A close-up of a phone screen showing a joyful white cat with a chef hat, surrounded by floating pink hearts.

Social Media for Authors:
Book Marketing with JOY

Book marketing — like all marketing — is storytelling.

So many authors (myself included) can talk for days about how much they love telling stories — and spend even more time lamenting how much they hate book marketing. And don’t get me started on social media advertising . . .

A white cat wearing a chef's hat throws its head back and screams.

But what if we could reframe our whole book marketing mindset? What if we could form a strategy that didn’t just alleviate the pain of social media advertising, but infused it with joy?

Let’s explore some practical tips to do just that — and see how Realm Chef is helping real authors get some JOY back into their social media marketing story!

Social Media Marketing for Authors: A Joyful Guide

1. START WITH THE STORY

And not just your book’s story. As we discussed in this post, your author brand is what unifies your book marketing message — and your author brand is the story of YOU. What’s important to you? When you tell people about your books, what are you most excited to share? Channel that joy into your social media marketing! Let YOUR author story — the fundamentals of YOU that shine through in all your work, and the bits of your book that make you come especially alive — guide your social media advertising strategy.

2. BE A GOOD HOST

Remember: this isn’t about self-promotion! If the thought of talking about yourself makes you squirm / gag / want to hide under a rock, fret not. You’re inviting people into YOUR story as an avenue to your book’s story, so be a good host! How can you make their journey to your book easier, faster, and more pleasant? Reframe “social media advertising” as hospitality, and get your readers to their destination in style.

3. CREATE WHAT YOU WANT TO CONSUME

We’ve all heard the wise adage: write the book you want to read. It’s the same with social media marketing for authors: create the content you want to see! That means:

getting on your social media platform of choice first, and seeing what’s out there
giving yourself time to explore, learning what's popular AND which popular posts you most enjoy engaging with
adapting the model of those posts to your story (your author brand, and your books!)

4. FIND THE BALANCE

Make a plan; give yourself grace. Social media marketing for authors can be, simultaneously, an overwhelming task and an all-consuming void, so I find it helpful to plan it out.

Set achievable posting goals (twice a day? once a week? what’s realistically attainable for you?).
Mark out time on the calendar to meet those goals.
When life happens and the goals DON’T happen, give yourself a break. Don’t waste emotional energy on beating yourself up; channel that energy into getting back in the game the next day.

Share about your book; share about yourself. Your target audience are the readers who love your author brand — both the story of YOU, and the stories you write!

Post teasers, tropes, snappy bits of dialogue — whatever highlights the book and makes the reader want to dive in. (Who doesn’t love a sneak peek?)‍
Post tidbits of your process: your favorite coffee shop, your struggles with writer’s block, your adorable furry writing partner — whatever highlights your unique humanity. (Who doesn’t love a behind-the-scenes exclusive?)

One practical tip: if you’re talking in the video, be sure to include captions. Many people scroll through social media with the sound off, so you want to be sure they don’t miss your message!

5. BE YOURSELF

Have you heard? Authenticity is trending. Let's keep it that way.

A fluffy white cat wearing a chef's hat stretches out on its back, playfully waving its paws in the air.

Realm Chef: A Social Media Marketing Joy-Infusion

Realm Chef is designed to be your ally in the social media advertising quest. How? Upload your book, and then go through each of the steps we just discussed — with Chef!

Through the chat feature, Chef can help you:

identify your target audience
clarify your author brand
brainstorm a social media advertising strategy personalized to YOUR book marketing story
make a social media marketing schedule
pull tropes, taglines, and punchy teaser scenes from your text (helpful for book marketing)
generate social media advertising copy (TikTok scripts, Facebook ads, Reel captions, and more!)

. . . all with a cheerful, encouraging perspective!

One Author’s Joyful Book Marketing Story with Chef

Check out this excerpt from our interview with Zoey Indiana, a successful indie paranormal romance author and early Realm Chef customer:

RUTH:

We've talked about how Chef saves you time and helps make you more money. What about just the fun element—the pain versus fun ratio in your writing process? How is Chef helping there?

ZOEY:

So for me, anybody who will willingly talk to me for hours about my books is already really fun and exciting. But when I'm trying to do marketing and I'm super frustrated because I just don't want to do this one more time; I don't want to stare at a blank page and think, what am I going to make a TikTok about? Or what am I going to write a story about? It doesn't matter what the context is, because the blank page is the most intimidating thing you could ever look at. And I can just say: “Chef, this is what I need.” And Chef replies: “Okay, here.” And I can say, “Okay, well, that was one; maybe give me ten examples.” And Chef pops out ten! No complaint.‍

And I find myself thinking, “This is a great book. Who wrote this book? Oh, right: ME! But I really like this book!” This is great because sometimes when you work with your own book over and over and over, you start to lose the passion of it, especially when you're trying to market and you have to write your stupid blurb. The blurb—everyone hates writing the blurb. But sometimes Chef rephrases things in a way where I get really excited about it, and I'm thinking, “Oh, this is really intriguing. Now I want to read it.” And then I realize: “I can market with this. This is FUN.”