This is a guest post about book marketing from Justine Schofield, Development Director, at Pubslush

In reality, if you’re still in the process of writing a book that you hope will one day reach a widespread audience, you’re not quite at the point where you should be marketing your book. You are, however, most certainly at the point where you should be marketing yourself as an author.

What do I mean by marketing yourself as an author? You should be building your author platform, which includes finding, engaging and building connections with your audience. Here are 5 steps that will help you do just that and, before you know it, you’ll be marketing your book to the people who actually want to read it. Sounds like a good plan, right?

Step 1) Define your brand.

What kind of a book are you writing? If you’re writing a business or self-help book, your area of expertise will be your brand as an author. If you’re writing fiction, you have more freedom to define your own brand, whether it’s genre specific, or perhaps another area of expertise you might have—i.e. book coaching, modern culture, history, etc.

Your brand doesn’t necessarily have to be directly correlated to your book. Many authors write several books, which can vary in theme or genre. Choose what qualities or skills you have that best serve others and use that to define your brand.

Step 2) Know exactly who your audience is for your brand.

The more focused you can get, the better. If you’re writing a series of parenting books, believing your audience to be all parents is very broad and will be difficult to pinpoint. Narrowing down your audience to first-time parents, between the ages of 20-30, gives you much more focus. This focus could shift from book to book, but when beginning to define and build your brand, you must start with a pinpointed audience, and then you’re free to expand the audience with each book, if necessary.

Step 3) Find your audience.

A focused target audience is easier to find. For example, first-time parents in the 20-30-age range will likely be active on Twitter and other social media platforms. First-time parent blogs and support groups are also places where they would look for advice. These are the places you’ll want to build your own presence so you can become and expert and resource to your audience.

Step 4) Provide value to your audience.

In order to become the expert and resource for your audience, you must know what valuable information you will provide that will help you connect and engage with them. In the case of the author writing for first-time parents, you could begin by seeking out parents with questions, using hashtags or going to online forums, and organically giving them advice. As your presence grows you can begin providing more broad and general advice that might tie into your upcoming book. By providing value to your audience, they will feel connected and continue to look to you for advice.

Step 5) Be consistent.

In order to maintain your connection and relationship, you need to continue to be consistently present—whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or sending out a monthly newsletter—and provide your audience with valuable content. With the overload of content and digital media available today, your audience’s attention can stray elsewhere very easily. Consistency is the key to maintaining your audience.

Once you’ve established your audience and built a connection with them, the marketing of your book will be much easier. Because your audience already feels connected to you, they will automatically be interested in your book when the time comes.

It’s very important to build your presence well ahead of when your book will come out because it seems more natural and organic, not like you’re simply trying to promote your book. Start building your platform now and marketing your book will come much easier later.