Book Authors: How to Sell More Books & Get Your Publisher
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by Bill Platt
Published on this site: May 15th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
It is an unfortunate reality that most people who write books believe
that their publisher will always put their best foot forward, to
promote their book. In the real world, it does not quite work that
way.
Let me put this in perspective for you.
The Profit-Loss Equation in Book Publishing
It is a financial matter of profits and losses. The book publishing
world is much different than what many of us believe it is or that
we believe it should be.
The average publisher will only print 1,000 copies of a book. They
do this because the average book will sell an average of 400 or
500 copies.
When a publisher takes on a new title, it is a real gamble. Publishers
are gambling that the books they take on will generate sales of
1,000 copies, and on rare occasions, they can hope for a book to
sell a full 5,000 copies.
The book that sells 100,000 or one million copies is extremely rare.
With more than 100,000 books being printed every year, fewer than
one percent of those books will see sales in the range of 5,000
or more copies. Every publisher has hopes that one of the 1,000
books every year that will sell at least 5,000 copies is one of
the books sold through their publishing house. These are the books
that will help the publisher to make a real profit this year.
One publisher told me that he lets his editors take care of the
full book editing and development process. And, he said that he
will not even pay attention to the book, until the book sells 5,000
copies. Only then will he consider reading the book himself and
cranking up his marketing department to try to sell the book to
a wider audience.
So, here it is in a nutshell. If you are a new book author, and
you would like to see your book get some serious attention from
your publisher and the public, then you need to step up to the plate
and promote your book in such a way, as you can ensure that your
book will sell 5,000 copies or more.
These days, most publishers will put up single webpages offering
each of their books to the public. As a writer of the book, you
should not believe that this page will be a well-written, well-optimized
page on the internet.
Don't fool yourself... The webpage where your book is offered generally
will not get great rankings in the search engines for the keywords
relevent to the topic of your book. Additionally, the sales copy
will not be set up in such a way as to give much confidence to your
potential buyers.
Print book publishers don't do a good job building online promotional
materials for a book, until they put their best people on the job.
And, the publisher will not put their best people on the job until
they believe that they have a winner in their stable.
As a writer, if you want your book to be anything more than a dust-catcher
on your own shelf, you need to learn to be a book promoter also.
How to Sell Your First 5,000 Books
As a book author, there are three basic steps that you will
want to undertake to promote your book online.
- Set up a domain website,
- Promote your book with articles,
- Promote your book with press releases.
In this article, I am going to take a look at how and why you will
want to consider each of these steps.
- Set Up a Domain Website
Yes, you need a "domain" website. A free page on Geocities.com
or Freeservers.com will not instill confidence with your potential
customers. Let's face it, the most important marketing consideration
for any product or service to be sold on the internet today is
to build the "trust factor".
A person, who is being asked to take out their wallet, wants to
know that they will get what they have paid for. Free sites cannot
be traced to anyone in particular, and commercial websites on
the free servers are considered in general to be owned by the
fly-by-night outfits on the internet.
We have to give our potential customers the confidence they need
to buy products and services from us. And, in order to give our
potential customers confidence, we must be willing to spend a
few of our own dollars to set up a website.
You can actually register a domain for less than $20 in most cases.
Hosting for that domain can be picked up from hundreds of web
hosting companies for as little as $10-$20 per month.
On your website, you want to tell readers about your book and
why your reader might want to buy your book. On your website, be certain
to also ask your reader for the sale, and give them a link where
they can buy your book.
Including testimonials and book reviews on your website, will
also help you to build interest and trust with your readers.
Sometimes, it can pay dividends to hire a web designer to design
the visual template for your website, and to hire a sales copywriter
to write your sales copy for the book.
One thing to keep in mind is that not all web designers can write
good salescopy, and few copywriters make good web designers.
When you can afford to do so, you should seriously consider hiring
a professional to do the tasks necessary to build a nice website
and to put good salescopy onto your website. Great web designers
will also help you by building your e-commerce system, so that
your readers can buy directly from your website.
