Stop treating book promotion as a 'bolt on' - the best marketing is *drawn from* your book
Creative ideas for your non-fiction book promo that don't use social media
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Be honest - how do you feel when someone like me uses words like marketing, promotion, sales, personal brand or publicity in relation to your book?
In my experience most reactions range from an eye roll, to a sneer, to heart palpitations - sometimes all three all at once. Only a handful of times has an author told me they’re excited about participating in the marketing of their book.
A simple reframe is sometimes enough to shift perspectives - I like how Tom Rowley put it in his recent piece 5 things I’d tell a first-time author:
‘It might seem somehow more authentic and writerly to stay off Instagram or TikTok but it will ultimately mean your book is read by fewer people than it should be.
Try substituting “getting your book into the hands of readers and actually read” for “sales and marketing campaign”. Does that feel better? If so, call it that. That is all it is.’
But it can also help to start thinking of marketing and publicity as something that’s intricately woven into the fabric of your book, rather than something entirely separate from it.
It’s true you have to learn how to package ideas and insights differently - which, like any other set of skills, is something you can learn - but effective marketing should not involve reinventing the wheel.
Instead, it should pull on threads drawn from between the covers of your book itself. Weave those same threads into something new in the form of ‘marketing activity’ and you’ll attract your readers and show them why they should care about your book.
What form your marketing activity takes will therefore vary from author to author, genre to genre, niche to niche, because what works for a gardening almanac probably won’t work for a political polemic.
But, regardless of what your book is about, when authors ask me where you should start, I always point you in the direction of the thing you have created and know better than anyone else: your book.
After that the choice is yours because, while I’m obviously an advocate for using Instagram - partly because the barrier to entry is relatively low; all you need is a smartphone to get started - it’s far from the only option.
Please enjoy the following suggestions from Sharon Woodhouse ConspireCreative for how you might use the threads and themes that form your book to generate creative promotional opportunities to complement your social media activity, or even to use instead of it.
This is an adapted extract from The Profitable Author: 1,001 Ways to Build a Business You Love Around Your Books (Everything Goes Media, 2025) by Sharon Woodhouse.
Introducing, Sharon Woodhouse from ConspireCreative.
Sharon is a former indie book publisher and current owner of Conspire Creative, a book business agency that offers coaching, consulting, project management, and business support services for authors and indie publishers. She writes and teaches about all aspects of creating holistic, income-generating author businesses you love and finding your place in the vibrant ecosystem of books on Substack.
Over to Sharon…
First, identify the themes or threads you can pull on
For years my book publishing company specialised in non-fiction regional books and it taught me a lot about maxing out all the themes of a book, things that any author can adapt in their publicity, marketing, and sales efforts.
Any creative, freelancer, solopro, or business owner can do the same by finessing this information for their own purposes (think niches and sub-niches when relevant).
What do we mean when we say ‘theme’?
Before you mine your themes for all they’re worth, figure out as many themes as possible. Find them in these groupings:
Broadest theme
For most of my books, this was the region: Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle. For your business, it may be education, technology, or yoga.
Primary themes
These are the more specific themes of your book and they will be the top sources of promotional inspiration. We had a book about Chicago firehouse dogs. Its primary themes were fires and dogs. Your clothing store could be about children and outdoor wear. Your spa may serve professional women and retirees.
Tangential themes
These are the deeper, related themes you can tease out of your primary themes, other places you can turn to connect with others for attention and sales. We published a title about Chicago’s Civil War connections. In addition to Civil War buffs, we promoted the book to Abraham Lincoln fans, military history aficionados, and general readers of early American history.
Tangents may go broader (not just dogs, but all animals) or narrower (not just dogs, but working dogs) within a niche. They may pull out the most popular person or sub-themes of a topic. One book collecting Carl Sandburg’s film reviews during the silent film era, also got mileage by focusing on Charlie Chaplin, silent film actresses, and old movie house organs and organists.
For your purposes, think broader, narrower, lateral, and name-brand people, eras, and movements.
Customer and reader themes
I like to distinguish between customers (those who actually buy books, which includes distributors, stores, libraries, etc. as well as individuals) and readers (those who actually read the book, whether or not they have purchased it). What are the peculiarities of the customers and readers of your book that expand options beyond the norm?
For us, guidebook customers always included anywhere tourists went, such as museum shops, hotel lobby shops, and souvenir stores. As examples of how deep you can go with specific customer/reader quirks: for the firehouse dog book, we also pursued those with Dalmatians as pets. For the Civil War book, we also sought the attention of the historical re-enactment crowd as well as participants in Civil War roundtables.
