Overcome Roadblocks to Successful Book Sales

Many authors consider book marketing a necessary evil – they would rather be writing! But of course it's essential to promote your book if you want to actually sell it.

Here are five common roadblocks to successful book sales: 

• Starting too late – Ideally, your marketing journey should begin the minute you decide to write a book. You want to consider whether there's a viable market for the book and also tailor the book to meet the needs of a specific audience. But wherever you are in your publishing journey, NOW is the time to get serious about marketing your book.

• Inertia – You can overcome inertia by setting goals and taking positive action each day to meet those goals.

• Lack of direction – Many authors just aren't sure how to promote a book or how to prioritize the numerous tasks involved in book promotion. Lots of authors feel overwhelmed or jump from one activity to another without any clear plan. A good book marketing plan gives you a blueprint for promoting your book.

• Lack of knowledge – Marketing requires a different still set from writing a book. Many authors have no background in marketing and they need to learn new skills. There are numerous books, blogs, podcasts, teleseminars and other resources available to authors. Many resources are free, but it's a good idea to invest in training in the areas you most need to learn about.

• Lack of time – Many authors are surprised at the amount of time and effort required to promote their books. This can be especially challenging for those who have full time jobs and family responsibilities on top of their writing and publishing venture. Having a good book marketing plan helps you to budget your time most effectively.

Book Marketing Plan = Success

As you can see, a book marketing plan will help you overcome the most common roadblocks to book promotion. But your plan must be:

• Well thought-out and in writing
• Customized for your book and your audience
• Reflect your own skills, budget and time constraints

Book marketing can seem daunting, but I guarantee that having a plan will make it less daunting!

Your book marketing plan will help to keep you from feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed. Just put one foot in front of the other – take at least one action every day, no matter how small, and you will make progress.

Better Marketing For Better Sales

There are three phases to making your writer's website resonate with your target audience: planning, site creation, and site promotion.

1. Planning

Ideally, before you begin your site, you will take the time to think about what it is and what you want to accomplish with it.

The first question is who is your target audience? It may seem obvious, or it may not. Many authors get stuck on that question and hamper their writing as well as their book marketing. You should have a clear idea of who your ideal reader is -- demographics, lifestyle and worldview.

If your book is already written, you probably had someone in mind as you wrote it. If you're just getting started, having your target audience in mind can propel the work forward, by giving the work unity and clarity.

If you need a resource to help you get a handle on your target audience, let me recommend a book that will help you get clear on that question: Target Marketing for Authors.

The second key question is what do you want your writer's website to do? Sell copies of your book? Direct readers to an online bookseller? Promote your speaking or other services? Collect names for an email list? This goal will be the "theme" of your site, not in a design sense, but like the central idea of a novel. Everything you do should support that central goal.

This will be your "call to action," the overriding message of your website, and the more you focus on this message, the more successful your site will be.

But if you have a site already functioning, it's not too late. In fact, it's important to keep revising your understanding of these crucial questions and allowing for the possibility that your audience may change with time.

2. Creation

Once you know who your target audience is and what you are calling them to do, you can make informed decisions about the design, language, and content of your site.

Writer's Website Design

Color will be an important choice in your website design. Color means different things in different cultures, but for everyone it has a strong emotional pull that most people don't even perceive on a conscious level.

Because of the way browsers handle fonts, you don't have a huge selection available for your site without using some off-the-beaten-track technology. But even making a basic choice between serif and san serif can make a difference in whether a site "feels" more breezy and modern (san serif) or more stable and established (serif). If you do take the trouble to use an unusual font, be careful about readability.

There are a number a basic structures you can use for your site: Blog, gallery, magazine, and so on. Knowing what you want your site to accomplish will help you pick the right structure. It makes no sense, for example, to use a site that's appropriate only for blogging if you don't intent to maintain a blog.

Language

The language you use will depend on who your reader is. You'll choose metaphors that fit the people you're talking to.

On Steven Pressfield's site -- he is the author of such books as Killing Rommel and Gates of Fire -- one of the bloggers described a weary book editor's look as being like a soldier's at the end of a long battle. If your audience is young moms, you might describe the same incident comparing the look to a mother with four small children pushing a cart full of groceries out of the grocery store.

Other factors are such things as formal versus informal language, jargon versus general-use language, and whether you tend to talk more about principles (tech-talk or how-to) or relationships (celebrities, family, office relationships). The goal is to speak the way your target reader speaks to herself.

