7 Calming Ways To Market Your Self-Help Book To an Anxious Audience

9 min readFeb 17, 2021

#4: Share reviews as testimonials that the book is helping others

Publishing my self-help book when anxiety is rocketing through the roof, I had to develop strategies to sell it.
As a mental health advocate, most of my audience suffers from mental health issues, where my new book that spoke about my own mental health journey is seen as a mental hygiene guide.
I would be selling to an audience that was feeling nervous, anxious, and depressed. My goal in sharing this book with them was to alleviate the problems they were having without worsening their condition. I wanted to help them and provide a tool for them without marketing in a distressing way.
I was successfully able to sell my book, which has been downloaded 70 times and continues to sell well. People are dealing with a lot right now in their personal lives and in the world around them.

Here are some of the strategies that I used to help market this self-help book to them. If you are working with an audience facing anxiety at this time, find these seven strategies to help you market your book to your audience.
Here are seven calming ways to market your next self-help book to an anxious audience.
“Anxiety is nothing… but repeatedly reexperiencing failure in advance. What a waste.” — Seth Godin
Write Encouraging and Compassionate Sales Copy
Don’t scare or make them afraid in your sales copy. Do not push their pain points, as they say in marketing speak. Instead, be kind and courageous. One way I do this is by being understanding of their current needs. I speak to them as if they are my best friend. You see, my best friend passed away due to mental health issues, and ever since I have made it my mission to spread peace to people who are suffering.
This book was a product of heartache and enthusiasm to help others after he passed away. So I always seem to have him in mind when I am writing copy that will connect with an audience that is suffering.

We are all suffering in one way or another — you don’t have to remind them of the suffering, but rather remind them that it’s OK not to feel OK. This is my motto and mission in most of my copy to help calm an anxious audience.
Help Your Audience While Promoting Your Book
When on Instagram, I realized that the more my audience saw my face, the better they connect with me, are ready to engage, and then buy my book.
So I started doing lives with other mental health advocates where we spoke about my book and issues like depression, how to get out of bed in the morning, etc. All these issues are current burdens to anxious people, so the more you can create value and give advice, the more your audience will want to buy something from you because they will see you as knowledgeable in this field of expertise.
Building up my audience by doing lives was scary at first, especially going live and sometimes not knowing what to say or who/if anyone will show up. But the more confident you are, the more attention you grab, so go for it and don’t be scared!
Instagram log-in page on a phone.

The third calming way to market your self-help book to an anxious audience is to:
Reach Out To Reviewers for Followers To See and Feel at Ease
There will be reviewers reaching out to you most of the time if you post about your book regularly like me. At the start, you may need to reach out to reviewers yourself for some good ratings, but then with time and posting, you will see all the reviewers creep out of the woodwork (that sounds freaky ha!).
To begin with my first week of marketing my book before it had even come out, I looked for some potential reviewers to read my book. This way, when they review your book, your anxious audience will see the difference it has made in others’ lives and maybe feel persuaded to purchase your book without being made to feel more anxiety but made to feel hopeful that the book will help them with their anxiety.
Share Reviews as Testimonials That the Book Is Helping Others
After reaching out to reviewers, they then share their reviews in time. Patience is key. The feeling of a reviewer giving you a five-star rating is amazing, to say the least. This is considered a calming way to feed your anxious audience because you are not shoving the book down their face the whole time, but showing them that the book is actually loved by people and is most importantly, helping people with their anxiety and mental health issues.
One review I got that suggests the importance of mental hygiene and how my book helps with it was:
“This book is all about guidance and awareness that the author wants to give to all of us through her real-life experience. As the title suggests, one needs to be chill in life and should be happy whatever the situation is. Smile is the only medicine for every problem. The book guides us on how to react and face the bad phase of our lives and convert negative vibes into positive vibes. Positive vibes can help you feel good about quitting and sticking to your plan.”
Share Your Journey To Help Your Audience See What’s Possible in Your Personal Story, So They Understand You
When on Instagram, it’s easy to show everyone the best parts of your life. In fact, on social media in general, we tend only to share what is going well with our lives and not what isn’t going so well. I decided otherwise.
As a mental health advocate and a sufferer from depression, I once posted a photo of me feeling very low in bed. This showed that actually I am just a normal person like everyone else and even as an author of a self-help book, I can be in bed at times feeling all the feelings in the world.
What’s most important on social media to connect to your anxious audience is to be yourself. Be genuine, be you, be true. Remember to share your struggles as well as your successes!
The author shares a post about mental health.The author shares a post about mental health.

Do Giveaways To Help People Who Can’t Afford Your Book
Anxiety over money is real. People aren’t spending as much these days due to financial turmoil, so I decided to do a few giveaways for my anxious audience. One of the reasons was to relieve their financial stress and give them a chance to win something where I could send the signed copy!
Some people expressed the price was a bit too high for them at the moment (I put my paperback price up two weeks into sales), so they’d wait a few weeks or months until they can afford it.
This gave me the idea that giveaways are for people who really need a free copy, so I don’t need to stress them financially. Fifteen people participated in my giveaway of a free copy, and three people won based in India. I was chuffed because many people in India when I messaged them said they didn’t have the funds to spend on my book.

To sell your book(s), you must make healthy relationships with your audience. At times, this may mean spending more time private messaging people to build relationships with them. When they share their struggles with you, and you believe your book can help them, you can suggest your book… Don’t go straight away into selling your book, but genuinely ask how they are doing — more likely than not, they won’t be doing so well considering everything that is happening right now with the world.
Once you know what they’re struggling with, determine what resources could help them. If you think your book can help, suggest it. Suppose your book doesn’t address that issue, guide them to other resources that can help them. Share with them tips that have worked for you. Ask if they like reading — that is what I did. If they say they enjoy reading, I gave them a link to my book and suggested they like it. Most of the time, they were very open and willing to buy it then.
There you have it! Seven calming ways to market your self-help book to an anxious audience!
You Can Help People While Marketing Your Books
The bottom line is you don’t have to use slimy marketing strategies to sell your book during these times. Many people are dealing with personal challenges and struggles. People are facing self-sabotaging thoughts, loneliness, and fear about the future. Please don’t add to it.
There is a healthy and productive way to sell your next self-help book. People need your book now more than ever. Now is the time to provide more encouraging words for people to write and sell their book and do it in a healthy and empathetic way.
Are you an author with a book to promote? What strategies and tips are working for you? Please share in the comments below.

7 Calming Ways To Market Your Self-Help Book To an Anxious Audience

Written by scric strak