MY BOOK ISN'T SELLING! THE CHARGAN BOOK OF MARKETING IDEAS by Philip Ragan **** PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS This book available in print from www.chargan.com My Book Isn't Selling! The Chargan Book of Marketing Ideas Copyright © 2010 Philip Ragan All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. Philip Ragan has asserted his right under the Copyright Act 1968 to be identified as the author of this work. Smashwords Edition License Notes Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. **** My Book Isn't Selling! The Chargan Book of Marketing Ideas **** This book provides practical advice on how to market your book or ebook. At Chargan My Book Publisher, we assist our authors by printing their local stock of books, getting their paperback books for sale online at lulu ® , wordclay ® , amazon ® and others, and we are also a Smashwords ® Affiliate, publishing their ebooks at Smashwords, for premium distribution to all major ebook stores including the Apple iBook ® store and the Amazon Kindle ® store. Details of our services are available at www.chargan.com or email us at books@chargan.com Some of the ideas that follow are our own, but many have been integrated from a number of sources. When it comes to ebook marketing, in particular I'd like to acknowledge Mark Coker, of Smashwords, and his book "The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide" which contains even more ideas and can be downloaded for free (at the time of writing) from www.smashwords.com Contents The ebook revolution The challenge for new authors Don't annoy. Excite! Curiosity is the key Why isn't anyone buying my book? Who do you know? Your book online Marketing your ebook A web site Paid advertising In Summary The ebook revolution The book publishing world is changing fast in 2010. Only two years ago, in 2008, ebooks represented less than 1% of all book sales, whereas today they represent 10% and rising. Ebook readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, the Apple iPad ® , the Sony Ereader ® and the Kobe ® , have become the must-have accessory of 2010. Of course, once someone has purchased an ebook reader, they want books on it, to read. Many free ebooks are available, as well as low cost ebooks. In October 2010, Amazon announced that sales of Kindle ebooks had way overtaken sales of paper books on the Amazon website, by a factor of three! While many people say they prefer paper books, the march of ebooks is continuing and it is not unreasonable to think that, by 2012, more books will be sold as ebooks, than paper books. The book world is in a position akin to the music world, when song downloading became possible. Unfortunately the same piracy issues come up. Why pay $50 for a new hardback when you can download it, legally, for $16, or pirate the ebook for free? The challenge for new authors First time authors face a whole new world of challenges. First, the old fashioned book publishers are turning into dinosaurs. Defensive of their pitch, they have little interest in taking on new authors under the old royalty system. If you are a new author, dreaming of fame and fortune with a royalty contract from a major book publisher, dream on. Second, the explosion of new titles, and the ebook format, is reducing the price at which books can be sold for. Don't expect to make much of a profit from your first book! Third, expect to spend a long time building up a readership that follows your books, and keep writing until you have a large selection of books for sale. Everyone who bought your past books is a potential customer for your next book. So you keep building up your readership and customer base. As a new author, the world looks like this: you will spend money getting your precious first work into print and available as an ebook. You will spend time marketing it, and getting known. You will have to compete with thousands of other new and existing authors. Readers are getting used to obtaining books for free, or at any rate, paying far less than they used to. Your first book may have to be offered for free, or at low cost, if it is to get a readership. Only when you have built up a readership following, and perhaps are on to your third or fourth book, will you be able to charge a reasonable amount for your book, and start to dream of making a profit on book sales. So, dear new author, publish because you've spent years writing your book, and want to be known as an author. Publish because you believe that there are people who will want to read your book. Publish because you like the excitement and feeling of being an author. If you eventually make a profit, or even a living, from your writing, then that will be cause for celebration, but there is more to life than making money! Enjoy the satisfaction that comes with being an author, and having all your friends and family knowing the fact. With a bit of luck and some marketing, you will find the rewards that come from being an author. Don't annoy. Excite! Tell everyone you know, about your new book for sale! But don't give copies away. It is tempting to start giving copies to all your best friends, in part to just get copies out there, in part because of fear of rejection - you may suspect that they wouldn't want to buy a copy. So two things: deal with