Content

You'll also choose content to fit your target audience, as well as the goal for your writer's website. If you want to drive book sales, your site will feature reviews and other material to support your book sales. If you want to promote your services, then a planned content marketing campaign may be in order.

Throughout, though, you'll be thinking about where your audience is in the process of learning about your topic. If you're talking to people who are just starting to learn your topic, you'll present basic information in a clear and understandable way.

If you're at the top of your field and talking peer-to-peer, then your material will contain more jargon, both because jargon is valuable shorthand for those in the know and because for experts, the use of jargon shows that you're on top of the game.

If your readers are somewhere in the middle, adjust your content to fit where they are.

3. Promotion

For authors, promoting your writer's website is a means to promoting your book, whether it's a one-step process, such as if your site exists to sell your book, or more than one step, such as if your book is part of a larger business offering. Having a clear idea of your target audience will make your writer's website more successful in your promotion efforts.

Social Media

Not all social media are the same, obviously. For one thing, they come and go -- rise to the top and drop like a rock. But if you're thinking about adopting a new social media outlet, it's good to ask yourself what people use the social medium for and whether your target audience will be looking for you in that medium.

So, for example, even though Facebook has the population of a large nation, most of those people don't want to do business on Facebook. They're there for fun, conversations, relationships. A business-to-business author probably wouldn't do well to pick Facebook as a first social outlet. LinkedIn, by contrast, is much more business oriented, and that same book would probably make good connections there.

Study the social media outlet to determine if it's a good fit for your audience.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is a great way to make contacts beyond your own site. It builds authority in the search engines' eyes, makes new contacts for you, and gives the site owner a break.

Inviting guest posters to your site can have benefits for you as well -- new insights for your readers, more status for you as host of a vigorous posting community, and more new contacts with readers as your guest posters link from their site to their post on your site.

Mailing List

Building a mailing list is one of the most important things you can do as an author. It keeps you in contact with your readers, gives them a sense that you're someone real who talks to them. You can tell them about new book releases and about book promotion events.

Most of the time, people join mailing lists in exchange for a giveaway of some kind. If you know your audience, you can make it something they really want in a way that doesn't cost you very much.

Your Writer's Website and Your Target Audience

Your audience is the lifeblood of your writing career. Without them, you're just talking to the paper. But if that's the case, then your website can be the heart of your writing career, because it's the core of where your readers move -- to learn more about you, more about your work, and to buy your books. Make sure that your writer's website "heart" matches your readers' "type."

More Marketing for Your Book

I find it extremely encouraging that so many authors are now embracing the reality of modern publishing, and acknowledging that they are responsible for creating the buzz around their books.

Those who publish their own books understand that the more publicity they can get, the more copies they will sell.

But even those looking for traditional book deals are starting to see the truth – that publishers now only pick authors who demonstrate they can help with promotion.

The problem is, most writers hide under the desk in terror at the thought of ‘marketing’, because their skill set is writing, not selling. The reality is that all writers need that elusive book publicity, but don’t want to become the literary equivalent of a used car salesman.

Nor can they afford to spend a fortune in the process.  What to do?

The Solution: Get Reviewed By High-Profile Book Bloggers

Book bloggers are high on the trust list for readers, which means they’re among the most influential connections we can make. These bloggers read a large number of books, and have an audience of readers collectively amounting to millions. Their subscribers trust their opinions and buy the books they recommend.

This makes them an incredibly powerful source for promotional help.  In fact, they can make an author famous, almost overnight sometimes. I’ll talk about that in a moment, but first, let’s look at a real life example of someone achieving incredible success from using this tactic…

Paranormal author Amanda Hocking is perhaps the most visible recipient of this ‘book blogger effect’.  She had written solidly since a teenager without stopping, but no agent or publisher would take the remotest interest in her books.

Resolute, she decided instead to self-publish the books herself on the Amazon Kindle.  But initially she only had the merest flicker of sales.

She was almost at her wits end when salvation suddenly appeared – in the form of book  bloggers.

Quoting from her site (abbreviated):

“… In May, I sold 624 books and made $362. Then in June, something truly magical happened.  I discovered book bloggers. I had no idea such people existed. These guys are my heroes. I asked several if they would be interested in reviewing my books, and most said yes, even if they didn’t generally review self-published work….    Then something surreal started happening. My books were selling. Like, really selling.  So, thanks in large part to book bloggers, June turned into a very good month. I sold 4258 copies of all three books combined, and I made a total of $3180. In July, I sold 3532 books and made $6527.  Here’s what August looks like for me: I’ve sold 4873 books this month (as of 12:50 am). I’m estimating that I’ll make over $9000 this month….”

