Your author newsletter is a crucial tool for building a strong, direct connection with readers, even before your first book is out. But it’s a good idea to think strategically about encouraging readers to sign up. When we get so many emails already, many of us ask ourselves: What’s in it for me?

If you’ve used Google or other search engines lately, you’ve probably noticed that the results, and the way books and authors appear in them, are changing. Searches no longer return just a long list of links — they include rich data, FAQs, AI summaries, and other new answer formats.

These changes are both a challenge and an opportunity — authors who adapt and earn placement in the new, richer results stand to sell more books and grow their audience. Meanwhile, authors who don’t adjust could see declines in their search-driven traffic and sales.

What do you need to do to make sure you benefit from these changes?

This article aims to answer that question by looking at the key ways search is changing, and the steps you can take to prepare.

Content marketing can be a wonderful way for authors to attract an audience to their books — but does this type of marketing make sense for you? You’re already creating content when you write your books, so why should you create even more content to promote them? And what content can you produce on a regular basis that your audience will actually care about?

EDITORIAL NOTES: For fiction authors, create illustrated editions of key moments in your books on YouTube — perhaps even in Shorts — and link them back in the description to your book marketing page for a chance at reeling in new readers from a wider pool of potential readers. For nonfiction authors, create illustrated instructional or educational YouTube videos covering key tips and tricks from your books, and remember again to link them back in the description to your book marketing page. Once your YouTube channel becomes eligible for monetization, get it monetized and have an e-commerce store ready to integrate with your YouTube channel — an e-commerce store filled to overflowing, of course, with your book listings.

Promoting your books is a crucial component of reaching more readers and getting in front of your audience. While there’s no single promotional tool that is universally effective for books, one strategy that many authors rely on is display advertising. And this strategy is broad — display advertising can encompass many different platforms, tactics, and goals, and is infinitely customizable to each advertiser’s unique business.

Sales lagging? Advertising budget running low? Go wide. Worldwide! Dare the whole world to ignore you. Someone, somewhere, who needs what you’re offering, is going to find it. I need to do this!

It’s one thing to decide to self-publish “wide” across retail and library platforms, versus being exclusive to a single retailer. It’s quite another to adopt a mindset that can help you grow a larger base of readers.