How to Market a Book and How to Sell Books After You’ve Published
How to market a book? How to promote books and sell books after you’ve written and published books?
I started this book The Accidental Copywriter in the long hot summer of 2018 where we spent months at our other home in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
It is a business book that I struggled to get back to and finish due to time. So when the CoronaVirus lockdown began I committed to finishing it and getting it online and selling it.
I began marketing the book two weeks before it was finished. This resulted in around 100 pre-orders of the book.
Here’s what happened.
This new book is an experts book. This means I am sharing a journey about me a couple of decades of expertise as a high-end copywriter. It is in story and experience format. The story starts with my previous life as a hairdresser, moves through my transition into copywriting, and then finishes with my life today.
So …
This was an idea I had in my head for a very long time. Also, a couple of publishers and people I know had been pushing me to get this book done and out.
It is roughly 42,000 words. It covers 232 pages. It is a paperback. The cover was done here as was the internal layout. The back cover has reviews on there despite it hasn’t been for sale yet. Once the reviews arrived I sold the book with around 100 sales to start with.
Afterward, we were ready to market this new book more fully.
I don’t mind sharing how I sell books and some simple things you can do yourself to sell books on Amazon, online, or in person.
Sell books to those I already know and on my mailing lists. The best way to do this is to sell the book to those you have in your contact lists. Even if this is two people it’s a good thing to get that book out there. One always leads to another. Ask them to refer to or recommend the book and try to create momentum for the book sales.
Sell books across all of our websites. We have five websites plus an amazon profile page. The book will be posted on all websites with its on the sales page. My amazon page will be fully optimised to make sure that whatever anyone types into amazon (like when you go to Amazon and type - how to become a copywriter) out of all the thousands of copywriters’ books out there my new book comes close to the top.
Publish online via our publishing house and which covers 71,000 retail outlets. This bit might sound like we are cheating but I am sharing it anyway. I have my own publishing house. This gives me access to tens of thousands of online book retailers in an instant. Obviously, we utilise this tool also.
Promote other ways. I also send out a ton of gift books to (1) my reviewers. That is how I get my early book reviews. I send out an incomplete book and ask for reviews. This is a draft one and an unedited book. I also send out copies of the book to those that have an influence on the target marketplace.
And of course, we do some other things also.
So for me marketing a new book is literally doing everything and anything I can do to make sure it sells. If it doesn’t sell the message hasn’t gotten out. If it has gotten out and been read the book is nothing more than a doorstop.
So if you need to sell more books you really need to do everything you can to make every effort to get your book selling and sold.
I hope this helps you.
Please leave a comment.
Peace
Alan Forrest Smith
