How to Sell More Books in 2025: Top Book Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore!

The book marketing landscape is a crazy, chaotic world of choices, dead ends, rejections and opportunities all hidden behind prickly bushes. If that's daunting or overwhelming, well, you're not alone. But this video is going to help you. If you want me to break down specific strategies, tools and real life examples to help you market your book successfully using market trends in 2025 and beyond, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, four time author and 20 times award winning author. We've helped more than 700 authors at Book Launchers and probably a whole lot more through these videos. Drop me a comment if we've helped you. And today I want to help you even more with ways you can stay on top of book marketing trends without doing this full, full time like we do. And there's a lot to cover. So let's go. All right, number one, what are your readers looking for? There are a lot of ways to stay on top of trends and changes, but my favorite tool is Publisher Rocket for finding out what people are searching for. And with their new Reverse ASIN lookup tool, I can do this even easier. Even if you did keyword and category research when you launched your book or six months before you launched your book, it's important to check on this periodically because guess what? Keywords have trends. Let me give you a few examples of words that have trended or are trending. Coquette this is an aesthetic trending word based on reclaiming girlhood and it's seen 157,000 searches for its meaning and it influences fashion and lifestyle product choices. Preppy is another word, or busin, which is literally used to describe desirable products. It's had 34,720 searches and and granted, these aren't examples that are probably words you're using in your book or your book description, but they might be if you're writing about fashion design or Gen Z trends. But what I'm trying to say is that our language changes, so what we're searching for changes. And it changes as the year goes by. For example, right now in the US it's election season, so all kinds of searches will be ranking right now related to what is democracy, how does a president elected, how to vote, or searches for the actual candidates, names, party information, and so much more. So that will change seasonally. Then there will be searches for Black Friday holiday deals, gifts for husbands, gifts for seven year old parents. Then it's New Year's resolutions, Valentine's Day. You get the point. So Rocket will help you and this reverse ASIN feature. Well, let's take a speedy look. Let's look at Kathy Campbell's book, one of our fabulous book launchers clients and her book Obesity the Modern Famine Today. Discover the underlying drivers of weight and navigate your way to health. When you look here, you can see what words have worked to sell her book with the approximate sales volume and the competition score. I like the help for obesity. It has a higher search volume and a low competition score. I'd be focused on that one all day long, but interestingly it doesn't have as many sales as a keyword like obesity weight loss pills. Anyway, I would export this and hang onto it and then do a search for another book in your category and start to see where the words are that are working to sell books for multiple books that are in a category like yours. Now if you're going, great, but what do I do with these words? Well, good news, I have a video coming out in a few weeks on that, so make sure you're subscribed and have those notifications turned on so you catch that one. Of course, if you're earlier in the process of writing your book, you could even be searching for what readers are searching for, allowing you to tailor your book content and marketing strategies to be something your market is actually looking for. By understanding reader preferences, you can create a book that that meets market demand. Of course, Publisher Rocket is just one tool for getting into the minds of readers. I'll link to a video I did on how to get into the minds of readers at the end of this video so you can do a little bit more deep reader research. Next thing, how to monitor trends on social media and tap into them for your book marketing. To do this, you can use platform specific trending sections. Most social media platforms have sections that show trending topics, including hashtags. Here's how you can find trending hashtags on major platforms. Instagram Use the Explore tab to see trending posts and hashtags. When you start typing a hashtag in the search bar, Instagram will show you related hashtags and how many posts. Use each hashtag. Twitter or X. On the homepage you'll find a Trends for you section that shows currently trending topics and hashtags. You can also adjust the location to see global trends. TikTok in the Discover section, the magnifying glass icon TikTok displays trending hashtags, challenges, and music. On LinkedIn, you can search for hashtags relevant to your industry and see how many people are following that hashtag. LinkedIn also suggests trending hashtags as you write a post. Of course, there are also tools that will do some of this work for you, like Hashtagify. It helps you discover trending hashtags on X and Instagram and provides data on hashtag popularity, related hashtags and usage patterns. There's Write Tag which is R I T E tag. It provides real time suggestions for hashtags when you upload an image or type text for social posts. It also shows trending hashtags and hashtag performance. There's Trends Map which focuses on X hashtags and shows geographically trending hashtags and you can use this to target trends in your region or city. Do you have a tool you love? Go ahead and put them in the comments below. I'd love to learn your tools. You can also do a search for influencers in the book world or authors in your genre and check the hashtags they are using in their posts. That is almost always a good strategy, especially if you know they've been blowing up lately like Dan Martell or Cody Sanchez. You know their social media team is killing it because they have grown their reach massively in a relatively short period of time. Once you know what is trending, get to work on creating some content around your book to tap into that trend. It's not just a nice thing to know. You have to take action on this content creation opportunity and start finding more readers and building your audience. Remember, your content should add value and if possible, be enjoyable to consume either visually or in how you deliver the content. All right, last thing, plug into industry news for the latest trends. And really, this is not at all a last but not least kind of thing. You need to stay connected to the publishing industry, which you're doing by hanging out here. High five. But there's a few other things to do. You can subscribe to industry newsletters like Publisher Weekly, Jane Friedman's Blog, or Her Hot Sheet. You can subscribe to YouTube channels like Book Launchers. Hint hint. You are subscribed, right? Go ahead. I'll wait. Or Dale Roberts self Publishing. He's always on top of the latest news or listen to his podcast or the Sell More Books show as they cover the latest news topics. My personal favorite way to stay on top of book marketing trends is attend events like Author Nation, which is happening in Las Vegas November 11th to 15th this year and around this time of year next year too. If you come to the event, come on over to our booth and say hi on the vendors day. Or come on over to Rave on the Friday because we'll be participating in Rave along with some of our book launchers. Authors marketing your book can feel like navigating a maze that keeps changing while you're trying to get through. I think it makes it fun and interesting because there's always new things that might work and interesting trends to tap into to help readers find you and your book. But I know it can be a little tricky. Now, this is the video I promised on getting into the minds of your reader, and this video is all about the truth of self publishing and making money as an author. Both are going to be great. Click on over. I'll see you there.