Online Book Marketing: How to Market Your Book Even if
You Are Not a Salesperson
by Jeremy M. Hoover
Published on this site: July 15th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
What you do after you have written your book is as much, if
not more, important than the actual writing of it. You can
take a great book and poor marketing and have very poor results.
Conversely, I believe you can take a mediocre book, market
it well, and make very good sales from it. The only limiting
factor is you. You probably think, “I’m a writer,
not a salesperson.” That’s true, but there are some
very simple things you can do to create a website that sells
your book.
- Create a direct-response sales page for your book.
This doesn’t need to be an extra site, your home page,
or anything extravagant. Devote your home page to information
about you or your most recent work and a subscription form
for a newsletter for your fans. Create a secondary page,
linked to from your home page, that sells your book. But
instead of simply stating a few sentences about your book,
either put up a full book review or a direct-response sales
letter. Either way, at the end of the review or the letter,
you must ask your readers to buy your book. Put a direct
order link at the bottom of your page. Simply asking for
your readers to buy your book will increase your sales.
- Create a “fan list” you can send messages
to.
On your home page, and on every page of your website, create
a newsletter subscription form for your readers to join.
You don’t need to send something out every day, or
even every week. Once a month, send out a new “flash
fiction” or microfiction story, or a new essay. Keep
in touch with your readers. Send out a special notice of
a discount for your subscribers. But in each communication
with them, provide a link back to your sales page and ask
them to buy. Don’t worry…they subscribed because
they like your work and are open to buying it!
- Write some articles or short stories and give them
away.
You can give these away from your website as a gift for
joining your newsletter group, or you can give them away
from other people’s sites as a way to get more awareness
of your work. Do a search for “article sites”
and you’ll find many sites you can submit your work
to. These are great for two reasons—1) More people
will be exposed to your writing (which means more potential
buyers); and 2) Others may take your article or story and
run it in their newsletter, giving you even more exposure.
Writing and distributing articles or stories is a great
way to build traffic to your site and confidence in your
writing.
Follow these three steps and you’ll notice an increase
in sales of your books.
If you have any questions about this article, please email
me at [email protected]
Go to Jeremy's site http://jhooverwebcopy.com/bookmarketing.htm
to see how he can help you market your books online.
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