Ten Things to do if You Don't Want to Sell Your Book

By Andrew E. Kaufman

What does it take to sell a lot of books? In an industry that seems to change by the minute, I'm not sure anyone has the answer. I'm not sure I really do, either. But I do know what doesn't work. Here are a few of the biggies:

1. Don’t hire an editor: That sounds really obvious, but it’s surprising how many skip the most important step in the process. Indie authors are often criticized for turning out substandard work, and in some cases, I have to agree. Not hiring a competent editor is one of the biggest reasons for low sales. Readers have become very savvy. Most read the samples, and most can spot poorly written work in a heartbeat. No matter how careful you might be, no matter how well you think you understand and implement the English language, you’re too familiar with your writing and have lost the objectivity necessary to turn out a polished manuscript. I often hear people complain that hiring an editor costs too much money, but you'll be wasting something far more valuable if you skip this step: your time. All the promotions in the world won’t make a bit of difference if you’re not turning out high-quality, professional work. 
2. Don’t treat your writing as a full time job: Is selling a lot of books as important as having a social life? Sleep? More than likely, you’ll have to sacrifice both, maybe even more if you do this right. As competitive as things are, it’s become imperative to treat your writing career as second job if you already have one, a primary job if you don't. There’s an art to juggling writing and promoting, and time is an important part of that. I’ve yet to meet a bestselling author who says that getting there was effortless. 
3. Don’t be persistent: Besides the rare exceptions, book sales won’t happen quickly—they might not even happen in a year or more; but that doesn’t mean it will never happen. This is a game of endurance and the ones who stay in it the longest (if they have a good product) are the ones who usually win. 
4. Don’t enjoy what you do: If you don’t absolutely love what you’re doing, if you can’t wait to get back to writing, it will show not only in your ability to stay motivated but in the quality of your work. Passion is what drives us to success. It’s what keeps us from settling for Just Okay. You have to love doing this. 
5. Don’t use the tools available to track and analyze your website traffic: 

Do you have a tracking system on your website and blog? If you don't, you're missing one of the best tools available for charting your progress and figuring out what does and doesn’t work. I use Statcounter.com. It’s free and it gives me more information than I’ll ever need, all in real time. I spend a lot of time analyzing my website traffic. One of the key features I use is the “Visitor Paths” section. It tells me where people come from (which of my promotions are working, which aren’t), how long they stay (overall effectiveness of my website), and where they go after they leave (did they follow the link to Amazon for my book? If not, we have a problem). It’s a great tool for figuring out which promotional tools to keep, which to toss.

6. Be obnoxious as possible while promoting your book: I’m often horrified at the lengths some will go to in order to sell their books. I also wonder if they realize they’re repelling instead of attracting. Shoving your book down people’s throats makes them gag, or at the very least, want to ignore you. Be relevant, not intrusive. Give readers credit and let them figure out who you are on their own. Do not post a link to your book on other people’s Facebook threads or time lines unless they grant you permission. Do not follow people on Twitter, and then when they follow back, send them a “BUY MY BOOK BUY MY BOOK” message. It's icky.

7. Don’t get to know your readers. Understand that every successful author builds his or her audience one reader at a time. It can be through word of mouth (which you have minimal of control over) or it can be through getting to know every reader you can, every chance you get (something you have a lot of control over). Take time to answer every email. Be gracious and kind. Say thank you so often that you feel like a broken record. And most important: realize that the readers owe you nothing and that you owe them everything. 

Before and after. 'Nuff said?

        8.  Don’t have a great cover, quality    formatting, or great synopsis: The best advice I ever got was from Indie Phenomenon, Amanda Hocking. She told me (with much nicer words) to lose the cover for While the Savage Sleeps, that it was amateurish and holding me back. And she was absolutely right: I created it myself, and it was horrid. I had to use Google to find the abomination, and when I did, I was horrified/nauseated to see it’s still out there. My only defense (and it’s a weak one) is that this was in the early days when most of us didn’t really know what we were doing. Hire a good artist and don’t settle until you are in love with your cover. It will make all the difference in the world.  Same goes for formatting. Hire a professional who knows what they’re doing. A poorly formatted book is a guaranteed return or bad review. Pay the extra money. Your work is worth it. About your synopsis: it must sing. This is one of the first things readers look at when deciding whether or not to purchase your book. Keep it simple, but make sure it draws them in immediately, then doesn’t let go. 

9.  Don’t use social media properly and to your advantage: I hear this all the time: social media doesn’t sell books. I agree; it doesn’t if you don’t use it properly. The key to using it successfully is to engage people, not hammer them over the head. I spend a lot of time on Facebook. When I talk about my books, I try to keep it relevant and not out-of-the-blue. I discuss my writing process, interesting and funny things that happen along the way. I do occasionally post promotions, but it’s a very small percentage of my total output. I also post other things about my life. Regarding Facebook book releases, most people I talk to find them really irritating. One of the problems is, as soon as an invite comes, the emails begin pouring in for every post and continue to do so unless you shut them off. I tried them myself in the early days but didn't find them helpful where book sales were concerned.

