Hello rebel authors, let's talk about the mistakes authors make when it comes to marketing their books.
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Video Transcript:
How am welcome to Follow the Arrows.
My name is Sarah Arrow.
And in this video, we're gonna be talking about the mistakes that stop you selling more of your books.
And let's face it, if we can eliminate some of these mistakes, you can sell more books and do more of the things you want in your life.
So, before I jump in, leave me a comment – say hello.
Tell me where you're from.
Also, if you've got a book, hop onto Amazon, open another tab and get the link and drop it in the comments and let me know what your book is.
So let's dive straight in. The biggest mistake when it comes to marketing in your book, it stops you selling a single copy is you're still marketing it to everybody.
Now I have the 30 day blogging challenge.
It's one of my most successful books.
I give away 25,000 copies.
I sell thousands of copies.
I've even got a print version coming out very soon .
When it comes to marketing my books, I'm very specific as to who I want to talk to.
If you are a business owner with a blog.
This book is for you.
If you are a business owner whose not gotta blog, this isn't the book for you.
Go and find one that shows you how to set it up.
Because whilst my book will show you how to set it up and get the best results is really not designed for beginners.
It's for a business that already has a blog.
I'm looking to connect with business owners who understand the power of blogging.
I don't want to have to spend all of my time convincing them that it's the right thing for them.
They can go and be convinced by somebody else.
I want to talk to the people who are driven, determined and ready to go.
That's my audience now.
Quite often when you say to an author.
So who's the book for?
They said, Oh, it's for everybody who's got a pulse?
Who's got this?
Who's got that.. and you think wasn't that everybody on the planet?
Now it makes it very hard to sell a book when it's for everybody, because people can't feel special.
When you go over to look at the page and read the description.
You want to feel special.
You want to feel that that book is really just for you, that you're gonna get the results.
And that's exactly what you need to do.
You need to stop marketing to everyone and start marketing to a specific segment on whilst you might think, Oh gosh, I'm losing sales while the chances are you're not making enough sales to start with.
So go on, be specific on marketing to a specific audience.
The second mistake that stops you selling your book is you have no platform, none whatsoever.
I know what it's like because I made this one. we had, a not very big blog – a transport blog.
We didn't have the audience for the book when we had The Complete Courier Guide, which was couriers that wanted to set up a proper courier business and run it as a productive business.
And I had a blog which was for people booking courier services – not the same audience.
I was with a very successful blog, but a completely different audience for the book.
I had no platform for the book and that made it really hard.
And, yes, I did very well.
I sold three thousand's worth every single year.
However, this is the however, I did not feel that was enough.
I did not understand at that point that most authors only ever sell 50 copies of their book.
If you poured your heart and your soul on all of your wisdom into this, why not sell more copies?
So that means embracing the platform. And that means doing things like setting up a simple email list.
It doesn't have to be complicated.
It doesn't have to be all singing all dancing, although if you want that I can help you with that.
It means getting a fan page for your book, talking about your book on that
fan page and going live and interacting with your audience.
Now, if you call Monday's video, you would have seen me talking about the author Ann Rawson on how she engages with her audience and the things she shares about her character's how she names them…
The what they're doing, what they're doing that's out of character and how they've changed and have evolved.
The reader is involved in the whole writing process so that when the book comes out we want to buy the book.
So even though your book may not be ready right now, having a platform helps you sell more books.
So set up a blogging section on your website and start talking about your characters, your stories, talking about the things that matter to your audience.
It is a business book.
Talk about the problems and struggles that they face and invite them to get on a wait list where they can perhaps pick up the book a little bit cheaper or get some bonus goodies for signing up to the wait list
The third mistake that people make when it comes to selling their book is not utilising the platform that they're selling it from properly.
So if you're selling from Amazon, you're doing things like slinging your book in any old category, because somebody, somewhere said, categories don't matter.
You're not using optimised description.
You have not used a high HTML editor to make it look all nice and easy to read.
Then you don't add any keywords or worse, you make the keywords up and you pop them in and you don't sell any more books, and this is a really big mistake.
No optimising the platform that you're on, even if you're selling by a Lulu or you're selling by your own website or even selling viaa specific websites up for your book.
If you don't optimise it, all of your hard work just flies out the window.
It means people are missing your content that you're losing out on readers on that you're not getting what you want and what you want, and what you want ultimately is to sell more books.
When it comes to selling more books, there are two things that you absolutely need, and that's traffic and conversions.
Quite simply, you need its number of potential readers to come to your platform, whether it's Amazon and it's fully optimised for you, or whether it's the platform that you own yourself.
You need that and then you need conversion, so you need to convince them that this book is going to give them some point of joy or satisfaction, or solve some big issue for them.
If you don't give them that, then you'll have to traffic, but not the conversion and having a great conversion rate but not the traffic is also a problem.
You know, if you have one person come over on one person read on by, that's fantastic.
You've got 100% conversion rate from the sale of one book.
Enough for you to live the life of your dreams.
I think I make something like £3 from a sale of one of my books on Kindle.
One sale is not enough.
It doesn't even pay for a good dinner, so we need to have more sales.
So let's go through the three mistakes again.
Grab a pen and paper.
Mistake one.
Stop marketing to everybody that has to stop.
That absolutely has to stop.
Start being specific, you'll start selling more of your books.
Mistake number two.
You don't have any platform.
You don't have fans.
Email lists are for other people. You can have a blog in section on your web site.
You are missing out.
I follow my favourite authors.
I'd buy their books.
I buy limited editions of their books and all sorts of things, and I do that because I followed them on their platforms and that book is worth a lot of money didn't cost me so much money.
And the reason I bought it was because it helped my favourite author.
Platforms are where I get to talk to the authors that I love. And platforms where I get to talk to people who love my work.
You need one if you don't have one, send me a message. We can talk about how we can get this working for you.
My third mistake, that I see the stops people selling their books is not optimising Amazon or their platform, particularly Amazon, because Amazon once set up properly and optimised correctly, is a selling machine.
Now, because I optimised Amazon currently, I can give away 25,000 copies of my blogging book and sell all of my other 13 books from that one giveaway.
Now, if this is something that you would like to do, then ping me a message and we can see how we can help you sell more of your books.
Thank you so much for watching and do you leave me a comment and let me know what you think
Brilliant advice not just for new authors, it always seems to come back to being specific as to who you want to buy the book or read the book, it’s so simple yet sometimes so difficult