By Chantal Cooke, author of ‘The Authority Guide to Marketing your Business Book' and founder of boutique PR Agency Panpathic Communications

‘For many business authors book sales aren't the primary aim. Rather it's about building your authority and visibility within your niche and enabling you, and your business, to reach a
wider audience'

For many business authors book sales aren't the primary aim. Rather it's about building your authority and visibility within your niche and enabling you, and your business, to reach a wider audience. Although a book can really help you to achieve this - it will only do so if you put some effort into marketing it and letting people know about it.

At the very least, make sure you do all the obvious things; talk about it on social media; send out a press release; tell all your friends and business colleagues.

But beyond that - what else can you do to market your book while, at the same time, building your business?

1)         Take an extract from your book and create a ‘white paper' or a set of useful ‘top tips'. Ensure your branding is on this, plus details of your book and where to buy and, very importantly, how to contact you. Offer this as a pdf download on your website and use it to collect the email addresses of potential customers. If they are interested in the ‘white paper/tips' then they are partially qualified leads. So put them to good use.

2)         Enrol your Kindle book in Amazon's KDP Select and make the most of the ability to offer the book for free for five days in every three months. This may seem counter intuitive but you need lots of reviews and a good ranking to make your book fly on Amazon, and giving away a few copies for free can really help.  In addition, the more people you can encourage to read your book, even for free, the more you build your authority and visibility among your target audience. If giving the book away for free to a few people leads to one new paying client - the book has probably already made you a profit.

3)         Take your book with you everywhere. Always have a copy with you, so you can show it to people, sell them a copy there and then, pose with it in photos, etc. You never know when you'll meet a potential reader, or when your book might tip the balance when it comes to closing a deal.  Use it at your talks, on exhibition stands and, wherever appropriate, if you are being photographed, make sure you're holding a copy of your book. 

A book can really help to boost your business - but only if you leverage it. So make sure you develop a book marketing plan and stick to it. That way you'll not only drive book sales but you'll also start to generate a steady flow of new client enquiries.