10. Don’t treat this as a business: It is one, and like any business, it takes money to make money. Invest in your business. Understand your industry. Pay attention to trends. If you’re selling widgets, you should probably have a good understanding about everything there is to know about the market, including the latest news and developments.

Andrew E. Kaufman is the author of The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted and While the Savage Sleeps, both Amazon top 100 bestsellers this year. His books are the most borrowed, independently published books in the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and his combined sales have reached far beyond the 100,000 mark.

And The Silver Bullet of Book Marketing is...

By:  Kimberly Hitchens is the founder and owner of Booknook.biz, an ebook production company that has produced books for over 750 authors and imprints.

This week's entry is from our Social Networking Genius  extraordinaire, Steve (Stephanie) Nilles, who holds down the fort on Tweeting and Facebooking, Pinteresting and other "stuff" over at Booknook.biz, and has taught me all I know about Twitter, et al.  She will be guest blogging for me while I recover from a shoulder problem, and to provide a different perspective than I usually have.  Take it away, Steve:

I'm not an agent, publisher, or aspiring novelist. I'm a working musician. About a year and a half ago, while taking a month-long break from the road, I happened upon part-time work for a well-established and traditionally published mystery writer who was just starting her own e-pub company. I have since edited manuscripts and provided marketing assistance for an ebook producer, as well as for mystery, science fiction, romance, children's books, and nonfiction authors, ranging from the seasoned and well-known to the obscure writer pushing his very first novel. Predictably, my work in publishing has drawn enlightening parallels to my work in the music business. In short, publishing seems to be about 20 years behind the music industry, at least in terms of adjusting to a preference for digital. And as an outsider temporarily peering into a world of energetic bordering on frantic writers and publishers, I've found the clamoring for the magical marketing plan that will give birth to the next Amanda Hocking, H.P. Mallory, or John Locke to be … amusing.

The obvious explanation for what now makes being a musician or author nearly impossible is that “everyone can do it.” Perhaps screenwriter Aaron Sorkin put it best in a particularly wry interview: Interviewer: "Look, I don't want to step on your toes, you don't want to step on mine. We're both writers."  Sorkin: "Yes, I suppose, if we broaden the definition to those who can spell."

As technology provides limitless tools for distribution, self-promotion, and even production of the artform itself, the internet has, as Mark Bowden puts it, "replaced everyman with every man." From art of every medium to the once revered science of journalism, press critic A.J. Liebling's 1960s fear of a dystopia with only one newspaper, "a city with one eye," has been replaced by a city with a million eyes.

Much like a writer, when I tell a stranger that I am a "musician," I'm painfully aware that my self-proclaimed title conjures up images of a dramatic and self-medicated kid, sulking in her bedroom and writing break up ballads in her diary. I am a 28-year-old that has spent 23 years playing music, 15 of those years nearly 5-10 hours a day. I'm on the road 8 months out of the year. I play 150 gigs a year. So imagine my displeasure at sharing the semantics of a vocation with an overnight YouTube sensation who recorded a 4 song EP in a basement with a Fisher Price tape recorder.

My 28 years notwithstanding, I think I've amassed an interesting cross section of experience witnessing the worlds of music-making as well as book publishing, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that what works in music works in publishing--whether you're writing what one of my clients calls The Great American Novel or the next paranormal romance Kindle millionaire-maker. If we define "success" as "consistently selling books" (and I have yet to find a better definition), the most successful authors I've worked for have one and only one thing in common: they spend all of their time writing more books. And each book is better than the one that came before it.

Sure, there are marketing shortcuts. But the old adage "live by the media, die by the media" rings true. About a year ago, I was helping with the marketing of a very cute and unique mystery with a chick lit bent. A genre book with a fascinating twist, it seemed a marketing no-brainer. We pushed social media, tried various angles to introduce it to target readers on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and LibraryThing. Paid promotions resulted in temporary boosts of sales from 20 to the hundreds overnight. We ran a genre-specific blog tour. All these contributed, over time, to 50-plus amazon reviews at an average of 4.6 stars, and to positive reviews in a couple of publications we did not pitch to with an ideal readership demographic. As marketing boons calmed down, the book settled at selling 20-30 books a day. At first. We've continued to push the book via social media and advertisements, but six months later, the author has written nothing new. And its sales have dwindled to 1-2 books a day.

Contrast this with a literary black comedy that was released around the same time. Although beautifully written, it seemed it would be difficult to market, as it fit into no overt niche. But the marketing plan employed has been similar to the one outlined above. The book currently has 20-some amazon reviews with a 4.8 star average and is consistently selling 15-30 books a day. Why? It is the author's eighth book, and she has since written and published two others, each as beautifully-written as the eighth. And press procured for the most recent books, whether solicited or not, have markedly boost sales of all other books.

