Five Things You MUST Do In Order To Sell Your Books
Want to sell more books? Learn from an expert the five things you must do in order to achieve your goals.
1. You Must Find YOUR Market
Hopefully before you even wrote your book, you sat down and mapped out who your potential customers were. If you didn’t, don’t waste any more of your time selling books to people who don’t want them. Knowing your audience before you write your book creates focus. Figure out who is most likely to read your book. If cat lovers are your market, don’t bother wasting your time with all animal lovers. Spend your marketing efforts and budget on cat lovers. Can’t find the cat lovers? See below…
2. You Must Create a Community
If you are having a hard time finding your market, find them by creating a community for them. The Internet allows you to create a place where all cat lovers can talk to each other, have live chats with you (the author) and ask their questions, get mailings about your events, find other resources for cat lovers, post their cat’s picture in your forum… you can see that there is no end to what you can do with the Internet. You can use click-and-point services to create your own website like I did for the NAWW (National Association of Women Writers) or you can hire someone to do this for you. We feature writers every week in our newsletter who have built wonderfully large communities from scratch in a very short time (less than a year) using the Internet. Check out NAWW Member, Dotsie Bregel’s site at http://www.boomerwomenspeak.com.
3. You Must Create a Database
To sell books, you must have a mechanism in place to store all your potential customers’ contact information. Intimidated by the thought of creating a database? Please don’t be, just go to your nearest office store and you can purchase a database program for less than $50. Some website providers even have this function built straight into their website. Keeping track of your customers’ basic information is crucial to the success of your long and short-term sales. At the very least, you must capture (enter) their name, address, and e-mail. You will use this database to quickly and efficiently communicate with your customers through future e-mailings and direct mailings. Add customers to your database by networking (and speaking!) at conferences by simply saying, “I have this free (report, booklet, etc.–something you created that is what every cat lover would want to read) and I would love to send it to you with my free weekly newsletter.” Just grab their card and put a little check by their e-mail so that you know you got their permission. Another faster and easier way to build your database is by doing it online. Have a sign-up box right on your website for new potential customers. Doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it!
4. You Must Have a Call to Action
Busy people need a reason to act now. Whatever your form of communication is with your customer, it must have a call to action somewhere in it if you want them to stop what they are doing and make your book a priority. Include wording that says ‘act now’ because if you don’t you will miss this opportunity. The best calls to action include date expirations, liquidation sales, early-bird sales, etc. Simple technique, very powerful!
5. You Must Have Fun
You must have fun creating your community, networking with future customers, and thinking of creative/seasonal calls to action. When you have fun doing what you love, people want to do business with you. Hopefully the book that you wrote came from your passion about the subject. Now that you are selling your book, you get to live the “sharing of your passion” on a daily, weekly, and/or monthly basis. It is up to you–the more you live it, the more books you will sell!
Want To Use This Article In Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete blurb with it:
Sheri McConnell is the President of the National Association of Women Writers (www.NAWW.org). She helps women writers and entrepreneurs discover, create, and profit from their intellectual knowledge! Free reports for writers available with subscription to NAWW Weekly. Sheri lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband Seth and their four children. Contact her at naww@onebox.com or her toll free number at 866-821-5829.
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Fabulous article.
Step number one is especially crucial. Before Michele Miller and I wrote The Soccer Mom Myth, we actually created personas of who our readers are. We both have blogs, so we had a good idea of who was reading and commenting on them.
This was helpful in so many ways. We looked at the different types of questions different personas would be asking. We made sure we are answering those different questions.
We know we have a lot of women as readers, but we also have male readers as well. Knowing we have these male personas was great – it forced us to make sure we were fair and balanced in the book. We make a big point of saying that when it comes to failures in marketing to women, men are NOT to blame. Men and women have the same stereotypes.
While we are pro-women, we are also pro-men. Many shopping experiences designed for women actually create a better experience for both men and women.
Having these personas was also helpful as far as knowing WHAT to write. When you know who your audience is, and what they care about, I found it much easier to know what to write and how to write it.
So thanks again for a great article – wonderful advice I hope everyone will listen to.
07 Nov 2007 at 2:59 pm