How to Get People to Buy Your Books

 As an author, you want to write and publish, but you'd also like to sell your books. To sell anything, you have to market it. Even as an author, you have to market! You cannot get there on your name, because as an Indie or Self-Published author, you don't yet have a "name."

Traditional Publishers often organize book tours, which is great, but that’s the most expensive way to market. As an Indie Publisher, you probably don’t have that kind of money, and the truth is even if you did, you might not have the clout to pull in enough interested buyers to make your investment in travel worthwhile. However, Indie Publishers need to get on-board with Internet Marketing Methods.

You need to do several things online to bolster your visibility. First, you need to create a Website for your Book. However, your Website needs to be geared to your buyers. What are they looking for? What are the BENEFITS for your potential buyers and readers?

One of the first things you probably did when you began writing your book is to think about your target market. If you didn’t actually do that step explicitly, you probably did without consciously thinking about it. Now is the time to spend that time to clearly define your target market. Next, you need to write down every benefit that your target market would find by reading your book.

Create your Website using those benefits. Also, create a good tagline that encompasses the book’s topic. Make your About the Author page also Benefit driven. Make sure your Home page also has a call to action. In other words, it needs to be a good sales page. Your entire site needs to be a sales page.

Paying an Internet Marketing Specialist might be worth the money, because you probably will get a better return. All of this is good for your Website, but a Website is only the place to start!

In his book “The Complete Internet Marketing Strategy Guide”, author Ed McDonough says:

“To effectively market on the internet today, you need to strategically utilize other key internet marketing components in conjunction with your website. Social Media, Email Marketing, Blogging, Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Specific Websites are all requirements of a sound Internet Marketing Strategy.”

So, get on Facebook, Twitter and everything else! But don’t think that’s going to do it!

You also need to do research on keywords that people would use to search for your book. One great strategy is to create some videos on YouTube that then drive traffic to your site.

Again, paying an Internet Marketing Specialists (You can contact Ed McDonough at ed@executivecoached.com) to do all of this for you will probably be a good investment, which is less than the cost of airline, motel, and food for going to just one place in the country to promote your book.