What are you doing today? If you are an author, you’d better be doing something to promote your book.
Those of you who have a published book know what I’m saying. If you want to sell copies of your book—whether it’s fiction, nonfiction or a children’s book—you must promote it. With the competition out there for readers and for their money, authors have had to shift into even higher gear in order to sell even a minimal number of books. Is this your experience? Or are you experiencing something different? We’d like to hear your story.
Among my clients and colleagues, book sales are slow. For those who are not out there regularly promoting, sales are non-existent. Is this what you are experiencing or observing?
So what will make the difference? What can you do to increase book sales? That depends on what you are currently doing. If you are just sitting around waiting for customers, there’s a whole lot more you can do. If you are doing a minimal or a moderate amount of promotion and you are selling a few books, do more of what you are doing and add a new promotional activity or two periodically.
With 31 published books and most of them still in circulation, I’m always in book promotion mode. But I have a brand new book out and I’ve had to kick my efforts up a bunch of notches in order to introduce this book to my audience and convince them to purchase it.
Every day, I seek out new avenues of promotion—new reviewers for pet-related books, new resale outlets, opportunities for submitting articles on the topic of this book, appropriate sites where they feature recommended books of this type, book signing opportunities, book festivals and so forth. Is this how you spend your day? Do you enjoy it?
Most of the time it is pretty tedious work. But there are small rewards—such as a flurry of sales, a good book review, orders from stores that want to carry it and so forth. Yesterday morning, I had my first review of Catscapades, True Cat Tales. Yeah! The review went on a cat-related site and even Google noticed. It will also be posted on my Amazon book page. Yesterday afternoon, Barnes and Noble contacted me to let me know they have accepted this book into their warehouse program. I’ve only had one other book accepted by Barnes and Noble. I appreciate that they see merit in this one, too.
I have a poster ready to deliver to Noah’s Apothecary where I will be signing Catscapades May 22. I’ll be sending out press releases for that event today. I’ve already alerted my emailing list of my signing and will send reminders a week in advance of the event.
It’s just about time to contact my initial list of book reviewers. I want to find out if they received the book, if they plan to review it and when. I’ve found that follow-up is important—we need to hold people accountable. Sometimes folks need a little nudge—a gentle reminder.
I figure that, to date, I’ve made a total of 150 or 175 contacts with regard to the Catscapades book. Now, logically, this effort should result in thousands of sales. Think about it—if each of these contacts leads to a book review read by at least 1,000 members of my audience or 1,000 viewings of the book online or in a bookstore, I should expect thousands of sales. And it could happen. Only these things take time. I know that I need to stay on task, follow up and continually work to locate new opportunities to promote this book. Tedious? Yes! Necessary? If you want to sell books, I’m afraid so.
If you are working on a book for publication, please don’t go into publishing wearing blinders. Study the publishing industry before you decide to make this commitment. Fully understand your responsibilities as a published author BEFORE you get involved in this highly competitive field. I’m telling you, it is not enough to produce a good, well-edited book. This is part of publishing success, but there’s so much more. Talk to any successful author and he/she will tell you the same—promoting the book is way harder and much more time/energy-consuming than writing it.
And it’s not always fun.
I wrote The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book in order to help educate hopeful authors about the publishing industry, their options and their responsibilities as a published author. This 300+ page book also guides authors through every process necessary for successful publishing—writing, editing, getting published, distribution, promotion, and so much more.
http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html
Do you need help writing a book proposal? Do you want to know more about self-editing? Perhaps you would like assistance promoting your book or self-publishing your book. Do you want to know more about writing and submitting articles to magazines as a way to earn extra money or to promote your book? Patricia Fry offers courses in these topics. Sign up for one of Patricia’s 6 online courses.
http://www.matilijapress.com/courses.htm
Order Patricia’s new book of cat stories—Catscapades, True Cat Tales. http://www.matilijapress.com/catscapades.html