A book marketing plan is simply a written answer to three questions: who is your reader, what's your budget, and which specific tactics will you actually use to reach that reader within that budget. Without answering these upfront, marketing tends to become a scattershot list of things other authors say worked for them, most of which won't fit your book, your genre, or your budget.
This is part of the Complete Guide to Book Marketing.
Before choosing any specific tactic, get specific about who you're trying to reach. "Readers who like my genre" is too broad to act on. Look at your comp titles (books genuinely comparable to yours), where their readers spend time online, what kind of marketing those books seem to have used, and what your own beta readers or early readers told you about themselves. A marketing plan built around a specific reader is far easier to execute than one built around "everyone who might like books."
Decide what you can actually spend, in both money and your own time, before you start choosing tactics. This matters because it changes what's realistic: a marketing plan built on a budget of $50 looks completely different from one built on $2,000, and trying to execute an ambitious, expensive plan on a shoestring budget usually means doing several things poorly rather than a few things well.
Time is its own budget. Some tactics (organic social media, a newsletter, outreach to bloggers) cost little money but real time; others (paid ads, a professional trailer, a broad giveaway campaign) trade money for less of your personal time investment. Be honest about which you have more of.
A marketing plan that tries to do everything, social media across every platform, paid ads, a trailer, press outreach, giveaways, all launched simultaneously, tends to dilute your effort across too many channels to do any of them well. Pick a handful of tactics that fit your book, your budget, and your reader, and commit to doing those consistently rather than spreading thin.
Consider, for each tactic on your shortlist: does this reach my specific reader, can I actually sustain this (not just launch it once), and does the likely payoff justify the cost in money or time?
Sequence your tactics against your production timeline, not just launch day. Groundwork (author platform, ARC outreach, press release distribution) belongs well before publication. Launch-week tactics (a giveaway, a promotional price, an ad push) cluster around the release date. Ongoing tactics (newsletter growth, continued reviews, social presence) extend indefinitely past launch. See Pre-Launch, Launch, and Post-Launch Marketing and Book Launch Timeline: From Beta Readers to Reviews for how this fits your broader production schedule.
A marketing plan isn't a document you write once and follow blindly. Check periodically whether your tactics are actually working, based on what you decided to track, and be willing to drop something that isn't paying off in favor of doubling down on something that is.
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Detailed enough to answer who your reader is, what your budget is, and which specific tactics you'll use. It doesn't need to be a long formal document; a clear one-page plan is often more useful than an elaborate one you won't actually follow.
Fewer than you might think. Three to five tactics, chosen deliberately and sustained consistently, usually outperform a long list attempted half-heartedly.
Yes. Reassess based on what's actually working, using whatever you decided to track, and adjust rather than sticking rigidly to the original plan.
No. Many of the highest-leverage tactics cost time rather than money. See Low-Budget Book Marketing for where to focus with limited funds.