Start where trust already exists
The first hundred copies come from people who know you: an email list, past clients, a course audience, colleagues. Tell them plainly what the book does and for whom, and ask the ones it helped for a review — reviews are the store's currency and the early ones set the tone. If you have no list, the lead magnet is how you build one: a free, shorter book on the same problem, with this book as its natural next step. Selling to strangers before selling to the people who already trust you skips the cheapest channel there is.
Go where the question is asked
Your reader is already somewhere asking the question the book answers: a subreddit, a professional forum, a search box, a newsletter's comments. Answer the question there, usefully and completely, and mention the book only where it genuinely goes deeper. A guide on your own site that ranks for the question does the same job at scale; it earns the click by being the best answer, and the book is the next step for the reader who wants more. This is slow and it compounds; paid promotion is fast and stops the moment you stop paying.
Test paid promotion last, and small
Ads amplify a page that converts; they cannot fix one that does not. Before spending, make sure a visitor who lands on the book's page understands the result, sees a cover that reads at thumbnail size, and finds a description that names the reader. Then spend a small fixed amount, send the clicks to that page, and use the sales funnel calculator to see whether visits × conversion × contribution per sale covers the spend. If it does not, the fix is on the page or in the book, not in the budget. If it does, scale slowly and keep measuring.
Common questions
Straight answers
Do free promotion days work?+
Inside KDP Select, a free promotion or a countdown deal can move a book up the charts and gather reviews. They work best with a list to tell; a free book nobody hears about stays unread.
What about social media?+
Treat it as a place to be useful, not a billboard. Posts that solve one small piece of the book's problem bring the right readers; posts that say "buy my book" bring none.
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