| Published | 2017-12-06 |
| Platform | Udemy |
| Rating | 4.01 |
| Number of Reviews | 29 |
| Number of Students | 8026 |
| Price | $49.99 |
| Instructors |
Zach Miller
|
| Subjects |
Sell more! Amazon Kindle, self-published, best-selling authors all can take advantage of the Best Selling Author Funnel.
Take this new marketing tool for authors and use it to build credibility and DOUBLE YOUR INCOME!
You have a book you wish to create OR are on your way to creating it. But what are you going to do once the book is complete? You don't know how to market it or how to use it for business so you can live the lifestyle that you desire, right?
Well inside you'll learn the tools necessary to maximize the vast work you put into your book and explode your income!
Use tools like websites, opt ins, landing pages, one time offers, upsells and more to promote your book.
Do you create an ebook, a workbook, a paperback. Either option will work for this sales funnel!
You will learn all of these tools in this course!
Stop building someone else's dream and start living the dream you want to live!
Register today!
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About the Topic
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Whether you’re an author, a marketer at a publishing house, a publicist, or anyone else looking to sell books, there’s a wide array of book marketing tactics you can use to amplify a book’s exposure and reach more readers.
Some of these ideas can help directly increase book sales, while others may help expand your platform, which can lead to future sales. Not all of these ideas will be applicable all the time, and we encourage you to consider the impact each might have before deciding where to invest your time.
Identify a target audience
Survey your target audience. Ask questions about demographics, psychographics, and online behavior so you can better understand where to market to readers and what messaging they’ll respond to. Survey your existing audience and fans of comparable authors and books.
Conduct reader interviews. Learn how your readers find new books to read and make their purchasing decisions. This will add qualitative color that can help you understand the quantitative survey data you analyze in spreadsheets.
Write reader personas. Write a short paragraph that describes each core group of readers you’re targeting. Refer back to it whenever you’re creating an ad, designing a cover, writing a tweet, or want a refresh on your audience’s motives.
Create a list of target keywords. Compile a list of of search queries that your target audience is using to search for books. Use tools like Google Trends and Google AdWords’ Keyword tool to see which relevant queries are frequently used.
Create a plan to reach a targeted audience. Compile a list of platforms and marketing tools that will let you reach a specific target audience. For example, BookBub has 42 categories and millions of power readers, whom you can target with BookBub Ads or Featured Deals. There are also plenty of genre-specific blogs and publications you could target for promotions!
Build an author platform
Create an author website. Your site should be a marketing tool that serves as the hub of all your online activity, from blogging to selling books to emailing a newsletter to participating in social media. Use a platform like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix to easily build a site.
Set up a blog on your site. Provide a “behind the scenes look” for readers by blogging once or twice a month. Fans will love the insight into your personality and writing process, and anything you post is fodder for your next email to subscribers.
Link to your published books. Create a site page linking to your books to make it easy for readers to discover all the titles you’ve written. Include cover images, brief elevator pitches, and links to multiple retailers so readers can purchase your books wherever they shop.
Build a mailing list on your site. Include a simple form on your homepage, website pages, and/or blog’s sidebar asking for visitors’ email addresses. Collecting email addresses lets you build relationships with people who want to hear from you.
Welcome subscribers with an email autoresponse. When people subscribe to updates from you via your website, send them a welcome email including either a link to a permafree ebook, sample chapters, or some sort of freebie as a “thank you” for signing up.
Claim your BookBub Author Profile. Make sure your BookBub Author Profile is up to date so fans and potential readers can learn more about you and your books.
Get more BookBub followers. The more followers you have, the more people will receive dedicated emails from BookBub notifying them about your new releases and price promotions. And once you get 1K followers, you can also send BookBub Preorder Alerts!
Add a BookBub follow button to your site. Make sure website visitors can find your BookBub Author Profile by adding a follow button or icon to your site, wherever it fits best into the site design.