The professionals do not have to be really expensive. Both can
usually be found for a couple hundred dollars. Of course, you
could pay more, but you can still find some good people at these
rates.
- Promote Your Book With Free-Reprint Articles
Free-Reprint Articles are informational pieces designed to educate
the reader about something of interest to the reader.
In an article, your goal is to talk about some topic that is related
to the topic of your book. You don't actually want to sell your
book inside the body of the article. Instead, you want to use
your article to introduce your readers to concepts that might
be covered in your book.
When you reach the end of the article, you want to include your
About The Author information (often referred to as your Resource
Box). Keep your sales material in your Resource Box, but keep
in mind that your goal is not to sell your book in your Resource
Box. Instead, your goal is to use your Resource Box to get the
reader to your website, then use your website to sell your book.
Many people ask if article promotion will work for them. This
is what I tell them.
The ability of an article to produce results for you will depend
on your article. The internet is still a democracy in that people
will make the choice for themselves whether or not they want to
use your article.
Some articles get lots of reprints, some do not. The average outcome
is about 40-50 backlinks and multiple publications in ezines.
Poor articles still get an average of ten reprints. Exceptional
articles generate in excess of thousands of reprints. The results
really do rely upon the article.
(One client of mine has one article that generated more than 5,000
reprints in two years time. This same client has written more
than 100 articles. He is a well-known article writer and this
fact does help his ability to generate more mileage from a single
article.)
Just as important as the article itself, is the author resource
box. The article is the vehicle to get your resource box seen.
A good resource box offers just enough information to inspire
the reader to visit your website to learn more about your book.
A good resource box also offers a strong call-to-action to get
the reader to your website. Let your website do the selling, but
use the resource box to get the reader to your website.
Also, you really should consider doing more than one article over
a longer period of time. For example, six articles over six months.
Each subsequent article puts your name in front of the publishers
who will use your articles. Name recognition will help your overall
ability for getting published.
- Promote Your Book With Press Releases
I always recommend a two-fold approach to any book promotion.
- Reprint articles related to the topic of the book.
- Press releases distributed through a system such as http://www.prweb.com
Press releases are different from an article. A good article
will have an educational or informational slant to them. A good
press release will be designed more as a news story. A good press
release has the most noteworthy news in the first paragraph, the
second most noteworthy information in the second paragraph, etc.
Additonally, the press release will provide a telephone number
for news reporters to contact you for more information concerning
your story, so that they can build their own news story from your
information.
Although the premise of a press release is so that a reporter
can learn enough to build their own news story, you have to remember
that their schedule is tight as well. Build your press release
in such a way that it can be used as the news story. Many people
will take your press release verbatum for their own use. They
might take only the first paragraph, and then they might take
the whole thing.
Build your press release with the hope that it will be used in
full. Build your press release with the thought that the reporter
may only use the first paragraph.
Be prepared to receive phone calls to answer questions about your
topic. And, be prepared when no one calls.
I have sent out more than a dozen press releases myself. I have
seen those press releases read thousands of times and used hundreds
of times. And yet, no one has ever called me for more information.
In Conclusion...
Book promotion should not be viewed as a one-time event. If
you take the idea that I will try this once to see if it works,
then you might as well save your time and money and not even try
at all.
Promotion is an ongoing process. Nothing will happen until you do
something. And then you will need to keep doing something to keep
open the possibility of something happening to your benefit.s
You need to build up a momentum, and then just keep on running.
You are more likely to get published and to sell books if people
recognize your name. And, one-time out will not allow anyone to
get to know you.
Book authors who can build up a promotional momentum for their book
are very likely to find their first 5,000 sales. And as a general
rule, once you have crossed that threshold, your publisher will
be more than happy to help you to keep that momentum going.
Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com
He specializes in distributing free reprint articles to help his
clients to promote their online businesses or their books. Bill
can be reached by phone at (405)780-7327, from 9:30am to6pm, Monday
through Friday.
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