Hi there! Duolit is on hiatus, but please feel free to explore our extensive archive of posts and our free Weekend Book Marketing Makeover. Thanks for visiting!

Exclusive Tools for our Indie Family!

For allowing us into your inbox every week, you deserve some awesome freebies to help further your career as an indie author. Check out what we’ve created below and keep an eye on your inbox — you never know when we’ll add a new tool!

The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover

Download the Weekend Book Marketing Makeover

wbmm-transWe asked you to tell us what book marketing tool we could create to help you and received a variety of responses (two of our favorites: an author scrapbook for cataloging your inspirations and a dating guide for authors), including:

  • “Something along the lines of a checklist/to-do list.”
  • “The equivalent of ‘Marketing for Dummies’.”
  • “How to find a marketing strategy that’s a good fit for me.”
  • “I’m a big fan of step by step books and timeline books. So anything that would walk me, step-by-step through 90 days of publishing success would rock! Can you do it in 30?”

How about we do it in a single weekend?

We’ll satisfy all those wishes with a (totally free, but very valuable) makeover guide that will get you excited about marketing your book, eliminate that sleazy feeling, and debunk the marketing myths that are holding you back.

We will reform your book marketing attitude and direction, helping you gain those all-important traits of motivation and focus…in just one weekend!

4-Piece Book Marketing Toolkit

No matter which book marketing ideas you pursue, always respect your reader! The growth of your crazy-dedicated fanbase depends on it :-) Don’t know where to start? Grab a cup of coffee with us!

  1. Get Your Mind Right: The 4 Rules of Successful Book Marketers (PDF)
    Do you know the rules that successful indie authors MUST follow to market their book? Peek inside this must-read exercise to get your mind in check!
  2. Market Your Book (Without Losing All Your Writing Time) (PDF)
    If you’ve thought marketing your book will eliminate all your writing time — think again! This deceptively-simple exercise will make sure you have time for both.
  3. Who is My Target Market? (PDF)
    Marketing to the whole world is impossible — for success, you must narrow your focus, and we make it easy with this 6-step worksheet!
  4. Find Your Best Reader Hangouts (PDF)
    Where can you find new readers? Use this exercise to figure out where they hang out and which places will be most worth your marketing time!

Bonus: More (Totally Free) Tools!

Talk Back

How have you used the tools we’ve provided? What’s your biggest book marketing question? Let us know in the comments!

  • Sweet! Thanks for this–I’ll be checking them out this weekend for sure!

    • You’re quite welcome, Nick :-) I hope they’re helpful!

  • Krystyna Clarke

    Biggest question is how to use Twitter for promotion without just self promoting all the time – so far my experience is that I’ve attracted other authors but we’re all self promoting in that our final goal is to sell OUR books, not each others. So how to attract READERS? Also having trouble cracking the Kindle code – have done everything, good book, good cover, good reviews, tags, but no sales – I know I am new to this but how to get that momentum going is tough. Thanks for what you do!

    • Hey there Krystyna! You’re right — starting out is by far the most difficult part. You put in a ton of effort and feel like you’re not gaining any momentum! I totally understand; we’ve been there! It took us a month and a half of blogging to get our first non-spam comment.

      While we don’t have any posts dealing with content creation on Twitter, check out our series on reader-centered marketing for more details on “marketing without marketing,” in general! It might just give you some ideas. Also, stay tuned for the next session of our 4-week book marketing course; it digs much deeper into this stuff!

      For more on Kindle, in particular, check out 30 Day Books. Laura over there is something of a Kindle expert :-)

  • I’m so stoked about these tips. i self-published a book of short stories a year ago and, boy, has it been tough marketing/promoting. I’m working on a novel(la) now and will implement your suggestions for this book and my first one. Thanks Duolit!

  • Mac

    It was (will be) very useful. Sorry for my tardy response. I’m between marketing two books and publishing the third–no excuse but I’m having a difficult time giving your offers and guidelines the attention they certainly deserve.

    More later,

    Mac

    • Aww, no worries, Mac! I recommend checking out tool #2 — it’ll help you carve out that marketing time :-)

  • Marbaden

    Thank you so much for these tools! I’ve been reading through your website and the tips are so useful!

  • writer2051

    character profile was very useful, thanks

  • Carolyn Davenport-Moncel

    The character profile has been super helpful…thank you!

  • Thrilled to have come across this blog. Congrats on all the great work and growing following. I’ve been marketing 2 short eBooks, writing a 3rd and plan to publish a printed collection of all 3 in 2013 (Thank you Kickstarter!) Already learning a lot here!

    • Congratulations, Michael! We’re thrilled that you found us. It sounds like you have a great plan in place — keep us posted on your progress :-)

  • Cody

    Wow, you’ve got a lot of resources here! I’m totally impressed.

