Promoting a novel

[Avidreader69]

Has anyone done any promotion for their book? I have self published my book on Amazon, and read lots of advice on promotion but none of it seems relevant.

For example - create a mailing list. But I can't just collect email addresses, it's against the regulations.

If you have self published a book, what do you do about promoting it, if you're a non famous person with only a few followers on social media?

I have read that traditional publishers want authors who have 10,000 followers. How does a normal person get that many followers?

Any advice hugely welcomed!

I'm trad published so not quite the same, but I didn't have and still don't have 10k followers anywhere! I do a lot of promotion myself though, I'm on SM every day and I promote other people so they will reciprocate. I'm not sure how much it helps, but I need to get as many people as I can seeing my book!

I’d love some more ideas on this but…
There’s a lot of advice online where if everyone does the same thing then you wind up competing for attention of readers.
It seems like the best way to get more readers is to write more books.

I am traditionally and self-published and use Facebook and Amazon ads. David Gaughran is a good source of advice here. Google him if you don't know of him.

I also have a mailing list and lawfully have ways of adding names to it--often by links to my newsletter at the ends of my books.

Join lots of Facebook groups and take advantage of any #writerslifts on Twitter where you can provide links to your books. I do the publicity for a self published author and he has reached nearly 3000 Twitter followers. If you DM I'll send you a free mock up graphic you can use.

I‘m both trad and self published and do lots more promo on my self published books, which are often in the top 100 and sometimes 25 in the US charts, and do way better than my trad published books. Finding the right groups for your genre on FB is a good start, and also there’s an amazing group called 20booksto50k which is all indie authors who are at various stages of writing and success. But there is tonnes of helpful advice in there. But mostly, love it or loathe it, TikTok and booktok has been a game changer for indie authors and has really helped to level the playing field.

Get yourself on TikTok and target the Booktok lot, I often see people share a particularly engaging few paragraphs with some nice imagery with the Booktok hashtag and they get good engagement. Then post the title and where they can find it