MARKETING BOOKS
G'day folks,
Welcome to a guest post from Karen Jonson about marketing your books.
Did You Sell All the Books You Wanted to Sell in 2013? — Or Did Low
Sales Crush Your Dreams?
Do you
recognize your book marketing problems in this list?
If so,
make a New Year’s resolution to conquer your book marketing problems.
1. No Marketing Strategy.
Too many
authors spend all of their time on book marketing tactics, like relentlessly
tweeting about their books, posting book sales offers on Facebook and LinkedIn,
and asking everyone they know to buy their books.
However,
every one of these tactics and others like them are likely to yield
unsatisfactory results.
Why?
But with
a strategy in place, every promotional seed an author plants is part of a
bigger plan.
Every
action is specifically designed to add value to a plan that is robust,
comprehensive, and ultimately more effective at creating an ongoing, powerful
book marketing program than merely engaging in random acts of marketing.
2. Failing to Give Readers a Map to Discover Your Books.
We tend
to thing of book selling as pushing our books in front of readers.
But I
think there’s a more powerful process that many authors are missing — giving
potential readers a map to discover your books.
This book
discovery map approach accomplishes several important objectives including:
- Eliminating the obnoxious “buy me, buy me, buy me” approach many authors take.
- Widening the net of people who discover your books.
- Getting better results with less effort.
3. Ignoring Your Blog — (or Not Even Having One!).
Authors
who don’t have blogs rely on their social media sites to communicate with
followers, fans, and likes.
This is a
huge mistake.
The
number one reason is that you do not “own” your followers on Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, or any other social platform. The companies own these platforms — and
this means they own your followers.
They can
do whatever they want with your followers — advertise to them, delete them, or
weaken your connection to them.
Here’s a
classic example: Facebook controls how many people (who liked your page)
actually see your posts — and this number has trickled down over the past few
years.
Some say
it is currently 5 to 10 percent. Others say it’s as little as 1% in some cases.
Is
reaching a small percent of your audience a smart marketing strategy? Certainly
not.
Guess
where you are assured of reaching 100 percent of the people who opt in to
follow you?
Your
blog.
4. Failing to Capture Prospect Emails.
Even
having your own blog is not enough to boost your book marketing impact.
What you
need is a group of people signing up to regularly receive your blog updates and
other emails from you.
And this
means you have to capture the emails of prospects who want to stay connected to
you.
This
involves having a reliable auto-responder, a compelling call-to-action, and a
valuable freebie offer.
This is
how you build a list of prospects that you own!
5. Using Social Media Incorrectly.
The rapid
rise of social media as a way to communicate with people is a lot like a gold
rush.
You know
there’s gold in them thar hills — you just don’t know exactly where it
is, how to get to it, what tools you need, and how long it will take to hit the
mother lode.
With any
gold rush, many prospectors will fail. They will waste time, use up resources,
get frustrated, and quit.
Does that
sound like your experience with social media?
If so,
it’s not the fault of the social media platforms (though we like to blame them
with a succinct: “Oh tweeting doesn’t sell books!”).
When the
reality is that you are likely using your social media assets incorrectly.
What you
need to do instead is set up social signposts within your Book Discovery Map.
6. Lack of Subtle Selling Skills.
Like
social media, many authors are using all of the wrong techniques for selling
their books.
While
many authors profess that they “don’t like selling” or “don’t want to sell like
used car salesmen,” too many authors just blast out “buy me” messages and call
it marketing.
Instead
of trying to hit people over the head to get them to buy your books, you need
to craft “sales” messages that help readers decide that they want to buy your
books.
7. Failing to Analyze Results.
Even big
companies don’t always do an excellent job of analyzing the results of their
marketing efforts — so don’t feel bad if you are weak in this area.
However,
engaging in regular marketing analysis is a powerful step in the direction of
realizing your goal of selling a lot of your books for two simple reasons:
- You’ll figure out what is working and what isn’t so you can do more of what works and eliminate what doesn’t work.
- You’ll bring strategy to your book marketing effort, which will elevate your attitude, habits, and approach to your life as a book marketer.
If your
book marketing plan has fallen victim to one of more of these seven deadly
mistakes, it’s time to take your book marketing program in a new direction in
2014.
It’s time
to market your books smarter!
http://indiebookmarketingcommunity.com/your-coach/
Clancy's comment: Thanks, Karen. Mm ... In recent years I have said, 'I never knew I was a car salesman until I became a writer.' It's all up to you folks. No white knight is about to appear on your doorstep. You're in charge!
I'm ...
Think about this!
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