Cross-promotion with other authors
Cross-promotion is the highest-return, lowest-cost marketing available to a self-published author, and most authors never try it, because asking feels like an imposition.
It is not. It is the one form of promotion where both sides end up better off, and it costs nothing but the time it takes to write an email.
Another author in your genre is not your competitor
This is the belief that stops people, so it is worth taking apart first.
A reader who finishes a book they enjoyed does not close it feeling finished. They want another one like it, immediately, and the recommendation they trust most is the one that comes from the author they just read.
Books are not a fixed pie. Nobody reads one cozy mystery a year and stops. A committed genre reader gets through dozens, and the constraint on them is not money or appetite — it is finding the next one. An author who points that reader at you has solved their problem, not lost a sale.
So recommending each other grows two lists. It does not split one.
The forms, easiest first
A mention in each other's newsletter. Two paragraphs and a link, each of you to your own list. The lowest-effort version there is, and often the most effective, because a personal recommendation to a list that already trusts the sender converts far better than an ad.
A swap of back-matter recommendations. At the end of your book, a short "if you liked this" page naming their book, and the same for you in theirs. This one keeps working for years with no further effort, which makes it the best value of anything on this list.
A shared giveaway. Several authors put up a book each, readers enter once, everyone gets the sign-ups. Watch the quality of what you collect: entrants who wanted a free anything unsubscribe fast.
A multi-author promotion. Ten or twenty authors in one subgenre all send their readers to a common landing page of discounted books on the same week. The traffic is the sum of everybody's lists, and the cost is one email each.
A boxed set or anthology. Several authors in one volume, usually with a single coordinated launch. More work — someone has to handle rights, royalties and the file — and a real commitment. See Box sets and omnibus editions for how those are put together.
Co-writing. The deep end. A shared book, shared audience and a written agreement about money and rights before a word is drafted.
How to ask
Read their book first. All of it, and say something specific about it — a scene, a choice they made, the way a chapter ended. Generic praise reads exactly like the mass email it usually is, and every working author gets several a week.
Propose something concrete, with a date. "Would you like to cross-promote sometime" puts the work on them. "I have a new book out on the 14th — I'd like to feature yours in my newsletter on the 3rd, and if it suits you, mine in yours that week" can be answered with one word.
Make your side easy. Send the blurb, the cover file, the link and the exact text you suggest they use, already written. If accepting your offer costs them twenty minutes of asset-hunting, it competes with their writing day and loses.
Offer before you ask. Feature their book with nothing attached. Do it because you liked it. The reply to that email is warmer than any pitch, and you will have proved you deliver before you ever request anything.
In the Interior Formatter. Back matter is built from fields, so adding an "if you liked this" recommendation to the end of your book is a setting and a new export — not a re-typeset. Start your book → · about the Interior Formatter
Who to approach
Authors at roughly your level. Similar list size, similar sales, similar number of books out. This is the match that works, because you are each offering something the other cannot easily get.
Not the biggest name in your genre. They are asked constantly, they gain nothing from your five hundred subscribers, and the email is going to be ignored. That is not rudeness; it is arithmetic.
Same subgenre, not just same genre. This matters more than authors expect. Sending cozy mystery readers to a serial-killer thriller produces unsubscribes on both sides — the readers were never the audience, they do not buy, and each of you has annoyed a list to no purpose. Match the reader, not the shelf.
People whose books you can honestly recommend. You are lending them your readers' trust. If the book is not good, that trust is what you spend.
The one rule
Deliver exactly what you promised, on the day you promised it.
This sounds small and it is the whole thing. These arrangements run on nothing but reputation, inside a genre where authors talk to each other constantly. An author who sends on the wrong week, or sends a smaller feature than agreed, or quietly does not send at all, is known about within a month and stops being asked.
Put the date in your calendar when you agree it. Send the promotion whether or not the results so far have impressed you. Then write and say what happened — clicks, sign-ups, sales, even when the number is embarrassing.
Do that four or five times with four or five authors and you have something more durable than any advertising budget: a small group of people in your genre who will help you launch, and whose launches you help, for as long as you all keep writing.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Street teams and launch groups · More: The newsletter, and what to give people for joining · The back of the book is where your next sale is · Box sets and omnibus editions