Self Published Author | Category | Marketing & Publicity

The New Way to Market Books

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Wed Feb 8, 2017

The traditional path for selling books is changing. There are more books available to fewer readers every year. Bookstore shelves are crowded with undifferentiated books viewed as commodity items, and shoppers increasingly base their purchasing decisions on price. Yet prices are increasing, not because of greater value to the reader, but because of increased costs partially due to shorter print runs.

Unfortunately, publishers continue to produce more books to sell through bookstores even though competing in this environment is increasingly less profitable. However, there is a real opportunity to create new sales in uncontested market space among non-retail buyers in corporations, associations, schools and the military.

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Your Guide to Picture-Perfect Instagram Book Marketing

by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Wed Feb 1, 2017

Since 2012, when it was acquired by Facebook, Instagram has grown by 400%! It may be relatively new to the social media game, but candidly, I barely remember a time when I didn’t have an account. Here’s why:

First, Instagram is easy to use. That’s a plus in anyone’s book! Also, since it’s not as ad-driven as Facebook (at least so far), it’s much more budget-friendly if your marketing budget is limited and you prefer to allocate those funds elsewhere. It’s much easier to capture someone’s attention on Instagram than on Facebook because it’s so visual. In fact, it drives 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook, and 120 times more than Twitter. If you like statistics, you should really like these numbers!

10 Ways to Get Creative on Instagram

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10 Easy Steps for Creating an Awesome Website

by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Thu Jan 26, 2017

What is the single most significant thing you can do for building your book sales or business? If you answered, “Have a website,” then you are spot on. I am always amazed at how many people jump into building their website without any knowledge of what it involves. Especially when they know how important a great website is to their business or book sales. And although design is important, that’s not really what I’m talking about. Instead, I’m talking about the goals, the mission, and understanding the principles that go into creating something that isn’t about you. Yes, your website has information about you and your books, but it’s ultimately about your users. In the end, they are the single most important aspect of how you sell your books.

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Three Steps to Making Large Sales to Corporate Buyers

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Dec 20, 2016

Non-bookstore marketing is identical to selling through bookstores, yet vastly different. How can that be? There are two pieces in the special-sales pie: retail and non-retail. In retail sales (airport stores, supermarkets and discount stores) books are sold off the shelf, each person buys one book, there is a formal discount structure, you work through a distribution partner and unsold books are returned. Non-retail sales (to corporations, schools, associations) are the opposite. You find the people who can use your content to solve a business problem and you sell directly to them. One buyer can purchase thousands of your books. Terms are negotiated and books are not returnable. This is the more profitable alternative.

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Making Your Pitch from the Buyer’s Perspective

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Tue Nov 29, 2016

Making a large-quantity sale (5,000 or more) of your books to corporate buyers typically entails a formal presentation describing how your content can help the company in some way. You can improve your chances of making the sale with an analogy to the game of baseball. In any one game there may be several different pitchers used, but the same catcher is always there.

How does this equate to selling books? There may be several publishers pitching their books to corporate buyers -- the people catching the pitches. The buyers have business issues they need to resolve, and the pitchers who demonstrate how their content eliminates those pain points get the win.

For example, let’s say you have a book with content that helps to motivate employees and you are making a presentation to a Human Resources (HR) manager. This person wants to reduce absenteeism and increase productivity for the company’s 10,000 employees.

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7 Social Media Tips for Indie Authors

by Frances Caballo
Bowker | Tue Nov 15, 2016

You published your book, celebrated your launch, and sold books to most of your friends, family members and colleagues. And you’re blogging.

But you may be wondering, “What can I do to reach even more readers?”

Reaching out to the press, contacting book clubs, and reading at bookstores are great ways to promote your book offline. To reach potential readers across the U.S. and around the world, you need to use social media.

The thought of creating an online presence can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need are 30 minutes a day and these tips.

7 Social Media Tips Every Author Needs to Know

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How You Can Use Infrastructure & Strategies to Increase Your Book Sales

by Penny C. Sansevieri
Bowker | Tue Nov 8, 2016

A successful book is what every author wants. However, choosing what steps you take to build upon your success is what will set your book apart from the 4,500 other books published each day. Authors that take the time to establish a rock-solid foundation first, will see this time and effort pay off, because from there you can employ a variety of strategies to boost book sales. Although a strategy may sound boring, putting the right infrastructure into place early on can make all of the difference.

Building up your infrastructure is the most important thing you can do as an author. Over the years, I’ve met a lot of authors who believe (mistakenly) that once they list their book on Amazon, sales will roll in without additional effort. But, in reality, there’s so much more that must be done. Take a look at the checklist below to make sure you are setting your book up for success:

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14 Ways to Find Potential Buyers

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Wed Nov 2, 2016

Publishers limit their book sales when they see bookstores – bricks and/or clicks – as the only place through which to sell their books. If you want to sell 10,000 books through any retailer, you must get 10,000 people to go there and buy one. But if you want to sell 10,000 books in non-retail markets, you find one person to buy 10,000 of them – non-returnable. Which do you think is a more profitable way to sell your books?

The world of special sales (non-bookstore sales) is actually larger than the opportunity for selling through bookstores. Many publishers do not attempt to sell there because they do not know who the person is to contact.

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How to unlock Amazon's keywords and hidden categories to sell more books

by Miral Sattar
Bowker | Fri Oct 28, 2016

Do you feel like your book is getting lost in the millions of titles currently for sale on Amazon? There’s a lot of competition for readers’ attention and that will only get more difficult as more authors embrace the freedom of self-publishing.

Did you know that you can use certain keywords in order to get your book listed in secret sub-genres that you can’t get from the regular list on the Amazon KDP dashboard?

Amazon doesn’t offer every existing category when it's time to publish your book.

Annoying right?

In our next LIVE ONLINE WORKSHOP on Wednesday, November 2nd at 12:00pm EST we'll be showing you EXACTLY how to unlock Amazon's secret categories AND how to optimize your book to be discovered by more readers.

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Marketing From the Customer's Perspective

by Brian Jud
Bowker | Wed Oct 5, 2016

What is the process you follow when you go to a store to buy something? You probably go to the most convenient place (bricks or clicks) and peruse the assortment available. You may search for a particular brand if you are aware of it. If not, you look at the prices to compare the value of the items to your needs. Then depending on the strength of your need compared to the available choices you decide to buy or wait.

If publishers looked at the purchasing process form their customers’ prospective, they could sell more books. Instead, they seek manuscripts based on an author’s knowledge (non-fiction) or imagination (fiction). Then they publish them, price them to cover all costs and desired profits, and sell them through bookstores. They announce the availability of their books through social media and publicity. And when the books do not sell they publish different ones.

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