5 Things to Do to be a Top - Selling Author

There use to be only one way to write a book, writing a manuscript. To publish it you could only rely on publisher and that was not easy. Nowadays, you have more choice to write. You can also self-publish your book. More and more books are published annually.

However, as more authors are interested in this method of book marketing, it is getting harder to become the most top-selling author.

The followings are 5 things you need to do to be a top-selling author.

1. Write a book – Though this has been pretty tangible, this must be the hardest part for many people. Anyone can have excellent ideas about a book and what would make an excellent book, yet only few could put them to paper. You can try the shortcut to this by making an outline. Afterward, breakdown the topics are interested in writing. When you have completely list the topics, begin to write!

2. Get an agent or self-publish – Decide if you want to get an agent or self-publish. To get an agent is not costly; you still can get profit because s/he just takes a little or no cut of your royalties. If you are ready to be in charge of everything, self-publish. It is even more profitable. Both paying an agent and self-publish bring their own benefits. But you had better get an agent when publishing your first book. You can steal from him/her better knowledge about publishing.

3. Beware of the competition – While this is the most crucial part, it is often forgotten by authors. Before launching your book, observe what genres are being launched at the same time. Otherwise, you will have to give in to your seniors and no one would even see your book. Learn the Amazon lists too locate who is publishing book and when s/he is launching it. Then, set the right time to launch so that you can meet suitable competitors.

4. Have a launch program - You should have begun marketing your book LONG before you launch it. Optimize the use of social media and email lists to do so. Start marketing by the time you decide to start writing. Doing this, you can include your audience and followers during the writing process.  It also enables you build anticipation of the book.

5. Sell books - If you want to be in the list of Amazon's best-selling authors, you HAVE to sell books. Very often you need to sell 5,000 copies or more to get into the list. You can buy the books yourself or push your launch program to meet the target. If you can’t sell many books, you will not get into the list.  One more thing, don't try to cheat the system. Many people made fake orders on launch day but were caught up by Amazon and retailers because they cancelled their order at last. If you do such manipulation, you will just ruin your day.

Top 3 Tips for Marketing Literary Fiction

Though most authors admit its important role, some of them may stick to death of book marketing. If you feel it too, then get rid of it soon. To hold out on publishing, whether you like it or not, you have to market.

However excellent your literary fiction writing is, if you cannot market it well, you may end up broke as many authors had experienced before.

If you think you are a serious fiction writer and you really want to make it your money maker, you need to follow these top three tips. Indeed they will not make you rich in one blink of an eye, but if you apply them consistently, you will make more money from your writing.

1. Create effective marketing campaigns.

Prior to your book launch, you need to plan your marketing campaign. You can do it much more easily with the help of internet. It helps you to do all things sitting in your couch.

There are so many free ways you can try to market your works. You can write articles, make social campaigns, film videos and comment on blogs. You can also try document and video submission tools like Slideshare and YouTube to help you get your content distributed. Recycling your content into different formats also enables you to distribute it to other sites. It may be time consuming, but it is powerful.

2. Build a follower list for your writing.

Make a list of the target for your marketing campaign. It is very important because it is usable to recycle your traffic and connect to your readers. In average, only about two percents of the visitors will return to your website. Therefore, you must have a strategy to collect their email addresses and build a good relationship with them. Unless you do, you can no longer connect to them.

If you are prepared with the list, you can send out an email to your readers whenever you release a new book or story. If your followers are loyal, you can sell more books almost instantly. An auto responder tool enables you to automate this process.

3. Build a writer's platform.

Provide a space for your readers to engage with you by building a writer's platform. You can do it best through a blog or website. A blog makes it possible for you to write about your writing process, share your readers more about your books, characters, plots and other elements of your story. It also gives them a clear picture of your writing. Besides, it helps them know you better. The better they know you, the greater opportunity you have to connect to them and sell your writing to them. How should you write if you have no readers?

You have really great opportunity to make much money from writing literary fiction. You must have a firm marketing plan to do so. Learn the fore-mentioned top three tips and apply them consistently. You will finally find that your fictions sale better.

Typical Mistakes to Shun When Approaching a Literary Agent

The role of literary agents is very significant in book publishing. They help reach the standard for publishing and promote your work. However, it is not an easy job to find appropriate literary agents. Therefore, you need to approach them carefully. To do so, beware of these mistakes commonly made by newbie. Avoiding them ensure selection of your book proposal among the other hundreds.

1. Poorly written contact letter 

Book agents frequently report to have received poorly written query letters. Poor writing has been a major reason for their rejecting such proposals. You had better learn effective techniques to make a good and impressive book proposal and then compose a draft before writing the complete one.

2. Offering inappropriate genre or subject to the agent

Authors also commonly make mistake by approaching an inappropriate agent for their genre. For example, writers send query letters for publishing their children book to an agent who is well known for publishing romances. If you do the same mistake, you will surely be rejected. You had better choose and approach top literary agents carefully to shun such a silly mistake.