your fear of rejection, and start your own marketing campaign. If they won't buy it, they won't read it either, in our experience. One other thing: friends, if they do read it, will often come back to you with criticism of your book. Don't take it to heart, unless you get the same comment from lots of people. Everyone will figure they would have written the book differently, or written a different ending, or something. Ignore them I say! This is your book, your style, your ending. If they want a different book, there is nothing stopping them from writing their own book. So you are going to tell everyone you know about your book? The first rule is, don't annoy them. People hate friends putting the hard word on them, to buy something. The softly-softly approach works better. Make it known that you are excited about your book, that it is being published. Print off some one-page flyers about your book, describing it, including details like the cost and where to download the ebook if appropriate. You can give these to people, to arouse their interest. You send emails to people, don't you? Set up an email signature that advertises your book and has a link to the download page. If you mention it on Facebook or similar, don't blatantly sell it! Mention its existence, or some great feedback you had, or something interesting you learned about ebooks etc. Make it sound like a conversation and you are more likely to get interest in your book. Curiosity is the key Think "teaser". If you give someone a précis of the entire story, or give away the plot or the very clever twist to the story that you came up with, why will anyone then need to buy your book? The one paragraph description of your book, written on the back page, or as a brief description of your ebook, is the most valuable thing you are going to write. This will decide whether or not someone will decide to buy your book, or pass it by. If you do nothing else, get this right! For starters, go to your favorite bookshop to browse existing books, or book descriptions online. Find books on topics similar to yours. Which ones get you tempted to buy the book? Make a note of how they are written and copy the format. Who is in your audience? Who are the likely readers? You have to write a "teaser" in a style that will appeal to them. If you've written a book on the Vietnam War, of interest to veterans, then the writing style, and words used, will be very different to, say, a romance for teenage girls. It is not the purpose to give away the whole book story, or to write a précis of it. The idea is to convey enough understanding of the book or its story to leave the reader wanting to know more. Curiosity is the key! If your "teaser" makes me curious to read more, then I'm half way to buying your book. People like to read books by someone who is, subconsciously, just like themselves. It may be hard for you to put yourself into their shoes. That is why, at Chargan, we sometimes find it easier to write the "teaser" for you. Since we are once removed from your book, we can visualize what would get people interested in your book. Why isn't anyone buying my book? The book market is fiercely competitive. With the advent of ebooks, thousands more titles are available to read, at prices that are getting cheaper every day. It's like the era of records and CD's (remember them?) giving way to mp3 files all over again, but this time for books. Has anyone heard of you? Is your book available, and prominent, in ebook stores, on Amazon, or in your local bookshops? Online, has your book been reviewed, or even purchased by anyone? Have you figured out the profile of likely readers of your book? You need to know this, in order to target the right readership for your book. No good marketing your Vietnam War epic to teenage girls! Are you focusing on the right readership? You are in competition So you have your book printed. You have a local stock of books. It is available for purchase as a paper book at Amazon.com and others. It is available as an ebook. You haven't sold one copy. What next? Put yourself in the shoes of a reader looking for a book to buy. Will they come across your book? We have listed some tips in the next sections on how to stand out from the competition. Who do you know? Tell people you know about your book. You probably know more people than you think. Have a look at the list below and think about who you could contact. In some cases, contact or emails may have to be made with consideration, or it may not be appropriate. * Family * Friends * Work colleagues * Club memberships * Professional associations * Any email lists you may have * Facebook or MySpace contacts * LinkedIn contacts * Local clubs or special interest groups * Church groups * School contacts * Local library * Groups you could do a presentation to * Web sites that you can post on (but beware looking like you are overtly selling) * Your printed books at home Your local stock of books can be advertised. Let all friends and family know they are available for purchase. If it is a specialist topic, e.g. the Vietnam War, try contacting local veteran and military history groups, for example. Offer to go along and speak on your topic, and have copies available for purchase. If it's that kind of book, what about a local radio station or newspaper? Can you get onto the station to talk about your book topic, or contribute an article to the newspaper about it? If you can do the above, then you may have some specialist local bookshops that would carry your book, on a sale-or-return basis. If they know that you are getting on the radio for an interview, for instance, and that you may mention your book is available at their bookstore, then their interest in carrying your book may increase. Your book online What about Amazon and ebook stores? People rarely browse "all" books and buy one at random. First, have you written a good "teaser" as above, tempting them to buy it? But of course, they have to get to a point where they can read your "teaser" first. 