.” They are standing on one solid plank and asking it to hold everything. Social media. Reviews. A newsletter. Advertising. Book sales. Growth. Guest articles. Podcasts. Live video. I could go on…
One strong board, carrying the weight of the entire structure.
Eventually, that board starts to bend and will break.
One Plank Does Not Make a Platform
Book marketing is not a ladder you climb rung by rung, and honestly, there is no ‘top.’ It is a platform made of planks, and each plank carries a different kind of weight. When one plank is missing, the pressure shifts to the others.
Think of it as your foundation - how firmly formed is it?
Social media is tasked with handling everything, even tasks it was never originally designed for, like branding, sales, and community.
Reviews are expected to create visibility.
Newsletters are asked to grow an audience from nothing, zero subscribers.
Advertising is there to help you stand out from the crowd.
And so much more (continue reading).
We can stand like that for a while. Many authors do, including me. But balancing takes energy, and over time, something gives—usually us. The issue is not effort. The problem is an uneven structure. Now we learn ways to balance.
Build the Platform One Plank at a Time
A stable platform does not require every plank to be perfect. It requires that each plank exists and can do its own job.
Each marketing strategy is a plank. None of them is decorative. None of them can replace another. The goal is not to do everything at once, but to distribute the weight so that no single board carries the entire load.
Core Planks (The Foundation)
Continuing the platform-and-plank analogy: these planks are load-bearing. Everything else rests on them.
Branding
This is the grain of the wood: your voice, values, genre signals, and emotional promise. Even colors, fonts, and more tangible signals are all woven here. This is your foundation. If branding confuses you, read ⤵️
Branding tells readers what kind of experience they are stepping into. Without it, attention rarely turns into trust.
Subscribers (Email Lists, Substack, Direct Access)
This is stability. Subscribers are the audience you actually own who’ve opted in to receive your posts. Algorithms change. Platforms rise and fall. Subscribers stay. Without this plank, your platform depends on forces you can’t control.
I find most authors don’t think about subscribers until many years into this writing gig. I was the same -I didn’t know what to do. Now I know and am sharing with you.
Reviews
This is the trust plank. Reviews reduce risk for readers. They do not convince everyone, but their absence creates hesitation right at the decision point.
Metadata and Discoverability
This is the hidden structural plank. Categories, keywords, tags, descriptions (metadata), Q&As, alt-text, and SEO determine whether readers can find your work at all. When this plank is weak, everything else has to work harder.
“Work smarter, not harder” ~ Madalyn Sklar | AI + Video
Advertising: Ads matter because they create visibility when organic reach is unreliable. Even small, targeted ads ($1/day or less) help put your book in front of readers who are already likely to care, instead of waiting to be discovered by chance.
Where to spend money on ads? No easy answer. Depends on your reader demographic, genre, preferences, and budget.
Support Planks (Balance and Visibility)
These planks distribute the weight, so no single strategy does all the work.
Social Media (Indexing and Visibility)
Social media’s real value is not direct sales. Crazy, right? It’s indexing and visibility.
Search engines crawl public posts, which surface in platform searches and increasingly appear in AI-driven discovery tools. Each post becomes a small, durable signpost that says, “This author exists. This book exists.”
Without this plank, even a strong platform is hard to find.
Newsletters, Blogging, Guest Articles, Bylines…
These are long planks. Quiet, steady, and cumulative. They build trust over time and give new readers something meaningful to land on once they discover you. Check out Rebecca Morrison on getting those bylines!
Giveaways
This is a widening plank. Giveaways invite people onto a platform who might not have climbed up on their own, creating connections. I like KingSumo (their lifetime plan is just $49). Easy to use and customize.
Tip: Include a newsletter sign-up option for your Substack or newsletter in your giveaway entry points, along with ‘follow me’ here and elsewhere. Make each CTA (call to action) an entry point.
Extension Planks (Momentum and Depth)
These planks extend the platform outward and deepen connections even further.
Virtual Book Tours and Online Events
Blog tours, podcast appearances, panels, and virtual readings create short bursts of visibility that work best when the foundation is already in place.
For crime, mystery, and thriller authors, Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours is a well-established option connecting books with engaged bloggers and reviewers. That said, they also take nonfiction and other genres.
Keep in mind, it can take 3-4 weeks to book your features (sometimes many months). Expect that lead time when creating your book marketing plan.
Tip: The point of these events is visibility, not book sales (which are lovely, of course). Shift and reframe that focus to visibility, and book sales will come.
Guest Articles and Essays
This is a credibility plank. Writing for other publications borrows trust, creates backlinks, and places you in rooms you do not own. Follow Allison K Williams for all the details.
Women’s Writers, Women’s Books highlights women authors and their work for audiences aligned with them. Good traffic, lots of wonderful voices.
Podcasts and Audio Appearances
This is the intimacy plank. Hearing your voice quickly builds rapport.Video Content
This is a familiarity plank. Video lowers the emotional distance between you and readers. It does not need to be polished. It needs to be human.Partnerships and Cross-Promotion
This is a load-sharing plank. Collaborations expand reach and reduce the pressure to do everything alone.Consistency and Maintenance
This is the plank no one wants to name because it’s a lot of freakin’ work. Platforms need upkeep. Updating links, visuals, and refreshing bios. Revisiting strategy. Posting daily. Interacting. Growth. Connection.
This is why people hire me, if I’m being completely transparent. You can do the work - it’s not rocket science - but we also need to write and, ya know, live.
Why This Reframe Matters
If one plank is missing, it doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong; it means the platform is uneven. A stable book marketing platform does not require perfection; it requires balance.
When the platform is even, we can stand. We can move. We can build without constantly worrying about falling through the gaps.
That is not about hustle. That is sustainable book success. You’ve got this.
If this reframing helped you see your own marketing more clearly, you’re welcome to subscribe. Free subscribers get all of my long-form book marketing posts. Paid subscriptions are always optional, never required, and help support the time and care that go into this work.🙏
What’s working (or not working) for you right now??? I’m glad you’re here, and I’m walking this path with you. 💫
A Note of Thanks
I made it onto a list! I’m thrilled. I’ve been writing here for 2.5 years, and this is the first time I’ve made it onto Education (they list only the top 100). I appreciate every single reader. Thank you for the wonderful support. 🙏
I have appreciated your voice, helpfulness and transparency. I was thinking about all of this as I struggled to sleep last night and have come to a level of acceptance that if I want to do this well, it is going to mean learning how to navigate all of this, building up my platforms, and real, honest-to-god effort. I have self-published under a pen name years ago and did not do this - ANY of this. Now I'm doing it knowing the difference it will make.
...and now, back to reading your past posts from before I was on substack and learning ;) Thank you!
Great post! my book is still in production, so right now I am focusing on creating connections with readers here. I've been reconnecting with old friends, sharing links personally, and with related fb groups, my fb/IG feeds and stories. Slow but steady...I'll move on to some other planks as I get closer to a pub date.