There are other attractive shortcuts and marketing go-tos. Launching a KDP Select Free Campaign, if done so correctly can help an indie author to the tune of thousands of free downloads a day, with fall off of a noticeable boost in sales. One popular thriller author I’ve worked for has had a good deal of success with handfuls of free days, which boost the sales of the other books in that particular series, as well as their Amazon rankings. But I've never seen this sales boost last longer than a week, and I've never seen the sales numbers exceed 20 in a day. I should also note that the writer I mentioned, an Edgar and Macavity nominee, has to date written 12 books across 3 series, spanning 20-odd years. And he’s still producing new work.

Paid promotions at least guarantee that your book will make some sort of appearance on a website, as opposed to investing exhaustive time into submitting your book to bloggers for review--they almost never review your book, let alone respond to your request, and even when they say they will, they almost always forget, or by the time your book is scheduled to reach the top of their queue, their blog will have mysteriously disappeared... I've seen some Kindle sites' paid promotions generate tens to hundreds of sales overnight, but victory is perpetually a flash in the pan. Sales always die down to where they were previously within the week.

Best-selling author Kristen Lamb addresses the importance of writers focusing on writing in her blog entry The Five Mistakes Killing Self-Published Authors. "Even in traditional publishing," she says, "it usually takes about three books to gain traction. In traditional publishing, this takes three years because we are dealing with a publisher’s schedule. In self-publishing, we can make our own schedule, but it still takes THREE BOOKS MINIMUM. I know there are exceptions, but most self-published successes hit at about book three. The ability to offer multiple titles is a huge part of why John Locke became successful." Lamb also discusses the dangers of self-publishing before an author is ready, jumping in before understanding basic business principles, and misusing free campaigns.

In both music and publishing, there’s something to be said for distinguishing between adapting to change and reinventing the wheel. Artistic and entrepreneurial endeavors that prove to be successful long term require long, hard work. No amount of technological innovation is likely to erase this axiom. Yet whenever I’m asked to begin working with a new author, I’m repeatedly amazed at his or her inability to grasp the concept of patience. Writer and publisher Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses this in terms of self-publishing, specifically: “The readership—and the income—will grow exponentially if the writer continues to produce work. One day, the indie writer will wake up and realize she’s making $1,000 per month on a single title, and that amount spread out over a year is more than she would have gotten as an advance for a first novel … If she’s a good storyteller (and her book has a decent cover and is copy edited, and if she keeps writing and publishing new material), she’ll make a living wage over time.” Rusch even goes on to suggest that promotion in publishing, be it in the traditional or indie realm, is utterly pointless: “I buy [books] because of word-of-mouth, just like every other reader on the planet. That’s why traditional publishers only spend advertising dollars on the bestsellers. They’re not informing you of a new writer. They’re letting you know that a favorite writer has a new book. They’re relying on word-of-mouth and habit. So indie writers who promote their book instead of writing the next book are wasting their time. The more books you’ve written, the more books you’ll sell. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s always worked.” 

====================

Thanks, Steve.  For those of you that like jazz, our Steve is a smokin' musician.  Warning:  ADULT lyrics and music, don't go to the page with your kids in the room, but her lyric, "facebook is a gateway drug to stalking" should be used in a bestselling  novel!   Visit her site at:  http://www.stephanienilles.com , and will start work on her new Album in about 3 weeks.  

Trailers: Trophies or Trash?

by Peg Brantley, author of RED TIDE

For those of you who do not want to watch trailers, even hate the things, today's post is not for you.

Several people have asked me about my process and what I think the results have been. The big and most important question is this: Did my sales increase because of a trailer?

First, here's the trailer:

The pieces: 

• Music was chosen from Free Music Archive. This site allows you to search for music by category and keywords: a fast and easy way to find the right music for the mood you're trying to reflect.
• Photos were selected from both iStockphoto and Shutterstock. I used the least expensive versions available for all of the images.

The glue:

• I have a Mac and through trial and error (a lot of both) I figured out iMovie. Of course I'll probably forget everything by the time I make another trailer. (Hint: I will be making another trailer.)
• For PC users, Windows Movie Maker has produced some stunning trailers.

The cost:

• If you have the time the equipment and the talent you can create your own trailer for free. 
• A professionally produced trailer can cost $2,000 or more. 
• I don't happen to own a way to create video and I didn't want only static photos. I also wanted it done as quickly as possible. I also didn't want to have to sell a gazillion books to pay for the trailer. Mine ended up costing less than $200 and it took me about two days.

I have made my trailer available in all of the obvious places:

• My blog, Suspense Novelist.
• My author page at Amazon.
• My author profile at Goodreads.
• YouTube.
• Facebook.

L.J. Sellers provided me with this link that has a list of other places to consider posting your video:

• Book Marketing and Book Promotion.

Now to answer the big and most important question: Did my sales increase because of a trailer? Given that there's not a box readers check to indicate why they've purchased your book, it's a little bit of a guess and comparison of numbers and timing kind of thing. But I believe my sales have increased because of the trailer. I'll make another one for Book #2.

What has been your experience with trailers? What worked for you and what will you do differently next time? Feel free to post a link to your video in your comments.