Book marketing is a multifaceted venture, but at its core, it’s all about connecting with the right readers. When publishers find those readers in communities—or build the communities themselves—and they can expand their return on investment, be that in time, money, or both.

To connect with reader communities, publishers need to know where to find them. They also benefit from using help at hand, especially technology, to interact effectively with those communities.

Reaching Readers Where They Are

Unlike big publishing conglomerates, indie publishers thrive by reaching niche markets. Many of those markets have built-in communities of readers. Publishers need only identify those communities and approach them in ways that facilitate sharing information about their titles.

For decades, Square One publisher Rudy Shur has built his business around existing communities. With a nonfiction catalog, he looks for easily identifiable niche markets. Then he seeks out organizations whose mission and membership include potential readers of his titles. Approaching a group’s leaders, he conveys the ways his titles can serve their membership.

Sometimes, the title in question is a submission from a respected expert in a field familiar to the group. For instance, a submission from a macrobiotics expert led Shur to organizations that focus on the topic. Through them, the book launched to reader communities with an interest in the topic.

Wanting their members to have ready access to pertinent information, the macrobiotics groups shared members’ mailing addresses for Square One’s direct mail campaigns. Between these sources and the additions the company makes from direct-to-consumer orders, Shur estimates 20,000 contacts in his company’s macrobiotics database.

Shur also takes on projects specifically to fill an organization’s needs. In one case, a Square One editor’s relationship with a Knights of Columbus official prompted Shur to approach the organization about books he could produce and market to members. Several books resulted from the effort, all with a built-in readership. The Knights promote the titles to their members, and Square One offers member discounts on the books.

When discussing these informal partnerships with organizations, Shur doesn’t ask them to pay for anything. He seeks no commitments on future books, and he has no set formula for making his approach other than to point out that if a group values the information they provide their members, books can be a great way to provide it.

“If you’re going to work with a group, you have to figure out what works best for them in a way that serves them,” he says. “As long as you respect what they’re doing and you turn [books] out in a way that explains what they want explained, it works.”  

Fiction publishers can market to existing reader communities too. Author-publisher Janis Robinson Daly identifies her niche as primarily women over 45 who are avid readers of historical fiction. She reports “great success” engaging with them in women’s book clubs.

Through social media outreach and relevant website content, Daly extends offers to chat with members if clubs select her book. Now that people have become familiar with online events through services like Zoom, she can meet with clubs across the country without leaving her office.

When Daly does in-person events, her sign-in sheet includes a checkbox for book club membership. Using this data, she tags readers in her newsletter database so she can send them specific, segmented emails pertaining to book clubs, including member tips. She also pushes out relevant, timely content through social media. Twice a year, she puts a call out for best book club picks, then shares the results.

Working with reader communities requires some effort, Daly says, but she points to how book club sales add up over time. For publishers who want to appeal to existing communities of readers, she advises creating relevant content with direct calls to action.

Cultivating Reader Communities

Not every publishing niche has a ready-made reader community. But with a bit of time and attention, publishers can grow their own.

For publishers who can’t find book clubs that fit their niche, Deep Read Press publisher CL Gammon suggests starting their own. That’s what he did for his nonfiction list focused on local history, Americana, and true crime. Readers who join the company’s Deep Reader Club receive newsletters, updates, discounts, and the chance to participate in contests. It encouraged reader interaction.

Members join the Deep Reader Club through the company’s website and social media posts. They can also sign up at in-person events, including an annual company-hosted book fair. The publisher’s advertisements also include a sign-up call to action. From conversations within the club, Gammon has gotten feedback that has helped him better serve readers, such as a request for hardcover books. “Another benefit is that we have a core readership that we can count on,” he says.

When exploring reader communities, Ghoulish Books publisher Max Booth III encourages companies to think local. “We publish horror books for beautiful weirdos who love spooky stuff,” he says. “We have launched our own annual convention called the Ghoulish Book Festival, which occurs every April in San Antonio. People from all over the world travel to attend and celebrate spooky literature.”

By bringing readers together, the company has grown a large newsletter list so they can communicate with the community they’ve grown. To facilitate what Booth calls the “ongoing conversation we are having with our readers,” Ghoulish Books relies on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Getting people to care about books can be difficult, he admits. But he notes that readers in the Ghoulish Books community seem to have a deeper loyalty than most.

Publishers can also grow reader communities—and generate marketing opportunities—through websites that encourage interaction. For its newly launched direct-to-consumer marketing effort, Ingram iD, Ingram’s Content Group has built a segmented consumer database by launching and running book-focused websites.

Having winnowed out a few sites that didn’t connect well with audiences, Ingram currently maintains five such sites. None sell books directly to consumers. Instead, they provide book-related services and content while gathering data for Ingram iD’s database of “verified readers.”

The Shelf Savvy site features print, e-book, and audiobook deals. Bookfinity is a book discovery platform where readers learn their “reader type” by taking a quiz, then receive book recommendations. Page & Pairing suggests wine and recipe pairings to go with books, while Her Promotion targets women in business.

For each site, Ingram also hosts a social community. “Our strongest community is for little infinite, our poetry website,” says Kim Schutte, director of consumer marketing services at Ingram Content Group. “In addition to a pretty engaged Instagram audience, we also host a quarterly poetry contest where participants can submit their own poems and then others can vote on the winner. It’s one of my favorite things we do.”

For publishers who want reader-specific targeting without having to nurture their own communities, Ingram iD provides options for reaching readers in 27 fiction and 17 nonfiction audience segments.

“The categories include the higher level BISACs like Mystery & Detective as well as more detailed categories like Hard-Boiled, Noir & Private Investigators,” Schutte says. “We will continue adding categories, including those aligned with more specific sub segments, as the audience continues to grow.” By year’s end, she projects the Ingram iD database will top four million readers.