The 26-year-old self-published author went on to sell over 450,000 copies of her ebooks in January of 2011 alone, for between 99 cents and $2.99. She’s since sold far beyond a million books, and belongs to the Kindle Million Seller club.

Do the math. She’s now a millionaire, and it was all set in motion by the book bloggers.

The takeaway lesson from her success is obvious – get as many high-profile book bloggers as possible to review your book.  But to achieve this, you need to approach it the right way…
 
How To Be Reviewed By Book Bloggers

Influential book bloggers now receive so many books from new authors, they end up swamped.  If your book is just another random novel ‘on the pile’, there’s a good chance they won’t ever read it.

Becoming known to a blogger before asking for the review can therefore make a difference.  If you’re known to them, then given a choice of too many books to review, they’re more likely to choose yours.  The solution is to open up a conversation about the genre in which you both are highly interested.

I’m talking about making them aware of you, and discussing things of joint interest, not becoming their ‘best friend’. Fortunately most book bloggers I’ve come across are very nice people, and I’d go so far as to say that they are the most helpful group of people I’ve come across online.

5 Tips For Approaching Book Bloggers

1.  Find book bloggers who ‘fit’ with your genre best and have a large readership

To find out how popular the blog is, type their blog address into the ‘site info’ box at Alexa.com.  If they are in the top 100,000, then they’re reasonably popular. Top 50,000 is even better.

You also need ensure that they’re the right fit for you.  So look for bloggers who have already reviewed other books in your genre.  Also check the general tone of their reviews – do they have a tendency to treat books harshly, and is this a risk for you?

2.  Check their availablity

Look into whether they actually accept books to review, or you’ll be wasting your time otherwise.

3.  Engage with them on Twitter

If you’re on Twitter, engage with them and cast opinion, and of course discuss the intrigue of genre – even argue the point if you don’t entirely agree.  The same applies to Facebook and G+.   Overall, you both have a fascination for books of this genre and the world around it , and that is the point.

4.  Canvas their ‘expert’ opinion

Ask for help on things you really do want to know about, by email, Twitter or Facebook.

5.  Engage with them on their blog

You can leave comments on their blog, again – all pertaining to things of interest in the genre, not your own book.

In sum, you gradually make yourself visible on your own terms. Taking a cynical or sycophantic approach won’t work either. There’s no point in artificially attempting to ‘be their friend’.    Instead, being yourself and conversing about the subject intelligently because you genuinely like it is the path.  Remember that bloggers are people too.  You are making yourself visible with a unique point of view and a fascination for the entire subject of the genre.

It takes time, so start early while still writing your book. Eventually, when you introduce your book for review you will not be an unfamiliar ‘door to door salesman’.  The book blogger will already be aware of who you are, and the door is more likely to open.

So why should you do your own virtual tour?

1. You will sell books during the tour and afterward as a result of the tour.

2. Virtual tours are less expensive and time consuming than traveling. Generally the only cost of a do-it-yourself tour is the cost of mailing your book to tour hosts.

3. Reach far more people and a more targeted audience with a virtual tour. In contrast, live author appearances by authors who aren't well known may to have low attendance.

4. The virtual tour provides quality, lasting links to your website. These links have search engine optimization value and may continue to bring new visitors for months or years to come.

5. Making a commitment to a tour gives you an incentive to get out there and promote your book and get content onto other websites.

6. If any of your tour hosts do a review of your book, you'll get the benefit of additional reviews.

7. Tours build buzz for your book and get people talking and sharing with others.

8. When others host you on their blog or show, there is an implied endorsement of you which enhances your author platform.

9. You have the chance to interact with readers and potential customers.

10. Getting a lot of book sales in short period of time pushes up the Amazon rank of your book.

11. You get the chance to develop relationships with bloggers and other key influencers in your field or genre.

12. The content of a virtual book tour gives potential book buyers an opportunity to sample your work.

13. Nonfiction authors can enhance their expert status by posting content on other venues.

14. You get exposure to new audiences you might not reach any other way.

15. Additional traffic to your website during the tour gives you the opportunity to build your mailing list and blog subscribers.