  • Wow! This is a lot of material. l look forward to putting it to use. I have a series of three books published and the fourth is with the editor. My wife does most of the marketing and has been overwhelmed by it so we are looking for guidance. (I just want to write.) These tools look like they are just what the doctor ordered. We are looking forward to your newsletter. Thank you for your generous assistance.

  • Jane Bragg Author

    Learning how to write keys so people can find my books on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.
    Also setting up a great portfolo profile of myself and my books would help me out a lot.
    If I could get help with this sure would be great!

  • Dawn James

    All these tools are very helpful … Thanks for sending them to me. You wanted to know where I am from.. well I am a South African currently living in the UK

  • Joel Wilson

    I am from Little Rock, AR by way of Denver, CO, where I now live. My biggest problems so far is getting my readers to review my book. During the free giveaway days on Kindle, I have given away 2,500 ebooks, but no one is reviewing for me. Also, I could use some advice on how best to promote my books when living on a fixed income. I have a new novel coming out this month.
    I look forward to your blogs and all that I can learn from you. Thanks!

  • Pauline Talbot

    I believe my biggest obstacle is just knowing where and how to start marketing my book. I am a newbie and this is my first adventure that has more downs than ups.I am not so good with facebook or twitter,as far as starting a page or the particulars. I must say that the tool kit was very helpful and is probably the big ‘kick in the pants’ I need to persevere. Thanks for the insights and info!

  • Glenn Maluchnik

    Retired from writing and looking good no more jerks have to put up with not referring to anyone here have a good time if you want to be a writer.

  • S. J. Seymour

    Terrific website, thanks for your material. Your information’s conveniently fitting and the tone’s
    supportive. Hope you keep writing.

    Maybe sales of my short fiction novel Slim Target by S.J. Seymour will soar as I finish the editing process with four more multi-edited manuscripts, and why wouldn’t it? The novel’s been a multi-year effort not just from me but from a team of talented individuals.

    Is it the next great American novel? It’s an exciting and entertaining page-turner of romance and adventure as are my other romantic suspense mystery thrillers. I look forward to reading your inspiring and informative emails.Thanks extremely much.

  • Jan

    Wow! This is really good advice done in a funny and usable way. Congratulations. Will get inmersed in it and actions over the weekend and will talk back!

  • Elke Feuer

    Wish I’d found you ladies before I published my first book! Thankfully I found you before publishing my series.
    These resources are rocking! I especially love the checklists (I’m a checklist freak myself).
    AWESOME job ladies!

  • venkyiyer58

    Wow. That’s a ton of material. Thanks a ton.

  • Angela Rawcliffe

    This is wonderful, I will download these tools and ‘get to work’ thank you! I live in Hythe, near SOUTHAMPTON. The issues I am struggling with is promotion of my debut novel on Kindle and finding time to write the sequel. Bye for now and thank you again ladies.

  • Kathleen

    Thanks for all of this! I’m from northern New Mexico, and while I’m not a total newbie to indie publishing, I’m definitely working against type as I market my work. My biggest challenge is time – nothing you can help with! But I’m whittling away at the problem.

    Thanks for all the duolit posts – I find them very good reading and have now officially subscribed.

  • Athena

    Awesome! I’ve been on vacation and am just having an opportunity to download the information. It’s almost too good to be true! This is a great resource to help indie authors join the ranks fearlessly! Thanks so much.

  • Jane B Night

    Hi. I am Jane from Ohio. In February I published my first book. I am just trying to build a readership at the moment and am trying to give away as many free ebook copies as possible. I am published on Smashwords.
    The problem I am having is that I can’t seem to even give away books. Any advice for that.

  • ellen

    Thanks so much for this. I know it will be a great help and I shall keep you posted about how it has helped me!!

  • Juliette Faraday

    Thank you! Just what I needed 😉

  • ellen

    I have given you info about me already – Ellen from Cape Cod. And thanks again for this book. I have been reading it and reading it.

  • Nesta Tuomey

    Thanks Toni for all the help. Look forward to getting those marketing tips. Sure can use all the help I can get!

  • Sammi G.

    Thanks so much will check them out soon

  • Khadija Craddock

    Thank you for all these priceless author tools. I can’t wait to get cracking on reading them.

  • Lisa Buie-Collard

    Looking through the “weekend” info now. Thanks for the talk today. Happy new year to all! Won’t have any questions until after I get through the info.

  • All these tools look incredibly promising. You can be sure that I’ll be going through each and every one of them over the weekend. Thanks for providing them!

  • Brother Simeon

    Thanks for all your work in putting this together! Quite a resource for aspiring authors.

  • L.A. Remenicky

    Can’t wait to dive into all these tools!

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