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Generating Sales After Self-Publishing: Five Things You Must Know

Penny C. Sansevieri's picture
by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Mar 14, 2023

Do you know the difference between book marketing and book sales? Well, it’s pretty easy.

Book marketing is raising awareness. It’s the social campaigns, the websites, the Amazon profiles; it’s what introduces you and your book to a potential reader. Meanwhile, book sales is done by your book. Is your work good enough to secure the sale? Is your cover enticing and your description flawless? I hope the answer is yes if you’re doing all this work to market it.

If you’re drawing potential readers to your book and getting them in the door, but you’re not getting many sales, that’s a sign there’s something wrong with your book, not with your marketing.

So let’s dig in and find out what really matters:

1. Know your buyer market.

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Short-Term Actions to Reach Long-Term Goals

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Mar 7, 2023

Entrepreneurial book publishers are regularly faced with a dilemma. They recognize the need to focus on long-term growth and they create five-year plans to achieve it. On the other hand, they understand they must generate short-term revenue to stay in business long enough to reach their ultimate goals. The dilemma? How to survive during the short term to achieve long-term success?
 
The answer is not to find better books to sell, but to find better ways to sell books. That is to create and implement an array of marketing tools that allows each to fulfill its designated function over a specific time period. 
 
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How to Improve Your Website for Better Book Marketing

Penny C. Sansevieri's picture
by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Feb 7, 2023

Consider your website to be your first introduction to a reader. They may have heard your name, or maybe they’ve seen your book in the store, but they don’t really know you or your writing. With your website, you get to decide what their first impression of you will be. What does that look like for you?
 
Your website doesn’t need to have all the bells and whistles and look like an aesthetic masterpiece, but it should be professional and competitive. To a potential reader, the quality of your website may be indicative of the quality of your work. So if your website looks thrown together and unrefined, that may be what they expect from your book.
 
There are a few must-haves for any good website. Here is a list of what you’ll need to get started: 
 
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Top Ten Tips for Creating a Sales Proposal

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Jan 31, 2023

When negotiating a large-quantity order your prospects will expect you to present a proposal. This is your recommendation of how to proceed, your solution to the buyer’s problem. Give them an answer to the unspoken question, “How will your product make a credible improvement over the existing or previous ways in which they have conducted promotional campaigns?” Here are the Top Ten Tips for Creating a Sales Proposal. 
 
1. Give a summary of what you propose, why it will benefit the buyer and how much it will cost – all on one page.  
 
2. An 8 – 15% improvement gets attention. If you predict a result that is too low, they are not interested. If too high, it is not believable. Make a reasonable and doable claim that is backed by credible data. Do not offer a guarantee.
 
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The Advantages of Advertising in Print Media

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Jan 24, 2023

In this case – as in most – either/or thinking is erroneous. A strategic combination of print and digital communication can maximize the impact of your message because print offers benefits that digital doesn’t, and that digital combined with print advertising is more powerful than digital alone. A strategic use of print media can most effectively and efficiently increase your sales, revenue and profits. 

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Picking the Right Book Marketing Services in 2023

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by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Jan 3, 2023

Not all book marketing services are created equal. That’s a given. And some have strengths in some genres or expertise that they don’t in others.

When it comes to finding the right book marketing service, you’ll want to find a partner. A team that has your best interests. A team that’s on the same page and making recommendations that make sense to you.

No matter what they have to offer and what promises they make, here are six key considerations for finding the right book marketing service:

Are they honest about strengths and limitations?

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Customize Your Pitch to Each Catcher

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Dec 13, 2022

Whether you are cooking a meal, planning a vacation or making a sales presentation, it is the preparation that determines the relative success of the outcome. The more time you put into preparing your sales presentation – what you will say and how you will say it – the more likely it is that you will get the order.

Your presentation to a corporate buyer, media producer or book distributor is not about your book, it is about how your content can solve your prospects’ problems. The corporate buyer wants to increase sales. The producer wants a good show for the audience, and a distributor wants to keep the pipeline to retailers full and flowing.

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How to Make a Good First Impression, or Correct a Bad One, with Prospective Buyers

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Nov 29, 2022

We all want to make a good first impression when calling on a sales prospect for a large book order. An order for thousands of books could be at stake. So the pressure is on you, and that alone could cause you to make a bad first impression. But there are other reasons, and some are beyond your control. The most expeditious thing to do is to control the impression you make on buyers. But if you don’t, you may be able to correct it. Here are Ten Ways to Make the Right Impression.  
 
1. Understand that your words and behavior are always subject to interpretation. The buyers’ initial assessments of you are the result of their assumptions, stereotypes and cues. Dress, talk and act the image you want to convey.
 
2. Walk in the office confidently, smiling and dressed professionally. Shake hands firmly while making eye contact. 
 
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Dealing with Emotions While Selling Your Books

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Nov 15, 2022

Negotiating a large-quantity book sale is a little like playing poker, requiring both hard and soft skills. To be good at it you need practice and experience. You also need a little chutzpah, the creativity to recognize alternatives, the ability to assess odds, the willingness to take calculated risks and the confidence to bluff when necessary. 

But unlike poker, selling to a corporate buyer is not a winner-take-all game. It is not zero-sum activity where one’s slice of the pie is increased at the expense of the other. Negotiating is a give-and-take exchange seeking a larger pie to split. 

Pursuing that end can cause consternation among the participants, particularly if they have not dealt with each other before. Both sides enter the negotiation with various degrees of tension or anxiety. If you manage the emotional tenor of a negotiating session you can be more successful bargaining and bring it to a win-win conclusion.

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March Marketing Madness

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Oct 11, 2022

Every March basketball fans are embroiled with Madness. However, while not all of us are so captivated with basketball we are all similarly obsessed with book marketing. There are so many marketing “bracket choices” available to authors that they become overwhelmed and do not know where to start or how to organize and implement an effective marketing mix. Until now.

Apply bracketology to book marketing by analyzing each of the four parts of a marketing mix: Promotion, Pricing, Distribution and Product Development. These are each depicted below and as one document suitable for editing here: https://bit.ly/37tZx5z. Complete the brackets as you would for the NCAA Final Four and at the same time your final marketing choices will set your Final Four marketing strategies and actions for the next three months. 

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