Just as musicians don’t much need record labels any more, authors don’t much need publishers any more. It’s that Internet that’s made all the difference.
Even if you have a publisher, they probably aren’t going to do much to market or publicize your book unless you are already a best-selling author or you are already famous.
If you self-publish, you definitely are going to have to market it yourself.
So how do you market a book? There is a successful pattern:
1. Build a good, professional website for the book that includes a picture of the cover, biographical info and photos of the author, reviews and one or more downloadable excerpts. The site then either has a store or sends people to Amazon.com, etc. to purchase.
2. Build traffic to the site through social networking and publicity.
Now that is a very simple formula, and I think, pretty obvious. The oddity is that few authors actually do it.