3. Author’s hype, arrogance, and ego

Mind your language, give up to date information, and set out your sincerest efforts. The way you talk about yourself and your work might be annoying for the agents. Do not be hyperbolic. You had better make it simple but impressive. Do not talk on other author’s demerits. Agents would not hear these. Instead, these will leave a nasty taste in their mouth.

4. Poor knowledge about the publishing process

Being a master in writing doesn’t always mean knowing well about publishing. Poor knowledge of publishing may result in poor responses from the agents. Therefore, be humble in framing your book proposal. Include information about your target market, the benefit people will get from your work, and other useful and informative aspects of it. You should not write with assumption that the agents already understand what you want.  Learning more about publishing process will let you know how to make an acceptable proposal.

5. Unawareness about book competition 

Eight percents out of 60 book agents complain on authors’ ignorance about the book competition in the market. They don’t seem to know if their book really brings a new, unique concept or it's just typical one among the other hundreds in the market. Authors are not really sure the target of their books and thus produce works that are so typical, not interesting, or have nothing special. Get to know your genre and the market competition better. It is useful to create a unique and attractive book.

While it is really not easy to deal with appropriate book agents, it does not mean you can’t. So long as you stay away from making those five common mistakes above, you will be helped to advance your book proposal approval. Hence, get prepared with adequate knowledge, information, awareness, and lowliness.

5 Ways to Gain Benefit from Your Book's Sell Sheet

Your sell sheet works the same way as a book's resume. It provides you an effective and beneficial marketing tool. It is created to let the world know about your book. Therefore it should be captivating.  Promote your book as soon and as imperial as possible. You will find that the selling has already begun. The followings are five ways to benefit from your sell sheet.

1.Get Media Kit

A media kit, another term for a press kit, refers to a set of promotional materials distributed to the media to facilitate promotion. Integrated to this media kit is a sell sheet. Any book you publish must have specific media kit. The kit ought to be well prepared and complete. It must also be readable in PDF format. You do not need to have different media kits for all your books. You can have one base and divide the sheets for different eBooks.

2. Upload in to Your Website

Make sure that your media kit is accessible from your website and is a downloadable PDF. Then, enclose a PDF of the sell sheet into each book that you publish directly on the webpage. It will enable everyone to locate it quickly and easily.

3. Email Marketing

Marketing books through email is indeed cheap, quick, and easy to do. It is very helpful because it is easy to trace back. Your data you saved in your email are usable to analyze open rates, clicked links, and access conversion details. These data are helpful to set and arrange your All of this data can help email content and message. Keep in touch with your clients and customers through email, and share them your sheet. Consider emailing bookstore managers, library book-buyers, book reviewers, and print and online media about your new publication to expand your extent.

4. Optimize the Use of Direct Mail Marketing

By using direct mail you can get your sheet directly sent to potential book buyers. The buyers of this kind might not have been able to find you or your book in today's market in primary sale as it might have been so busy. Through direct email you can refer them to your website, too. It is on the website that you can provide more marketing material for your book, and impress them with information about you as well. Consider to direct email bookstores and libraries, too. You can find their email addresses on internet.

5. Issue Hand-Out

Every time you are invited to a conference, trade-show, class, or presentation, share the sheet as a hand-out. If you have an office, make the sell sheet available at the front office desk so that your visiting clients or guest can find it easily.

Your sell sheet can be a good source of profit. Apply these five ways, and you will leave a good mark and get more chances to sell more books, and bring in new customers.

9 Tips for Writing a Great Blurb of a Non-Fiction Book

To attract readers’ attention, you need to write a good blurb for you non-fiction books. It must be promising and convincing so that they will believe to find what they are seeking in your piece. Your blurb must be able to steal their heart just in seconds. Otherwise, they will move on browsing other more promising books. To make it both promising and convincing, you can follow these useful tips.

1. Write an attractive introduction to catch the reader's attention

When writing a book, you must have got ideas about whom to market it. Therefore, you must have known what you need say to steal their attention.  Try to catch their attention in your first sentence. This introduction functions as a braid.

2. Make it Brief and Concise

Do not get your reader bored by serving them a lengthy description. Make it brief and concise. A good blurb is generally is 100 to 150 words long.

3. Build an Emotional Connection

This is very important to make the reader interested in your book.

4. Be Honest and don’t oversell 

Do not praise your work overwhelmingly. Share how good it is precisely. Readers would rather see the proof than keep an ear to your baloney. If you can make them what you have promised, your readers can easily let you go.

5. Use the third person point of view and present tense in your writing

No matter if you are author or the publisher of the book; you should write the blurb in the third person perspective and make use of the present tense. This will make the blurb more convincing.

6. Insert a quote or testimonial from a third party

Testimonials are a very powerful marketing tool. People rely on these to make their decision on buying things. They will be easily influenced by testimonials mainly the ones made by a popular or very accomplished person.

7. Explain the benefits the reader will get from your book

Say the most important things the reader will learn from your book. Make them think that they will miss a fortune if they ignore your book.

