- Three things any writer can do to sell more books online
- The role of publishers (according to a profitable publisher)
- Top 5 Myths About Self Publishing
- Before You Self Publish: 5 Vital Things To Do
In my other life, I’m a marketer, but on this blog I speak first as a reader and book buyer, even if I’m talking about business! Today’s post is going to be short and sweet — here are three easy things that any writer can do to sell more books on your site. Even if you don’t have any thing to sell, you can still do these things to get more readers and feedback.
1) Accurately and honestly describe your book, but do not use pitchy, cliff-hanger-filled blurb speak. The first reaction for me and most other customers is “Yeah, right,” when we encounter anything that sounds salesy. Yes, we are hoping that your book is the best thing we’ve ever read, but when everything makes that promise… and when we’ve been disappointed over and over… we learn not to fully trust those little paragraph writeups.
On your own site, you don’t need to rely on those pitchy back-cover blurbs. You have freedom; you can write your own accurate description of the book — what it does and does not do, who the intended audience is.
2) Provide sample chapters. What do you have to lose by providing the first few chapters of your book? If there’s some lame legal reason, you can always post something else by you. Novellas are hard to publish and don’t make that much money for the writer, but as a promotional tool, they can make great samples.
Readers buy books in part because they respond on a gut level to the author’s voice and storytelling authority, as Les Edgerton says in “Finding Your Voice.” If you don’t give readers the chance to form that response, you’re losing out on readers.
3) Start, and promote, a mailing list. Mailing lists aren’t evil, even though many people are afraid of them. Tricking people into joining isn’t cool, but you’d never do that, right? Look, people want to hear more from you, so give them the opportunity.
Not everyone who visits your website will join your list, but the people who do want you to contact them. They are your friends and fans! They will leave comments and send you feedback if you ask them to!
Mailing list programs are not that hard to set up — most of the programs are intended for beginners, such as Constant Contact or iContact, and you don’t have to know much about web junk to use ‘em.
Seriously, do these three things; they won’t take you long. Every writer I know — amateur, professional, published, or unpublished — is ravenous for more readers and feedback, and these are the easiest and simplest ways I know to get them.
- Kat
Update.
I’ve written a free PDF tutorial on this. I cover a lot of related topics, but some of them are:
- Why you may feel uncomfortable with building an email list
- How to set up your system so that your reader has a good experience (yes, you can do a “bare bones” Feedburner thing, but it’s not nearly good enough for your reader. They deserve better than a half-assed effort.)
- The best email list management programs
- Potential problems you may run into when choosing your program
- And, of course, free vs. paid list service!
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Good basics that we should all be following – except I just can’t get myself into creating a mailing list.
I have the first chapter available on my web, I have what I hope is a reasonable description, but mailing list….
Maybe I need a kick up the bum.
For reasons that are too deep to explain here, you’ve got to do a mailing list. It’s so very important — more than you probably realize — and I am writing that paper to address the reasons and to walk you through the process. Seriously. It could be the single best thing you do for yourself and your readers, even if you don’t sell anything for money!
Cheers for this, I do the first two things with extracts of chapters and samples of my writing, as well as other posts to create an idea of who I am and where my ideas and writing comes from.
I currently have the bare bones feedburner list, so to find out about other ones would be great.
Cheers Andy
Oh, you need that list tutorial, too, and I’m totally done with the rough draft! I’m adding a few diagrams, sending it out to beta testers, and hope to release it by the weekend. Interested in being a crash-test dummy?
Cheers for the offer, depends how much time it will take, currently snowed under with coursework and writing! Let me know.