Let’s face it. Finding creative angles to market fiction is a challenge because most books are built on characters, emotions, and something potentially awful that happens to the protagonist. Here and there, you might run across an author who has figured out a distantly related way to market their novels, but it shouldn’t be that hard. And it’s not at all hard when you’re publishing cozy mystery novels. More so than any other genres, marketing a cozy mystery is much easier because there are so many elements within the novel that allow for a ton of creative marketing ideas.
Keep reading, and we’ll show you why this is true.
Cozy mysteries often deal with a specific hobby.
Here are some examples of trending hobbies that are often featured in cozy mysteries:
- Writing/Reading/Books
- Gardening/Horticulture
- Sewing
- Quilting
- Cooking (we will dive deeper into this soon)
- Travel
- Sailing
- Knitting
When you build your cozy mystery book series on the foundation of one of your favorite hobbies, it becomes 10x easier to market, especially if you have a lot of knowledge and experience about this one thing.
Let’s use a fictional case study to explore the possibilities.
(This is a made up story, so there are no copyright laws being broken here—I promise.)
Story idea:
A world-renowned expert on the oleander is on a business trip because she’s been invited to speak at a lecture at the University of Florida to a room full of botany graduate students. After she delivers a pretty successful lecture, she goes to a lab they’ve set up for her in the science building, where she finds the dead body of everyone’s favorite botany teacher at the university. And much to her surprise, the professor has been poisoned with the exact species of oleander she talked about in her lecture. The sleuth has an alibi for the victim’s time of death, yet because she’s an expert, the police invite her into the investigation to help.
A little bit about our fictional author:
In this scenario, maybe our made-up author who wrote this novel is a botany professor herself, and she wants to come up with some creative ways to market her cozy mystery series, which will feature a different gardening expert turned sleuth in each book.
Here are some things this author could do to market her new cozy mystery series:
- Start a blog about poisonous plants and flowers that teaches people how to identify them when they’re out in nature.
- Create a TikTok and/or YouTube channel that gives gardening tips for people who want to care for exotic plant and flower life.
- Tweet several quick gardening tips every day for people who want to learn how to garden.
- Start a monthly newsletter about poisonous plants and flowers for pet owners.
Do you see a running theme here? Yes, you do, because our fictitious author built these possibilities into her story.
Culinary cozy mysteries are still very popular today.
If you take a look at the cozy mystery bestsellers on any given day, you’ll see that close to half of them feature a culinary theme. This is an excellent element for marketing because over 100 million people in the United States cook at home every day. It’s both a skill needed for survival, and it’s also something people are very passionate about. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be a countless number of foodies, food bloggers, food critics, and food influencers on social media today.
With a book that centers around a culinary theme, there are tons of opportunities for marketing:
- YouTube or TikTok channel focused on food while you talk about the culinary delights in your stories.
- Social media posts of custom recipes with photos of the finished product.
- Blog that gives you space to talk about the food in your novel and the story you created.
- Cooking lessons for fans who want to learn how to improve their skills.
With culinary themes running through your cozy mystery novel, you’ll find many chances for daily content if you’re one of those millions of people who cook at home every day.
Some of the most popular cozy mystery novels have hilarious pets that readers fall in love with.
Beloved pets are so popular in cozy mystery novels that they have their own subgenre, and this might be one of the easiest ways to create a story that’s easy to market. And why is this? Because everyone loves to hear funny and heartwarming stories about pets and animals of all kinds. This becomes even easier to execute when you feature your own pets in your novels because you have unlimited content at your fingertips to use in your marketing materials.
Have a dopey Great Dane in your family? Immortalize him in your story and post about him every day on your social media channels. Great Dane lovers—and there are lots of them—will adore your content, and even if they aren’t cozy mystery addicts, they could just be your next biggest fan.
As for dogs, if you have one of these popular breeds, you’re already a step ahead of your competition1:
- Bernese Mountain Dog
- English Bulldog
- Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
- Golden Retriever
- Labrador Retriever
- French Bulldog
- Border Collie
- Basset Hound
- Yorkshire Terrier
- Dachsund
- Alaskan Malamute
- Australian Shepherd
- Dogue de Bordeaux / French Mastiff
- Siberian Husky
- Shar Pei
- German Shepherd
- Miniature Schnauzer
- Boxer
- Brittany Spaniel
- Great Pyrenees
- Great Dane
You know how everyone loves to say you should write what you know? Well, that technique works brilliantly here because generating new daily content is as easy as taking a photo of your favorite pet.
And the ideas shouldn’t stop here, but I hope these have given you enough inspiration to start thinking creatively about your current (or next) cozy mystery novel.
Have a creative way to share about your own marketing strategy? We’d love to hear about what’s been working for you! Let us know in the comments below.
1: https://thelistwire.usatoday.com/lists/64-of-the-top-dog-breeds-of-2022/
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