If you’re an author and you’re looking to use Pinterest to sell your books, grow your audience, and ultimately drive more traffic to your listings, these best practices are for you. Here’s everything to know about Pinterest for authors.

I’m going to walk you through four different ways, with a bonus resource at the end, for exactly how you can utilize Pinterest as an author to sell your books. Because that’s the whole point of doing it—grow your audience, build brand awareness, and sell your books. So let’s help you do just that on this great platform. 

Pinterest marketing for authors

Using Pinterest in your marketing strategy as an author is definitely an interesting way that you’re going to be able to sell more books and grow your audience. As we get started, I want you to start thinking about how to position your profile on Pinterest. Positioning is everything on this platform. Do this by:

• Positioning your display name with keywords
• Keywords in your Pinterest bio
• Positioning your boards for search
• Creating pins that show up in search 

Position authors on Pinterest with keywords

One of the things that I see authors do wrong all the time is naming every single Pinterest board on their profile after their book series. Or every single thing on their profile is their own name. There are so many other ways to go about it that will benefit you greatly. 

Main niche keywords in display name

The thing that I want you to think about when positioning your profile is, number one, use a main niche keyword for your books in your display name. For example, author Becky Wade has done a fabulous job of positioning her display name as a main keyword: Sweet Romance Author Becky Wade. 

Not only does she use her name, but she’s also using “Sweet Romance Author” as a main keyword. When people search for romance authors on Pinterest—and they do search that—she’s going to come up in the results.

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Keywords in your Pinterest bio

Something else that you want to do is use five main keywords in your Pinterest bio. The actual bio itself should include keywords related to your books, your niche, your audience, and the topics that you write about. I want you to position it from how you help your readers, or who you’re writing for, and in what way you do that—obviously through your books.

I want your banner to actually be a showcase of your books, preferably with some text on there that tells people where they can purchase the books. If that’s not something you want to do, then the way that Becky has done it here is actually a really great job. I actually really love her bio.

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Great author profile examples on Pinterest

Here are two more examples of profiles that are really well done that I wanted to call out. Krystal Simpson is a Christian blogger and author and podcaster. She has got videos all about the books that she sells in her business. She has showcased some images of herself and images of her book in her banner, and I think this is really well done. I like that she also calls out her expertise as Dr. Krystal R. Simpson. I think that is fantastic. 

Another one is Tara Sun. I think this is also really well done. She’s a Christian author and podcaster. I probably would use a phrase here instead of the title “Christian Author and Podcaster” to be more around what the book is about. But that’s okay, because people are actually searching for a Christian author. Both of these profiles came up really, really well done.

Positioning your boards for search

The next thing that I want you to be thinking about is how to position your boards for search. When pinners come to Pinterest and they’re actually searching for things, their intent is usually really high. They obviously go through the many phases of a customer journey—from awareness to consideration, all the way down to purchase.

You want to position your boards in a way that they are going to be found in search, to show up for your readers’ intent. Remember when I mentioned a lot of authors on Pinterest actually create boards that are their book titles or their book series? That’s not actually the way that you want to go about positioning your books on Pinterest.

People don’t necessarily know the name of your book before they find it unless it was recommended to them by someone else. In that case, they would already be somewhere between consideration and purchase, and they would be searching for keywords related to your book, your book title, or your book name.

Yes, you should use keywords for your book series, book titles, author handle, and pen name. However, you should also be creating boards that are highly searchable. These four examples are really, really good positioning: “Sweet Royal Romances,” “Clean Romance Reads,” “Books for Women,” and “Small Town Romance Books.”

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Other Pinterest boards that authors can create

What other boards can you create? I get this question quite often from authors. These are the kind of overarching themes of boards you can create on your profile that are related to what you’re doing, but they’re not outside of the norm: book inspiration boards, reading themes, reading gifts, home décor for reading, and quotes and reviews.

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Creating pins that show up in search

Moving on to creating Pinterest pins that will show up in search. You want to create both content and product pins. Yes, if you are an author, you should still be creating content on your own website to drive people there, and to get found on search engines like Pinterest and Google.

One way you can guarantee that you can do that is by creating content on your own website, like your blog. Here are some examples of just pins that I mocked up for a sample Pinterest strategy that I created inside of my Pin Profit Academy.

Content vs product pins

You can see that a couple are content pins, and a couple are product pins. These could be all your books, they could be your books and your colleagues’ books, or they could be your books and your favorite reads—whatever you want to put together for your audience.

The content pins have more of like, “Oh, here are some spicy romance books with a small town vibe,” and it’s going to go to a blog post that maybe has a listicle with 10 different spicy romance books with small town vibes.

The next one is things like “10 Must-Read Cozy Books in 2024,” and maybe these are all your own books. Again, it really doesn’t matter here, however you want to position your content.

The next two are obviously products. These are product mockup pins–book mockups. Whatever you have as far as marketing your book, turn it into a Pinterest pin. That will enable you to place that book image or mockup on a marketing pin. Or other marketing images, even for Instagram.

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Calls to action and links

Then with your pin design, add your main text overlays and have some buttons like “Buy Now,” “Shop Now,” or “Grab Your Copy.” Where should you link your audiences to? Direct them to click or move forward with your link attached to the pin.

I don’t know what the stipulations are around Amazon or other direct or affiliate links to book sites, so make sure you’re abiding by those things needed with your printers or publishers, etc. The last thing you want is your links flagged because they appear as click bait or don’t follow guidelines.

I’m assuming you can link to your author page at a very minimum with Amazon. I’m assuming if you create Pinterest pins and you want to link to them in the form of product pins, you guys probably have some sort of listing that you can actually promote that’s within the guidelines of what Amazon allows, or for Barnes & Noble, Target, etc.

And then have a great pin description. Plus always link to your website, including landing pages, blog URLs, any podcasts that you were on as far as your book tour goes. Any media where you might be featured—anything on the internet that shows you talking about your book, sells your book, or is about your book. You can link to all of that in the format of Pinterest pins and place it on your profile.

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Pinterest marketing for authors board

I also created a Pinterest board called “Pinterest Marketing for Authors,” where I compiled examples of pins. The board includes sections for video pins and static image pins. Video pins show people holding books or include animations featuring your books. Static pins are simpler, showcasing your books with text overlays and clean designs. Both formats are effective for promoting your work.

Pinterest strategy guide for authors

Lastly, I’ve created a six-page Pinterest strategy guide for authors. It includes a bio example, display name example, strategy overview, keyword plan, board ideas, trend examples, pin examples, and pin templates. 

This guide is available as part of the Pin Profit Academy, located in the bonuses section of the Pinterest Roadmap course. If you’re an author looking to start on Pinterest, this guide will give you everything you need to get started.

Join Pin Profit Academy at pinprofitacademy.com. In the meantime, check out my Pinterest Marketing Strategy playlist on my YouTube channel for more tips. I can’t wait to see you inside!

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