Claim your social media profiles. Grab your username on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn. Even if you don’t have active profiles on each site, at least claim your name and direct people who visit to your most active social media profile instead.
Link to your website and BookBub Author Profile. Once you’ve created a website and claimed your BookBub Author Profile, make sure that people can find these assets by linking to them on your email signature and bio sections on your social media profiles.
Create a video blog. Upload videos to YouTube and embed each video in a blog post. In these videos, you can answer fan questions, partner with another author to interview each other, list book recommendations, or do a short reading from an upcoming new release. Experiment with a few simple videos to see if you’re comfortable vlogging before focusing on production quality.
Design a book’s cover
Hire a cover designer. A great cover design can have a major impact on your sales numbers. For example, romance writer R.L. Mathewson went from selling five or six copies per day of her novel, Playing for Keeps, to over 1,000 per day by updating her cover design. It’s usually worth hiring a professional to create a polished cover that appeals to readers in your genre.
Test cover variations with your audience. Have your cover designer create multiple variations and use data to choose your cover design. Test two variations against each other using tools like PickFu, UsabilityHub, or Playbuzz.
Unify cover designs in a series. Create consistent branding between books in a series to make purchasing decisions easy for readers. A unified cover and title style often helps readers recognize connected titles and encourages them to purchase subsequent books.
Re-launch a book with a new cover. Redesigning a book cover can be a great way to invigorate book sales. It gives you the opportunity to “re-launch” the book according to the ever-evolving tastes of genre readers.
Add a blurb to the cover. If you’ve managed to secure a blurb from a well-known author, consider including it on the book cover design. Try to use a short blurb so it’s easy to read and you don’t clutter the design.
Optimize a book for effective promotions
Make book samples end on a cliffhanger. For example, on Amazon, users can download the first 10% of a book for free or read it on-site via the “Look Inside” feature. This gives you the opportunity to score a sale if the reader wants to continue after the sample.
Cross-promote books in the back matter. Include a list of all your titles in each of your books’ back matter. Update this back matter whenever you launch a new release. If you have the time, create a version of each book for each retailer with retailer-specific links to each book.
Include an excerpt in the back matter. Authors who include an excerpt see the highest increase in sales of their promoted book. Immediately after the acknowledgements, include the first chapter of the book you’re promoting. Bookend the excerpt with links to purchase that book.
Link to your mailing list in the back matter. On your “About the Author” page, encourage readers to sign up for your mailing list. If they sign up, you’ll be able to contact them any time you want to promote your backlist titles, new releases, giveaways, price promotions, etc.
Optimize your book description. BookBub A/B testing shows that descriptions that include quotes from authors, awards, and language that caters to your audience (e.g. “If you love thrillers, don’t miss this action-packed read!”) have higher engagement rates.
Include target keywords on product pages. Narrow down a list of 5-7 keywords your audience typically searches for, then incorporate these words into the description headline, description copy, and keyword sections on each retailer product page.
Choose relevant subcategories on retailer sites. This can increase your chances of being on the retailer bestseller charts for a specific category, which could drive higher sales volume. You’ll also avoid disappointing readers who were expecting something different.
Tie different versions of a book together. Different authors and platforms use different systems, but find a way to connect a print edition with the ebook, audiobook, and international editions. This ensures that visitors to the product page can easily purchase the format they prefer.
Link series books by name. If you’ve published a book series, create a master name for the series and add it to the product’s title on retailer sites. This will help retailer sites make automated recommendations within the series, and help readers find more books in the series to read.
Make books available globally. With growing book sales and millions of readers, international markets can be attractive targets for authors and publishers looking to expand their potential readership. Optimize the cover design for each region and reach out to relevant local bloggers who can help spread the word.
Prepare your book marketing assets
Write a killer elevator pitch. Write a concise, snappy elevator pitch that shows what the book is about, what kind of world readers will be immersed in, why readers should care, and what accolades the book and author have received. A strong elevator pitch will make a book more enticing to readers deciding whether or not to purchase.