The Social Connection

Social platforms are all about building community. Through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, publishers can connect with existing communities or grow their own. The trick is to market effectively while keeping interactions authentic and meaningful.

“First, know your audience,” says author-publisher Linda Poitevin. “Then know where your audience is hanging out.”

Having determined her audience of women over 50 is best reached via Facebook, Poitevin posts on her author page several times a day. She also maintains a private Facebook readers’ group where she posts daily. “Most posts are memes or slices of life designed to drive higher follower engagement, which ensures that book-related posts are seen by more eyes,” she says.

Along with this reader outreach, she runs Facebook ads. “I respond to all comments on the ad, and I invite all responders to follow my Facebook author page,” she says.

From these efforts, Poitevin says she has seen an “exponential” increase in sales. “Engaging with readers in my communities has helped them feel not only invested in the books, but [also] in my career as a writer,” she says. “Visibility is always a challenge, but drilling down to discover my true niche market—and accepting that I have a niche and not everyone will enjoy the books—has been instrumental in overcoming that.”

To build a community of readers interested in learning Chinese as a second language, Mind Spark Press also taps the power of social. “We publish memes about learning Chinese to an audience of over 40,000, which results in lots of sharing across all social media platforms and lots of discussions,” says co-founder Jared Turner.

Supplementing these efforts, Mind Spark hosts a podcast where they talk about learning Chinese and interview learners about their stories. As listeners share podcast episodes, Mind Spark’s reader community grows. The company also maintains an active presence on chat platforms, including relevant Reddit subreddits where they talk about learning Chinese.

Through these various communities, Turner says marketing happens organically. “We don’t really have marketing campaigns,” he says. “We’re just constantly out there and accessible. Our readers and customers like knowing we’re real people.”

Relationship Marketing

The relational opportunities afforded by connecting with reader communities are significant. To tap into them, publishers do well to focus on their niche and know where to find the readers in that niche. Help-at-hand-resources, including technology and social media platforms, facilitate the process.

“There are so many ways,” Turner says. “But whatever you do, be authentic and be consistent.”

As Gammon points out, it’s a matter of understanding and connecting with a potential audience in a way that adds value for readers. Once publishers find or create its reader communities, patience and persistence will help to nurture and grow them.

Reaching Readers with Ingram iD

For publishers looking to market to segmented audiences of verified readers, Ingram’s new iD program offers help.

We asked Kim Schutte, director of consumer marketing services at Ingram Content Group, to explain how the program works.

What prompted Ingram to undertake its direct-to-consumer marketing initiative?

This initiative to develop audiences for book marketers, which we call Verified Reader profiles, is one of Ingram’s most significant recent initiatives. Ingram has been on a long journey of business transformation that has included adding print, digital, and physical distribution to our traditional wholesaling. The next most helpful service we can add to the work we do for our industry is to help publishers and booksellers reach more readers.

Marketing has increasingly become operational, technical, and scaled. Ingram has accomplished this level of operational and technical scale in its other business areas; we are now confident that we can bring the same benefits to our industry through the launch of our consumer marketing business, and specifically Ingram iD, our self-serve advertising platform designed specifically to meet the needs of the book industry.

From a publisher’s perspective, how does the program work?

For several years we have been quietly building our consumer audience and can now reach 2.7 million “known” readers by email and millions more “unknown” readers—meaning we know the reader’s preferences and where to reach them online. The consumer audience continues to grow, and we expect to have well over four million readers by the end of the year. 

At the simplest level, publishers can choose from a variety of advertising services to reach Ingram’s large, high-quality database of Verified Readers. With millions of subscribers and reader profiles, publishers can choose book-specific audience segments that align with BISACs and then advertise directly to them in a number of ways. The services include Google Display and Google Search ads, Facebook, and Amazon-sponsored product ads. Coming soon are a number of services to advertise directly on the websites that we own and operate, and we’ll also add in additional third-party services over time.

What benefits might publishers enjoy from tapping into this marketing initiative?

Most notably, the audience is 100% book specific and spans the breadth of readers. That not only includes audiences that span the wide variety of books categories published but also the formats and price points. Our audiences include readers of all formats, including print, and they are not all deal seekers.

We’ve been testing our efficacy with the Verified Reader audiences since early 2022 and can say with confidence that Ingram iD offers an effective and efficient way to reach large, micro-targeted audiences that map directly to publishing categories. Ultimately, we hope to help publishers and authors sell more books.

How does the cost compare to publishers running their own ads?

There are obviously a lot of variables at play here, including whether the publisher has their own first-party audience but, in general, publishers are seeing a lower CPC on our ads.

How can publishers get started with Ingram iD?

Publishers, authors, and anyone else interested in reaching book readers can simply visit id.ingramcontent.com to create an account and start advertising. There is no fee to sign up for an account and publishers determine their ad budgets. Ingram iD enables a single point of ad creation and payment, eliminating the need for multiple accounts and the headaches marketers so often experience when launching simultaneous campaigns on multiple ad platforms. Also, ads can link anywhere that a publisher prefers, and ad metrics from across platforms are shown in iD. It is great to have all those metrics in one place, allowing anyone at a publisher [company] to not only quickly launch but also quickly measure what they’ve done.

When publishers are setting up campaigns in iD, they’ll see an estimated range of clicks and impressions based on the audience they’re targeting and the budget for the campaign. We watch those metrics carefully to make sure we’re meeting or exceeding expectations. The reporting in iD right now is coming directly from the ad platforms and mostly consists of the essential datapoints: clicks, impressions, etc. A big part of our future development roadmap is to expand reporting to help publishers understand the impact of their advertising beyond just Amazon.

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