How do you market your self published book?

As many of you will know from my previous blog posts, I am dedicating a third of this self publishing project to the marketing phase. The other two thirds being the writing and publishing phases. I have no prior experience in marketing or sales and I am literally 'winging it' as I go along. As I have also mentioned before, I put a post on social media, via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and occasionally Pinterest as part of my every day 'to do' list in order to increase my author platform and drive sales. That generally takes me an hour and then I have to develop other ideas in an effort to spread my words. This is mainly done via email but can also include sending out signed copies to people in the book world and to celebrities who I feel may like my book and hopefully decide to post about it on social media. That is certainly my sole aim. I believe in my book and have done since receiving the feedback from my review team as I was writing it, indicating their enthusiasm for the next chapters as they rolled onto the pages of my laptop, through to today when I received a message this morning that three young women who share student digs, have read my book and I quote "absolutely loved it!". So how do I keep on driving myself to getting my book further and further out there in the world? 

My love for my gift of writing, my self belief in my gift and my gratitude for my gift all stoke my motivational fire. I am also blessed to have had consistent messages (as I have previously mentioned in my blog) of people's enjoyment of my book, together with them wanting to know when my next book is out. How can I not remain motivated when I get those kind of messages continuously and from such a wide spectrum of fans, women my own age (who I was pitching the book at as my target audience), elder women, young women in their 20's and even men in their 40's, 50's and 60's. That is an incredibly diverse range of the reading population, consistently telling me the same things about their enjoyment of MY book, MY debut novel. That is nut's to me.... crazy..... but good crazy! I love it. Who wouldn't? These are not my friends reviewing it any more these are strangers from far and wide now, who are taking the trouble to let me know via email or social media how much they liked my book and how it impacted and inspired them. I honestly believe that the secret to my book taking off is via social media, via a big name who reads it, enjoys it and shares it on their own social media accounts. Celebrity influence is massive. Social media is massive. Combine the two and the sales rocket. Kate Middleton wears a Reiss dress and boom it sells out. A celebrity with a large following tweets that they loved my book and boom, the sales rocket. 

To date I have had four negative reviews (three can be attributed to vindictiveness...(ex husband and ex friend .... yawn yawn, so be it, the haters are gonna hate!) and a woman who said she loved the plot but didn't like chick lit, so theoretically I have had one negative review based upon the fact she doesn't like the romantic comedy/chick lit genre of my book. I can live with that. My point being, it can only be a matter of time before a celebrity likes my book too and decides to message me or posts on their social media platform/s about it. So how do I get a celebrity to read it? I post copies, I email, I tweet them, Instagram them and hand deliver copies to them too! It can be very disheartening when you get nil response from celebrities (from the 100's of contacts made only 2 have replied) but I remain motivated, as I do firmly believe that a celebrity social media post is the key to further success. 

In order to keep the Instagram and Twitter ideas fresh and not get bored of posting or allow my followers to become bored of 'my daily sales pitch' postings, I have to think of new ideas to keep my interest in what I NEED to do. I am a modern day door to door saleswoman flogging my own book. I have to keep myself and my followers interested. It's very interesting researching and thinking and planning new idea's. I recently decided to focus on the number 23 as in the title Exactly 23 days and posted 23 reviews over 23 days and 23 facts about Fi (the main character) for the following 23 days. Tomorrow I will post about 23 places featured in the book and so on. I gave myself a two year marketing phase deadline but I decided 23 months is kind of close! That will be 7/10/2017.

If any of you have any idea's I would love to hear your suggestions and I enclose the 23 days of reviews for you as well as a direct link to purchase the book.  https://completelynovel.com/books/exactly-23-days