Fiction vs Nonfiction Book Marketing: What Actually Changes
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
If you write fiction, you’ve probably heard book marketing advice that sounds like it was made for a business author. And if you write nonfiction, you’ve probably looked at BookTok-style marketing and wondered how any of it applies to you. The truth is, fiction and nonfiction book marketing aren’t completely different, but the reason readers buy is. In this episode, Jenn breaks down the distinction that makes marketing advice much easier to evaluate, so you can stop copying tactics that don’t fit your book and start marketing in a way that makes sense for the readers you actually want to reach.
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Have you ever heard a piece of book marketing advice and thought, “Okay, that might work for a nonfiction author, but what am I supposed to do with that as a novelist?”
Or maybe you write nonfiction, and you keep seeing authors talk about tropes, aesthetics, character teasers, and BookTok trends, and you’re wondering how any of that is supposed to help you sell a business book, memoir, or self-help book.
This is one of the reasons book marketing advice can feel so confusing.
Because fiction and nonfiction authors are often given the same advice, even though readers aren’t choosing those books for the same reasons.
So today, I want to clear this up.
I’m Jenn Hanson-dePaula. I’ve spent nearly 20 years helping fiction and nonfiction authors simplify their marketing, connect with the right readers, and sell more books.
And in this episode, I’m going to show you what actually changes between fiction and nonfiction book marketing, what stays exactly the same, and one question you can use to make better marketing decisions no matter what kind of book you write.
What Doesn’t Change
Let’s start with what doesn’t change, because I think this is where authors sometimes overcomplicate things.
Fiction and nonfiction authors do not need two completely different marketing universes.
The basic reader journey is still the same.
Someone has to discover you or your book.
They have to recognize that what you’re talking about is relevant to them.
They need some reason to become interested, curious, connected, or invested.
Then they need a clear path to take the next step and eventually buy the book.
That applies whether you wrote a psychological thriller, a historical romance, a memoir, a leadership book, or a guide to growing tomatoes.
You still need to know who your reader is.
You still need to understand why that person would be interested in your book.
You still need a clear way to communicate that.
You still need visibility and some way to build a relationship with people who aren’t ready to buy immediately.
And eventually, you have to ask people to buy the book.
Those pieces don’t disappear just because you move from fiction to nonfiction.
Where things start to change is in the reason the reader says yes.
And that reason affects almost everything that comes after it.
What Is Your Reader Actually Buying?
Think about it this way.
When someone buys a fiction book, they’re choosing an experience.
When someone buys a nonfiction book, they’re usually choosing some kind of outcome, answer, understanding, or transformation.
That distinction might sound simple, but it has a huge impact on your marketing.
Let’s start with fiction.
A fiction reader isn’t standing in a bookstore thinking, “I need 87,000 words about two people living in a seaside town.”
They’re looking for how they want to feel.
Maybe they want the tension of an enemies-to-lovers romance.
Maybe they want the comfort of a cozy mystery where justice is eventually restored and the world feels manageable again.
The plot, genre, and characters are important, of course.
But underneath all of that is an experience the reader wants to have.
So for fiction, one of the most useful questions you can ask is:
What does my ideal reader want to experience when they pick up a book like mine?
Now compare that with nonfiction.
Someone buying a nonfiction book is usually trying to do something, understand something, solve, change, or make sense of something.
Maybe they’ve just been promoted and suddenly realize they have no idea how to manage people.
Maybe they’re trying to understand their finances, navigating grief, or starting a business.
The nonfiction reader is asking something closer to:
Can this book help me get from where I am now to where I want to be?
That is a very different buying motivation.
And this is why a piece of marketing advice can technically be correct for both fiction and nonfiction and still need to look completely different when you apply it.
How Your Message Changes
Let’s start with your message.
If you write fiction, your marketing needs to help the right reader recognize the kind of experience your book gives them.
And this is where authors sometimes get stuck because they think marketing means summarizing the plot over and over again.
It doesn’t.
Let’s say you wrote a second-chance romance.
You could spend all your time explaining who the two main characters are, where the story takes place, what their jobs are, and what happens in chapter one.
Or you can start talking to the reader who already loves stories about two people with a complicated past being forced back into each other’s lives.
Now we’re talking about what that reader already wants.
The emotional tension, longing, and the history.
The question of whether people really can find their way back to each other after too much has happened.
That gives your reader something to recognize.
For nonfiction, your message needs to make the problem and the desired outcome clear.
Let’s say you wrote a leadership book.
“Here’s my book about leadership” isn’t much of a reason to stop and pay attention.
But maybe your ideal reader has just moved into management and feels completely unprepared to lead former peers.
Now you have something specific.
You can talk about what happens when being good at your job suddenly isn’t enough because your new job requires you to get results through other people.
That reader can recognize themselves in the problem.
So in both cases, good marketing creates recognition.
The fiction reader thinks, “That is exactly the kind of story I love.”
The nonfiction reader thinks, “That is exactly what I’m dealing with.”
Same principle.
Different reason for paying attention.
How Your Content Changes
Now let’s look at content, because this is where I see authors copying tactics that don’t make sense for their book.
