Book Design: 7 Questions to Ask For What to Do About the Sales and Promoting of Your Book…

What is it about the prospect of having to sell and promote our new book design that makes us think we don’t know anything? We wake up to the process of sales every day. It begins with us asking what we’re going to wear and progresses into who we talk to at work. The process of creating rapport, stating benefits and follow though with each action we take… which is really all aobut the sales or promotion of us! Think about it?

So, lets take a few minutes to see what that might mean to our book?

1. Is the topic interesting?

2. Have we shared benefits throughout the text?

3. Have we taken the time to really show we care about how the book is perceived by having the cover and interior professionally deisgned?

4. Does the back cover pull the reader in?

5. Are we blogging?

6. Have we checked with local book stores?

7. Have we gathered relevant magazines?

These are just a few of the techniques needed to develop for the sales and marketing of our book… after all, it is our business card. Right?

And when you start thinking about all the ways you already unconsciously sell yourself… how hard can it be to do the same for your book?

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

The power of blogs…

The potential of blogs for the book author who is struggling to grow a readership is simply staggering. So far in the news, it’s been more a case of bloggers being catapulted into the role of book author, but the reverse shows equal promise of becoming the next big thing for self publishing authors. Book marketing and publicity is all about access; an interesting, well run, and frequently updated blog can achieve an audience of immense proportions for your material, and for little or no financial investment.

Blogging can be thought of as a continuous conversation of sorts, a conversation that propagates throughout the Internet by word of mouth in the form of links or emails between interested readers. What separates it from the static web pages we’re used to seeing, is an informal, more intimate exchange of dialog that creates a sense of community – only this community isn’t simply one website, but an amalgamation of several linked together as lists of links to other blogs. These lists are called blogrolls, and are the life-blood of the successful blog. But you can actually think of them as recommendations.

Link by cherished link, some bloggers have developed readerships numbering in the millions – becoming celebrities of sorts within the blogosphere, and even transcending the Internet into mainstream media. But the more obscure niches are finding an audience as well – which is the real power of blogs, and a source of optimism for the modern day author-entrepreneur.

It’s now possible for a successful title to never see the light of day in a brick-and-mortar bookstore.

Combined with print-on-demand and/or eBook technology, it’s now possible to write, edit, design, print, market, and distribute a book entirely electronically – completely on a do-it-yourself basis. Any of the technical steps you don’t care to tackle can be outsourced to the burgeoning number of freelance professionals online. Your book can readily incorporate the production values normally associated with name-brand publishers, and rival in quality most of what can be found on the shelves at your local Barnes & Noble.

If you consider the evolving online buying habits of consumers, your book needn’t ever see the light of day in a brick-and-mortar bookstore to be successful. Chris Anderson wrote in his article The Long Tail:

“The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon’s book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.”

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Promotion: Taking Care of your Audience with Your Blogging.

How many of you have a blog… AND use it regularly? I know this might be an old question for a lot of you and I hope you have a blog going and keep it alive… but for those of you who don’t know the value… A blog can be a win/win all around… for both you and your readers.

Your blog is the friendly introduction your clients need. The information you share is their window into who you are, your values and your way of thinking. Your possible clients will be seeing you from your mind point of view and making a decision to buy or not to buy.

Here are some  items to keep in mind when you are blogging:

• basic content: What will you be writing about? Your book, product or service? Your thoughts and findings? Latest news on the subjects of your profession?
• list of resources: begin gathering your own resources to follow and gather information from to blog about. Believe me, this is an indispensable part of blogging.
• interviews and post them on your site: These interviews are great if they come from you, but remember, these can be youtube.com videos of people who you feel represent a way of Read more »

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

RSS, Podcasting, Blogging, Print-On-Demand, eBooks – Connecting with an audience.

The world of mass media has changed, and if you’re not keeping up with the new technology you’ll miss out on some amazing innovations that could put you and your book in the spotlight.

BLOGGING
Blogging, or more simply “blogs”, are a form of website that is updated frequently with links, images, commentary, or anything else you like. New items go on top and older items flow down the page. Blogs can be political journals, personal diaries, or business related; they can focus on one narrow subject or range across a plethora of topics. For the author – blogging offers the potential to connect to, or develop a broad readership base in a timely and cost-efficient way.

RSS
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (depending on who you’re talking to) and is a format for syndicating news or other user definable content – known as a “feed” – that can then be viewed using a reader application – also called a news “aggregator” – such as NetNewsWire for Mac or FeedDemon for Windows users. Simply put, RSS lets you the author quickly share your thoughts and ideas by publishing to the web, while giving readers the convenience of grabbing these news feeds and viewing them together in a simple, ad-free list (that can be keyword specific) instead of having to navigate through multiple websites to find the information they’re looking for. This ability to zero in on only the articles that interest the reader by entering a topic keyword into the RSS search field is highly addictive for those of us who have become dis-enchanted with much of the crap being served up by the major search engines.

PODCASTING
This technology is a new twist on RSS syndicated content feeds, only instead of pushing text from blogs and news sites to various content aggregators, podcasting sends audio content. This allows individuals to create their own radio shows and deliver them over the Internet to be played on listeners computers or mobile devices such as Apples hugely popular iPod and even on mobile phones.

PRINT-ON-DEMAND
While not exactly a new technology for those of us who have been using it for the last few years, and the so-called vanity presses have flooded the market with stigmatizing books using this printing model; it remains a brilliant, fast, and cost-effective method to test market new titles, or publish titles with limited niche market demand. Traditional publishers are using it, and it makes sense for the self-publisher too.

EBOOKS
Like print-on-demand, eBooks aren’t really “new” anymore, but new things are being done with them so it’s time to take a fresh look. Simple to make and distribute, eBooks are growing in popularity. eBook sales have been growing in double-digit numbers; a total of 419,962 eBooks were sold in the third quarter of 2004 alone – an 11% increase over the same period in 2003, during which time 377,095 units were sold. With this growing acceptance, eBooks are also becoming an innovative way for authors to reach their fans directly and deliver new material without the wait and expense of traditional book publishing.

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services