👀 In case you missed it…
Have you seen the comprehensive collection of my posts and videos from the last year and a bit that I’ve pulled together so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance? Have a browse of the directory here:
9 ways to exploit your book’s themes (that don’t use social media)
Parties
Never pass up the chance to launch your book, product, or service with a party or series of parties connected to your book’s obvious themes. We launched Great Chicago Fires at G&L, a Chicago firefighters bar. These theme events are more likely to draw guests, animate the crowd once they arrive, and attract local press coverage. The optics are usually better for social media — your own and what you can inspire your audience to produce.
Note from Nicola: I attended a book launch party at The Museum of the Home for Jimi Famurewa’s debut book Settlers, and Jennie Agg held the paperback launch for her book, Life, Almost at The Vagina Museum! Bookshops are the obvious choice for book launches but some books have particularly specific hooks that might mean you can be a bit more creative with your choice of location.
Non-bookstore stores and other shopping alternatives
Get inside all the nooks and crannies of your customers’ minds and figure out where they go on a day-to-day basis where they can stumble upon your book, product, or service. Where did we consistently sell dozens of copies of the book A Cook’s Guide to Chicago every month for years? A hole-in-the-wall knife sharpening joint.
Volume sales
Where can you sell books a dozen, 50, 100, or 1,000 at a time? One example from my past involved selling 3,000 copies of The Chicago River Architecture Tour to Wendella tour boats — at a discount that made sense for the volume — to sell as a souvenir to the scads of visitors who patronize this top Chi-Town attraction.
Other actual volume sales customers that might spark an idea for you: large speaking events, workshops funded with government grants, institutes and professional organisations, realtors/ estate agents for closing gifts, conventions, convention goodie-bag vendors.
Your events
Where can you do theme-related events? Start by running through lists of libraries, historical societies, clubs, organisations, professional societies, schools (grade/ primary to grad/ university), tours, bookstores, gift stores, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and booths (festivals, conferences, trade shows, conventions).
Author Dick Lanyon has a four-book series on the history of Chicago’s public waterworks (i.e., water reclamation, sewage, stormwater management). In addition to scores of neighborhood and suburban libraries and historical societies, Lanyon has also presented and sold books to engineering firms, college classes, planning societies, the Chicago Maritime Museum, and the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago.
Other people’s events
Similarly, where are other people holding events that you can latch on to, either by selling your book, product, or service at their thing or having them sell it without your being present?
Ted Okuda is a prolific author on narrow film and TV topics, two of which I published (The Golden Age of Chicago Children’s Television and Chicago’s TV Horror Movie Shows). Assorted dealers have hosted him countless times at their fan and collectors show booths to sign and sell his books.
Another book, Finding Your Chicago Irish, had multiple sales opportunities with different vendors who set up shop at ethnic festivals, holiday bazaars, heritage festivals, and post-church get-togethers.
Your classes
You are presumably an expert of some degree in your book or business’s topic/niche and/or related skills that you can share with others. As with many events, you are not just selling books and products to/at your classes, you should be making money from giving the class or workshop.
Grace DuMelle, author of Finding Your Chicago Ancestors, gives sought-after workshops to beginners and experts on general and niche “how-to” genealogy topics. From here she also gets clients for her house history and oral history work.
Other people’s classes
How can other people, whether they teach kids, teens, college, or adult ed classes use your book with their students? Classes move multiple copies of your book at once.
Our book The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History was used in high school history classes, college and graduate-school planning and environmental science classes, and in hands-on, outdoor adult enrichment programming.
Your tours
Do any of your book’s or business’s themes lend themselves to walking or bus tours? One best-selling author, Ursula Bielski, bought an old school bus, painted it black, and was on her way to building a 20-year ghost-tour business around her Chicago Haunts series.
Other people’s tours
Also good…are other people hosting tours that mesh well with your expertise, your book, or your business?
The City of Chicago once paid Dennis Foley, author of The Streets and San Man’s Guide to Chicago Eats to do a series of tours to eateries in his book for their Downtown Thursday Night events.
No one said promoting and selling a book is easy but there are so many options here I hope you’ve found something that will work for you, or that is worth researching further. Let me know in the comments if you’ve seen any success with any of the ideas here, or might be tempted to try one of them.
Good luck, and if you’d like to know more about Sharon’s work, you can find her here:
🌐 www.conspirecreative.com
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Thanks, Nicola! Loved how you introduced and positioned this.
This was very inspiring! Makes me think of reaching out to hair salons to market my forthcoming non fiction debut or do an event in that space.