It’s time to get the party started, an author friend of mine quipped. She was referring to the independent publishing party, the one where our lovingly written and agonized-over manuscripts become honest-to-goodness books for sale.
I couldn’t agree more.
Joanna Penn, author of several best-selling thrillers and book marketing expert (see Penn’s book, How To Market A Book
Penn says she is asked on a nearly daily basis: How do I sell more books? “There are 10 questions I think you need to answer,” she explains. Note there is nothing on Penn’s checklist of questions about blogging or platform building on Facebook. These are the fundamentals critical to setting the stage for sales.
Here are the first 5 questions an author must ask:
1) Is your book available as an ebook? Penn uses Scrivener for formatting in Kindle, ePub and Word formats and publishes on Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life and Smashwords, BookBaby and B&N Nook PubIt.
2) Has your cover been professionally designed? Penn believes this is non-negotiable if you want to stand out in the crowded market. Check out the ebook cover design awards at TheBookDesigner.com to see some great covers and some truly awful ones. Then hire a professional cover designer, give them that information and work with them to create a professional cover.
“If you don’t have a budget for this, then work extra hard until you have that extra money,” she says.
3) Has your book been professionally edited? According to Penn, “You should edit your books until you can’t stand them any longer, and then you should consider hiring a professional editor to help you take it further, because you cannot see your own words after a point because you know the story so well.”
You need other eyes, preferably professional eyes who will critique you honestly and tell you where the problems are. “Here’s some more articles on editing and my recommended editors,” says Penn.
4) Have you submitted your book to the right categories on the ebook stores? Sorry, but not everyone will like your book. The category/genre reader has expectations and if you don’t ‘fit’ they will be disappointed. Match your readers’ expectations and the promise of what your book delivers with what your book is actually about. A great book on categories and Amazon algorithms is David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Visible.
5) Have you optimized your Amazon sales page with a hook, quotes from reviews and other material? Treat the product description like a sales page. “People will not buy your book if your description is badly written or hard to understand because it’s an indication of the quality of your book,” explains Penn.
Read the other 5 questions you need to answer and find out how you can action them here. Number Ten is especially important, so please do read on!
As you can see, there is a significant investment the writer must make beyond writing the book itself. A professionally-produced book will earn a loyal readership, and excite the reader to explore your backlist.
Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers on the edge, as well as non-fiction for authors. I’m also a professional speaker and entrepreneur, voted as one of The Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013. Follow her on Twitter at @thecreativepenn.
Interested in more tips on selling books? Check out Sell More Books with Calls To Action at the End of Story
Let’s connect on Twitter! @TheRJLacko