1. Category Is your book listed under the right category? If it is a science fiction book and I search for science fiction books, will it show up? 2. Tags You can apply "tags" to your book. Here you try to anticipate all of the relevant search terms that people might use, that could lead to your book. So if you've written a science fiction tale of alien abduction, maybe you'll want to show up, when someone searches for "aliens", "alien abduction", "crop circles", etc. The more tags the better. 3. Book Comments Most sites have space for readers to write comments about the book. If your book has no comments that implies that no-one has been interested in reading it. You don't want that! Get some friends to log in and write comments about your book. Pre-feed them with suggested comments, if you like. Try not to choose friends that will write rude things about your book! Get half a dozen comments or more listed. 4. Best seller lists People will browse best-seller lists. It's the old chicken-and-egg story here. How do you get onto a best seller list when you haven't sold any? Here is one way. If we are considering your ebook listing on Smashwords, for example, first set your book price to "free". Then get in touch with all your friends and ask them to download the book from the site. Ask them to contact their friends with the same request. It won't cost them anything. After your download campaign is finished, you can reset the book price if you wish. If you have enough friends, and this is done over a short targeted period, then your book may show up in the best seller lists. Now you hope that this will drive enough readers to your book, for them to consider buying it. See Mark Coker's book for more information on this topic. 5. Linking to popular books Sites such as Smashwords and Amazon will analyze sales, and a book may be flagged as "People who purchased this book also purchased the following books…" So you have power, to be exercised by purchasing a few copies of your own book! For example, if you purchase a best selling book, and your own book in the same transaction, you increase the chances of getting the above marketing message working for you. 6. Your profile page When we publish your ebook with Smashwords, you, as the author, get a personal web page in which your details can be provided, including a listing of all your published books. If you have produced several books, this can be useful to point readers to the balance of your books. 7. Your book page Similarly, your book gets a web page to itself, in which the write-up can be extended, and a copy of the Cover displayed, or anything else relevant. 8. YouTube Consider making a short video about your book, and uploading it to YouTube. All publicity helps! 9. Coupons When your ebook is available on the Smashwords site, you can generate discount coupons that offer a percentage off of the book price. Obviously, if your book is currently free, then coupons don't apply, but otherwise you can email your friends with discount coupons, maybe describe it as an "author special" or "mates rate" promotion. People like to think they are getting something cheaper than normal. 10. Hyperlinks Do you have access to web sites that could host a hyperlink to your book web page? Make sure you have permission first, of course, and that the site is relevant, but it is helpful to get as many hyperlinks to your book as possible. Marketing your ebook 1. The power of "free" So you've wondered down to your local bookstore and noted that most books of your type are for sale at say $15. In pricing your ebook, you think, maybe knock a few dollars off and price it at $12 for download. But the problem is, none of your books have sold. One obvious problem here is that your price is way too high. It's a competitive world for new authors, and until your book is recognized, you should price it as cheaply as possible. Maybe $2.99, or $1.99, or even $0.99, or how about offering it for free? Offering your book for free may seem counter-intuitive when you are hoping to make money from sales. But there is logic here. People are drawn to books that have already been downloaded by lots of other people. At first, offering it for free encourages a lot of downloads. If that creates ongoing interest, and you get plenty of unsolicited positive comments on your book, then later you can start charging $0.99 and then increasing the price in small increments. At that point in time, the theory is, better to sell 10,000 copies at $0.99 than 10 copies at $9.99! 