How To Sell 11,487 Books in 2016

Recently, I sent out a post called Benefits To Becoming A Best Selling Author On Amazon . It raised quite a stir especially with those that consider themselves serious writers. While, I wanted to help them understand why this trend is here to stay, it’s time to stop hating the player; hate the game.

Yes, seeking best seller status on Amazon is just one part of the plan with our clients. It’s the first part and a necessity to get the algorithms working for us. Why not take advantage of free marketing from Amazon to their millions of subscribers? If you are serious about selling books, shouldn’t this be a given?

However, don’t stop there. Let me give you the other 7 strategies we use in our 8-point marketing plan for our clients. What we’ve discovered is authors can average about 11,487 books sold in a year by implementing my strategic plan. The best part: most of this is automation with little work for the author after writing the book. One hour of automation for us equates to 20 hours or more of manual work (and worth hundreds of hours when it comes to the sales process).

1. Become an Amazon best seller. Refer to my other article for the benefits.
2. Create a website for your book. Most people have their book on their main site so the book loses focus. While yes, have an image of your book on your website and an option, link it to its own site. By having a separate site for your book, you book can get it’s own SEO (search engine optimization) and you know if people land on this site, they are interested in your book, not the other services and products you may sale. Also, this is the year of retargeting. Retargeting your prospects to buy your book is definitely low hanging fruit. Then the only thing that is left is drive traffic.
3. Give Bonuses For Purchasing Your Book – No surprise here. This is selling online 101 (and most people still aren't doing it wondering why their sales are low). Give bonuses that exceed the value of the purchase (actually I find 10X the purchase price to be the sweet spot) and it will help you sell more books. An awesome bonus is a private Q&A with the author via Google hangout.
4. Create A Virtual Book Tour – This has been a fabulous edition to our strategic plan. It gets rave reviews from independent bookstores as well. Remember everyone, including physical stores, are looking to keep engagement up and have offers exclusively for their customers and followers. If you offer a virtual book tour exclusively through book stores (many of them have screens connected to internet), they will help you sell your book.
5. Find bulk purchases – Finding bulk purchases isn’t as difficult as many seem to think. Go to where the money is and see how your book can fit. A great place is nonprofit organizations. They budget so much money for resources. If you can make the pitch why your book could serve as a resource, you have a winner. There are so many examples. Too many to name here.
6. Use Your Book As An Upsell – Let’s say you have an opt in offer on your website. When a new prospect gives you their name and email address, let your thank you page become an offer for your book. This does two things: First, it positions your authority on your topic and Second, you just might get the sale.
7. Speaking Engagements – Speaking engagements are an easy way to get your book out to the masses even if you don’t speak for pay. If you do, create an add on so everyone in the audience can get your book. Some of my clients have changed their speaking fee so this is already included. Also, many times when an event doesn’t have a budget for books, they may have a resource budget. That could be your book.
8. Book Signings – many authors only think of the traditional places – bookstores, conferences, etc. Think of it this way. Any place that will have a large gathering of people could be a potential place of a book signing.

There are so many other strategies to get your book selling. Many of these I’ve listed above go into the category “I can set it and then forget it”. If you want to average selling 11,487 books for 2016, talk to us.