Test copy variations by polling readers. Use polling software like PickFu to test variations of description or marketing copy and see which your audience likes better. Always test and optimize to discover what copy will resonate best with readers.
A/B test marketing copy. Unlike polling, A/B tests give you quantitative data (i.e., the number of clicks). Use your email service provider to run A/B test emails and see which copy has the highest click-through rate, or use ad platforms like BookBub Ads and Facebook to A/B test your copy.
Get blurbs from reputable authors in your genre. Blurbs can catch readers’ attention, especially if they’re familiar with the quoting author or publication. Our tests showed that book descriptions including blurbs got an average of 22.6% higher click-through rates than those without blurbs.
Create images for teasers and quotes. You can easily turn book quotes into vibrant images using free apps like Canva or Designfeed. Publish these teasers to your website and social media accounts in the weeks and months prior to a book’s release.
Run a preorder campaign
Make books available for preorder. Driving preorder sales can help a book hit various bestseller lists, since many retailers count all preorders as launch day sales. They also help build buzz and momentum for a new book, which can help lead to word-of-mouth sales later.
Announce a title reveal. Create buzz for an upcoming book by announcing the book’s title. Some authors get creative by posting a video announcing a book’s title or publishing a texting conversation between characters about the book’s title.
Post a cover reveal on a popular blog. Partner with a blog or website that’s popular amongst readers in your genre to host a cover reveal. If you can arrange to have a book available for preorder in time for its cover reveal, linking to a page where readers can preorder their copy can be a great way to jump-start pre order sales.
Link to a preorder in previous books’ back matter. This lets readers order it as soon as they finish the previous book, without having to remember to buy the new book when it’s available for download. Include an excerpt of the upcoming book in the back matter, even if it’s unedited, to provide a sneak-peek.
Send a BookBub Preorder Alert. A Preorder Alert is a dedicated email to an author’s BookBub followers announcing that one of the author’s books is available for preorder. They’re highly targeted since they’re only sent to an author’s followers, and at only $0.02 per eligible follower, they’re a cost effective way to promote a preorder!
Run BookBub Ads for a preorder. BookBub Ads let advertisers market any book at any time to BookBub millions of power readers — including pre orders, new releases, and full-priced books! Many authors and publishers have promoted pre order books on this platform.
Offer free swag in exchange for preordering. This gives readers an extra incentive; they may need an additional nudge since they can’t get the instant gratification of reading the book right away. In these promotions, have readers email a copy, screenshot, or picture of their receipt to receive the swag.
Send a digital gift pack to readers who preorder. Sending swag packs via mail can get expensive, so digital gift packs can be a great alternative. This could include exclusive content like short stories, author commentary, deleted scenes, or high-resolution posters.
Get more book reviews
Provide advanced reader copies to relevant bloggers. Start getting reviews before the book launches. You can use tools like NetGalley or Edelweiss to find early reviewers, or reach out to relevant bloggers with a pitch on the book. While they can’t review books on retailer sites until release day, they can post the reviews to their websites, blogs, or Goodreads.
Offer free copies to Amazon top reviewers. Reach out to Amazon users with a “Top Reviewer” badge who’ve reviewed books similar to yours. They’ve proven themselves to be experienced reviewers — they know what makes a good review, they’re willing to take the time to write a truly helpful review, and they will likely have a quick turnaround on reading and reviewing.
Run book giveaways. Book giveaways can take various forms, including blog tours or contests on your blog or Facebook page. Providing free copies to your most loyal fans in exchange for an honest review can help a new book get traction, plus it rewards them for their loyalty.
Ask readers to review a book in the back matter. A high number of reviews makes a book more enticing to potential readers. We found that when a book has at least 150 five-star reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, including the number of five-star reviews in the copy increased clicks an average of 14.1%.
Submit a book for relevant editorial reviews. Many genres have publications like RT Book Reviews Where authors can submit their books for editorial reviews. Some of these publications require submitting your book months before publication, so plan early!
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