A nonfiction author sees someone teaching on Instagram and thinks, “Okay, I guess I need to teach something in every post.”
A fiction author tries the same thing and suddenly they’re making educational posts that have almost nothing to do with why someone would want to read their novel.
You don’t need to turn your romance novel into a class.
For fiction, useful content might revolve around reader identity, tropes, themes, character dynamics, emotional tension, atmosphere, or the kinds of reading experiences your audience already loves.
If you write gothic fiction, for example, you might talk about the settings, themes, moral questions, character types, or unsettling emotional experiences that gothic readers are drawn to.
You’re creating recognition around the world your reader wants to enter.
For nonfiction, teaching something often makes more sense because useful information can demonstrate how you think and help the reader understand the problem differently.
You might address a misconception.
Explain a small part of your method.
Show why something they’ve already tried isn’t working.
You’re creating recognition around the situation the reader wants to change.
And notice what I’m not saying here.
I’m not saying fiction authors should never teach anything.
I’m not saying nonfiction authors can’t be entertaining or tell stories.
Those are formats.
The important thing is the job underneath the format.
Your content should make the right person more interested in what your book gives them.
Your Email List Changes Too
The same thing happens with your email list.
Authors often hear, “You need a reader magnet.”
Yes, that’s great advice.
But a fiction reader and a nonfiction reader want completely different reasons to join.
A fiction reader might want a prequel, a short story, or something that gives them more of the reading experience they already enjoy.
They are essentially saying, “Yes, give me more of this world.”
A nonfiction reader might want an assessment, a template, companion guide, workbook, or another tool connected to the problem they’re already trying to solve.
They’re saying, “Yes, help me take the next step.”
It’s the same strategy to build an email list.
But it’s a completely different reason to subscribe.
And if you copy another author’s reader magnet without understanding why their reader wanted it, you can end up building something that looks perfectly professional and attracts almost nobody.
The Path After the Book Can Be Different
There’s one more important difference, especially for nonfiction authors.
For a lot of fiction authors, the long-term path is to make them want more.
Another book.
The next book in the series.
A backlist title.
Another series.
The author is building a community of readers that want to keep reading.
For nonfiction, the book may have a much bigger job.
Is the goal simply to sell copies of the book?
Or is it to lead to speaking opportunities?
Introduce people to your business?
Build authority around your expertise?
Is it leading to consulting, a course, a community, or another resource?
There isn’t one correct answer.
But if you don’t know what the book is supposed to do, it becomes very difficult to build a marketing system around it.
Because “sell more books” may not be the entire goal.
Stop Copying the Tactic. Look at the Buying Reason.
This is the mistake I want you to watch for.
You see another author doing something successfully.
You copy the tactic.
And then you’re frustrated when it doesn’t work the same way for you.
But the better question is:
Why does that strategy work for their reader?
Let’s say a fiction author has great success posting beautiful graphics around a very recognizable trope.
The graphic itself isn’t the strategy.
The strategy is that the post immediately signals an experience the reader already knows they want.
Or maybe a nonfiction author is getting great engagement by explaining common mistakes in their field.
Again, teaching isn’t the strategy.
The strategy is that their reader recognizes a current problem and starts seeing the author as someone who can help solve it.
If you only copy the visible tactic, you miss the part doing the actual work.
This is why generic book marketing advice becomes so frustrating.
The advice might not be wrong.
It may simply have been given to an author with a different reader, a different book, or a different buying path.
The Questions I Want You to Ask
So here’s what I would encourage you to do with this information.
Before you create your next post, newsletter, lead magnet, sales page, or book promotion, ask:
What is my reader trying to get from this book?
If you write fiction:
What do they want to experience?
What do they want to feel?
What kind of story do they want?
What makes them immediately recognize that this is their kind of book?
If you write nonfiction:
What do they want to understand, solve, or change?
What’s happening in their life that makes this book relevant now?
What outcome are they hoping the book will help them move toward?
Then look at your current marketing.
Can your reader see this and experience it?
Because sometimes the problem isn’t that you need to add a new platform.
It isn’t that you need more posts.
And it isn’t that you’ve been given the wrong marketing tactic.
You may simply be emphasizing the wrong reason for them to pay attention.
What I want you to remember is that fiction and nonfiction marketing are not completely separate systems.
What changes is what that reader is hoping your book will give them.
And once you understand that, a lot of confusing book marketing advice becomes much easier to evaluate.
You can stop asking, “Should I do this?”
And start asking, “Does this make sense for my reader and what they’re buying from me?”
That is a much better marketing question.
If you know you have some of these pieces but they’re not really connecting yet, that’s exactly why I built the 90-Day Book Sales System to help you do.
It starts with the foundation work for your specific book and your specific reader, including separate guidance for fiction and nonfiction, and then helps you turn that into your content, your email list, and a consistent sales system so you’re not trying to piece everything together from random marketing advice.
You can find the 90-Day Book Sales System in the description for this episode.
And before you change your entire marketing strategy this week, start with that one question:
What is my reader actually buying from me?
The experience or the transformation.
Once you know that, you’ll have a much clearer idea of what your marketing needs to say.
I’ll see you next time.