8. Explain how helpful your book is to overcome their problems?

It is the essential part that can persuade the readers to buy your book. This is the main reason they have to put your work on their priority.

9. Make a Brief Promotion

In soft tone, get readers to buy your book. However, do not be too aggressive. It will make them go rather than stay.

Those tips must be so easy to apply. It is recommended that you devote some time to learn books blurbs in Amazon the subject matter of which is similar to that of your book. This will lead you to find how other authors write their own book blurbs. You can observe the descriptions of the books written by famous authors and by the newer one and compare them.

The 5 Key Elements of Brilliant Book Marketing

To reach a brilliant success in self-publishing, you will need to bind up in it. Self-publishing does not merely mean marketing your books, but promoting yourself as an author as well. Your brand goes in accordance with your book’s fame. You will find that writing your book is just a start of a pleasant adventure. Always keep that in mind to keep your spirit up. Here are five sales strategies you need to learn in order to succeed your efforts in book marketing. Mastering them will increase your book sales, gain more fans, attract more followers, and invite more clients.

1. Be Credible

Credibility to an author is before all else. You are known of the books you result in. Therefore, never promise people what you can’t give and never talk on what you can’t be. Once you get their attention, make sure that you can finally keep what you have promised them before. If you fail to, they will not think twice to put you under their black list. Don’t put your life on the line.

2. Build Emotional Connection

It is engaging to build an emotional connection to your reader. People will most likely buy from those they feel comfort with. Utilize your entire marketing materials, media kit, blog, website, videos, articles, and so forth to do so.

3. Invest in Professional Look 

People know whom to trust. To them, the professional ones deserve more trust. Therefore, make your products look as professional as possible. Think of each part of it. From the beginning to the end it has to be professional looking. This will make your audience put their trust on you. They will consider it promising. It is also a sign telling them that you do have that credibility.

4. Figure out Your Audience

A successful author has to know the needs and problems of his/her audience. Your audience must believe that you know what they want and need, and can give them efficacious way out. The stronger their belief in you, the more books they will buy from you and thus the better your book will sell. This will work in cooperation with the emotional connection you have built with your audience.

5. Repeat Your Marketing

Do not quit marketing a single product in one-time display. Most prospective buyers do not respond to it right away. Most of them will think well of it after seeing it some more times. Thus, consider repeating your marketing. It gets people more familiar with your stuffs, and thus consider your credibility. Once they connect to you and find your work satisfactory, they may put a stable trust on you, and thus be your prospective persistent buyers.

You will soon find out that marketing is an important part of achieving success with your book. Just as the heart is the most important part in your body, marketing plays most significant role in your success. Always keep these five basic elements to keep your marketing fare well.

7 Reasons to Self-Publish

Creativity 

Unlike traditional publishing, self-publishing let writers take all control. Creation is borderless. Designing book, rewriting it, and decorating its cover have been major strategies for self-publishers.  What the content is, how it is designed, and how much it sells belong to your authority. Moreover, you can handle the marketing on your own. This makes it even more profitable.

Profits 

Traditional publishing houses hardly enable you to improve your career. It usually pays you 4-6% royalties. Self-publishing will not do you the same way. It lets you grab all the 100% profits from selling books.

Marketing 

Traditional publishing seems to conceal that authors have strived for getting their books published. In self-publishing, your major concentration is on your title. Moreover, self-publishing does not require you to spend lots of fund. You can deal with cheap even free marketing channels. You can make use of social media to promote your books hand over hand.

Credibility

Self-Publishing has been considered effective and profitable by many authors. Because of this, some traditional publishing companies decided to open a special division for self-publishing. Many self-published books have also be displayed in bookstores and placed in libraries worldwide. What is more, publishing your books lets people listen to your voice. Your book is really a good medium to share your thoughts. In addition, it helps those who need the knowledge and information you include. Publishing your work also enables people to trace your creation when you have gone to glory.

Speed

Self-publishing enables to publish your book much faster than a traditional publishing house. This is the right way to get connected quickly to your readers. However, do not deify a quick work so much that you let go of the quality. You can rule your own publishing: how fast you need to work, what kind of information you should include, and when you can start the promotion. This allows you to cadge your book only in days or weeks. No need to wait for years.

Branding 

Your book reflects and resulted from your expertise. When people find your works satisfactory, it can make an effective branding. It can even be more effective than your business card. It will by then open chances for you to speak in public, train people, even direct a play. All because of your amazing product. It helps your improve your credibility as well as your expertise.  It is then a must to have such a marketing tool.

Kindle 

Kindle has unlocked the self-publishing door and opened big opportunity for even new comers in this field. Everyone may have at least a book on and share inspiring story about it. Kindle helps you step into the world of publishing with ease. It allows you self-publish your work even with little budget. Adding a little more can make it work everything on your behalf. There are just many other platforms of this kind that facilitates you to publish a highly-qualified, professional e-book.

Ready for this abridging fun? Start writing and self-publishing!