2. The sampling download percentage When we at Chargan set up our ebook sales on the Smashwords site, we allow a free download of a portion of the book, usually 10% to 20% of the book. The idea is that people can start reading the first part of your book. If they like what they read, then they can purchase the balance. This way, you get readers over the nervousness of buying a book about which they know very little. 3. One book or many volumes? How large is your book? If it's 200 pages or more, printed, then it might be too large as an ebook. You will have already noticed that the popular ebooks sell for only a dollar or two. The reaction of authors to that pricing has been to shrink the size of their books to match the price, and many ebooks would only run to 50 pages if they were printed. So take a fresh look at your own book. Could it be split into several volumes, in a logical manner? Instead of one book of 200 pages, you could be the author of, say, three books, a trilogy. Each book can sell for say one dollar, giving you three dollars revenue if someone eventually buys all three. Or your book could become a series, volume 1, 2, etc. As a bonus, you are now the author of several books. If we search on your name as an author, it will show up that you have written several books, and authors of many books are much more likely to achieve book sales! 4. Catch the eye - your Cover What about the Cover design for your ebook? In this different world, the Cover plays a new role. For a large print book, the Cover design is important. But in the online world, readers will be viewing your Cover only as a small thumb picture on screen, so expensive graphics are largely wasted. Cover design is still important, however. In particular, pay attention to the color of the Cover. A bright, striking color will draw the eye, so go for a bold color. The rest of the design should still be a good design. A poor cover, with minimal artwork, or spelling mistakes, or layout problems, will give the message that the rest of the book is no good. Be sure that your Cover design is professionally presented, even if it is plain. 5. Book description - the "teaser" We've talked about the single paragraph book description above, but emphasize that this is one of the most important parts of your marketing. That one paragraph will largely decide whether a reader buys your book or not. Social Networking Social networking is a way for people to indicate web sites, books, etc that they have found interesting. Facilities such as Xmarks, FaceBook, Twitter and Delicious all provide ways of voting on a site or linking to it. If these terms mean nothing to you, then you need to start by looking at the web site for each service (or ask your young kids if you have any!) to learn how they work. Knowing how these work is useful to authors. Consider setting up a FaceBook identity for you as author, or for your book, separate from your personal FaceBook identity. This enables you to dedicate a FaceBook wall to your writing, your ideas, and topical stuff related to your book. By getting people to become FaceBook friends, you have a low-key way of regularly reminding them of your existence. It works best if you don't overtly "sell" your book on this site, just write things that encourage interest and curiosity. A web site You can set up your own web site devoted to your book, books or you as an author. This involves some cost, of course, and is not as useful as might be thought, unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money promoting the site. The same question applies: why would anyone visit your web site, and how will they become aware of it in the first place? If you have started to get a following with a large number of readers, then that is an appropriate time to consider the idea. Paid advertising Lastly, you can consider methods of paid advertising of your book, through adverts in media such as: Google Ads Newspapers Journals In Summary If it sounds like you, as the author, need to do a lot of work to promote your book, then you are right! You are the person with the vested interest in getting your book read by people. It is a competitive field, and you need to monitor your downloads, sales, and peoples comments regularly, adjusting your marketing strategy to match. If you haven't done all of the above, then you are not ready to move on to more expensive methods of marketing. So our suggestion is, put the work in! Think of how much time you have spent in writing your book. By comparison, the amount of time needed for marketing is not as great, but it should be thought of as the second, essential, step in the writing of your book. Best wishes for your life as an author! Philip Ragan Chargan My Book Publisher http://www.chargan.com mailto:philip@chargan.com?subject=Book marketing . MY BOOK ISN'T SELLING! THE CHARGAN BOOK OF MARKETING IDEAS by Philip Ragan **** PUBLISHED BY CHARGAN AT SMASHWORDS This book available in print from www .chargan. com My Book Isn't Selling! . this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. **** My Book Isn't Selling! The Chargan Book of Marketing Ideas **** This book. announced that sales of Kindle ebooks had way overtaken sales of paper books on the Amazon website, by a factor of three! While many people say they prefer paper books, the march of ebooks is continuing