Use Blogging to Market Your Novels Without Social Media

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts about marketing for fiction authors without using social media.

SEO for blogs:

Unlike with nonfiction authors, blogging about nonfiction topics doesn’t automatically garner more sales for fiction authors. Sometimes readers will do a Google search for something they read in a novel, but from my experience and from talking with lots of other indie authors, fiction readers don’t necessarily care that much about nonfiction blog posts. So for some fiction authors, nonfiction blog posts don’t do anything to help them get more readers.

However, blogging in general is a great way to post evergreen long-form content on a space you own, if you host your blog on your domain. My blog platform is Blogspot, but my blog itself is at https://blog.camytang.com. I like the fact it’s on my domain.

Evergreen long-form content is posts that continue to market for you for years to come. Some fiction authors will post nonfiction topics (Sarah Sundin posts about WW2, which is the era of her books), some will post lists and links (“5 Things a Regency Lady Keeps in Her Reticule,” “4 Reasons Why I Set My Series in Hawaii,” “5 Top Christian Romance Authors I Love”).

I prefer to post bonuses and extras about my books so that my readers will enjoy the books even more with these behind-the-scenes tidbits about them.

Blogging bonus content

In 2023-2024, I experimented with cross-posting on both Facebook and my blog, so a lot of the older blog content includes some quick “Facebook-like” posts for shallow engagement and value. However, I looked at the stats of my blog and pivoted at the end of 2024, and I stopped cross-posting to blog less frequently and focus instead on the posts that seemed to get the most traction.

I take some of the longer annotations from the annotated edition of my latest novel and repost them as blog posts. I figure I get extra mileage for the time I take to do the annotations. I sometimes simply copy the text from the annotated edition, and other times it’ll be an original blog post and I’ll simply link to the post in the annotated edition.

Here’s a breakdown of the type of bonus content in my annotated edition and which I blog about;

a) Easter Eggs:

I will often mention characters from my other series in my current book, so I’ll blog about “Miss Church-Pratton appeared in Prelude for a Lord as the hero’s ex-fiancee, and she also makes an appearance in my novelette, “Bidding on Treason” as the villainess’s best friend.” Readers seem to like seeing the hidden secrets in my books.

I have also posted deleted scenes or deleted snippets or flash fiction related to the last book I published in order to generate interest in my latest work. Here's an example.

b) Research facts:

I don’t blog a lot about research because in general, my readers don’t seem to care as much about those types of blog posts. But since I will mention research facts in my annotated edition, I’ll repost some of those footnotes as a blog post. Sometimes, if I can add extra pictures that I can’t include in the annotated edition, I’ll then link to the blog post in the annotated edition so people can follow the link to see the photos and read the research fact on my blog.

I mentioned above that research posts tend not to be very popular with my audience, but they could be popular with other authors’ audiences. You just have to try it and then analyze the data.

For my genre, historical romances, and for my readers specifically, they tend not to like research posts, and I see the truth of that in my post views. I personally suspect that a lot of research posts on the web may be more popular with fellow authors writing in a similar genre than with readers. But I might be wrong, so authors need to test it for themselves.

Here’s an example of a research fact post.

c) Behind-the-scenes tidbits:

I’ll sometimes explain why a chapter turned out the way it did, or why I originally didn’t write the scene this way, or something like that. Readers seem to like this peek into my writing process.

I will also sometimes comment on extras about the characters that are only in my own personal character notes. For example, one of my protagonists has dyslexia (although it wasn’t diagnosed in that historical period), and while it’s not mentioned in the series yet, I added it to a footnote in the annotated edition as a hidden secret I shared with the reader. In the same way, I add extra tidbits about the characters in the footnotes and will sometimes copy those footnotes into a blog post.

Here’s an example of a behind-the-scenes character post.

I also blog about the covers of the books and which character is represented by the stock photo, and then some tidbits about the character’s personality and backstory.

I also comment about other extra things in the book. For example, the symbol of the treasonous organization in my series is actually my family crest (which I suppose means my family is a treasonous organization! LOL) and I blogged about it, showing my family crest. I also used my family crest as my logo, so I showed my logo alongside. I then linked to the blog post in the footnotes of the annotated edition so people could see the photos.

I suppose that the majority of my blog posts are when I have a photo to accompany the footnote which I can’t include in the annotated edition, and so I link to the blog post and the photos.

I’ve also occasionally posted deleted scenes on my blog, but recently I’ve been posting those only for my Patreon. Sometimes the deleted scene will be available to my Free Followers, but other times it’s only available for my paid subscribers.

d) Author commentary:

I will often write goofy author commentary in the footnotes of the annotated edition, and then if the commentary is lengthy enough, I’ll copy it into a blog post and maybe add a little more to it.

For example, when a character thought things couldn’t get any worse, I commented with “Nope! Just wait a chapter or two.” Readers seem to find that amusing.

However, I don’t blog about this as often since I try to aim for longer blog posts rather than short one-liners. But this would be fun if I posted images of the annotated pages with the author commentary in a blog post. I haven’t done that yet, but I might after this series is finished. Also, posting the annotated edition pages might garner interest in the annotated version, which is only available to buy from my website.

Pinterest:

I admit I started Pinterest because it sounds like another version of Google, but I’m only just starting. I didn’t always blog evergreen posts, but I still have a lot from the past several years, and so I have lots of blog posts I could pin. But that’s pretty overwhelming, so I’m starting slowly.

What I’m doing at the moment is whenever I link to a blog post in my newsletter, I’ll also make pins to pin the same URL to different Pinterest boards. I ask ChatGPT to help me write titles and descriptions for each pin, then I create the graphics in Canva (there are lots of great templates in Canva so I don’t have to look very hard for something I can just plug in my info and use). Then I schedule the pins to post one a week for the next several weeks. And it’s done.

When I pin a blog post, I’ll usually go back to it to revise it if necessary, update any links, and I’ll also add a meta description or search description for the blog post for SEO.

Eventually, I’ll get around to pinning all the evergreen posts I have on my blog. I don’t know for sure if Pinterest will actually help me get more eyes on my blog, but I figure I should at least try it. It’s not that much work to make and schedule the pins at the same time I’m writing my newsletter, and Pinterest is another avenue where people can find my website and writing.

About Substack:

I blog rather than using Substack because I control the domain name for my blog and I just feel more comfortable about that. I will sometimes link to a blog post within the footnotes in my annotated edition, and I felt uncomfortable linking to Substack rather than my blog at camytang.com. I’m probably being paranoid, but I didn’t want to link to Substack and then have it disappear, and I’d have to fix all the links.

I also didn’t want to cross-post on Substack and my blog. I read that it’s not good SEO to have the same content on two websites, and I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to be adjusting the Substack posts to be different from the blog posts.

I know I’d probably get more reader growth if I used Substack, but because of the annotated edition links, I made the decision to not continue my Substack.

I also haven’t heard of fiction authors who successfully use Substack to promote their fiction, aside from using Substack as their newsletter. Not all fiction genres can be marketed well by nonfiction articles and blog posts—while it might work with historical fiction, it doesn’t work as well with historical romance.

Some authors will offer chapters of their book for paid subscribers on their Substack, but I mostly hear of success with book chapters when authors have their own Patreon. Also Substack only allows 1-2 tiers while Patreon can allow several tiers of support, which fiction authors usually use to give superfans extra content like audiobooks, paperback copies, custom stories, and book boxes.