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How to Promote a Book
The realities of the book-selling business...
Book Authors: How To Sell More Books & Get Your Publisher Active
Copyright © 2006 Bill Platt
the Phantom Writers
http://thePhantomWriters.com
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.
1. Set up a domain website,
2. Promote your book with articles,
3. 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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. PROMOTE YOUR BOOK WITH PRESS RELEASES
I always recommend a two-fold approach to any book promotion. 1)
reprint articles related to the topic of the book. 2) 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.
Additionally, 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.
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.
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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 to
6pm, Monday through Friday.
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