Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Sales: How to Sell Your Book, or anything for that matter



Sales: How to Sell Your Book, or anything for that matter

Personality-wise, I’m no salesman. Just don’t have the natural talent. My father was a great salesman. People automatically liked him and bought anything he decided to sell. I however, did not inherit that special ability.

People generally don’t like me at first. I am told I come off as snobbish and “high flalutin!” I’m not. I’m just extremely introverted and keep to myself.

This used to work out well because I’m a writer and writers must be able to sit alone for long periods with no human contact. In fact if you interrupt me while I’m writing I can become extremely abrasive.

Which is the other reason people don’t like me.

At first.

Before the GREAT RECESSION hit, I was a published author who went on book tours and met with my readers. I had no problem with this because they were rarely a one-on-one situations. I’d give a talk about my book, answer some questions then sign copies. Easy Peasy.

After the recession hit, my publisher ran into serious money problems and could no longer afford to publish. I thought about searching for a new publisher then decided to create my own company with a couple of other authors.

It was during that time that I discovered the hardest part of being a writer is not creating the book. The hardest part (by far) IS THE SELLING!

Trying to convince someone who doesn’t know you, or isn’t familiar with your work to buy your books (or whatever you’re selling) was far more difficult than I had ever imagined! It is an art form in and of itself and one that requires a considerable amount of knowledge and skill in order to be successful.

For nearly three years I struggled to get Ari Publishing off the ground. The problem certainly wasn’t the books themselves. Those who did buy gave great reviews but word wasn’t getting around fast enough.

Then I met a few entrepreneurs who were selling boatloads of their books. And to top it off, they hadn’t even written them! They had outsourced that part as well as the cover design and were making between 3 and 4 grand a month in sales!

If you are an author, I’m sure you are stunned to learn this. You’ve likely spent years developing your craft, honing your skills, sacrificing your free time in the hope of becoming a successful novelist only to discover there are people out there with no writing talent or ability whatsoever living the good life while you’re subsisting on Raman Noodles and Mac & Cheese.

And so…

ATTENTION FELLOW AUTHORS! STOP WHAT YOU”RE DOING AND LISTEN CAREFULLY. I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO SELL BOOKS AND I CAN SHOW YOU HOW YOU CAN TOO. IF YOU’RE TIRED OF POOR SALES AND WORKING YOURSELF TO DEATH FOR LITTLE MONEY THEN SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE.

First you need to learn how to sell. I spent months gathering information from these successful entrepreneurs, stopped romanticizing book publishing and learned exactly how the process works.

Figuring that there was a lot of writers who needed this info as much as I did I wrote a book explaining how selling books on the internet is done and how you can learn to write a book that goes directly into the fast lane of sales. Here’s the link for the ebook and audio book:


But that’s not all you’re going to need. In order to sell your book or anything for that matter you going to need a professionally crafted, highly effective, search engine optimized website that will generate traffic and ratchet up sales.

One of the early mistakes I made was thinking all I had to do was create a website for my books and they will sell. I came to learn that if that were true, major corporations wouldn’t be spending thousands of dollars on web design for their businesses.

But then I got lucky.

While researching successful sites I came across SBI and discovered they were the best in the business when it came to web site creation and whose membership had thousands of successful money making sites. And to back up their claim of being the best they offer a complete 90 day money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the results.

I was MORE that satisfied, I was amazed at how little I knew about selling on the web and how much money I was losing by not having a fully optimized site. You can avoid making the same mistake I made by checking out this video:

So here’s the bottom line. You can spend $5.00 for the e-book and learn how to sell your books online and sell them on a fully optimized website that generates continuous traffic and makes you lots of money or stick with the starving artist route and have bestselling books written about you after you’re dead.