Better Information Retention

 

 Swarm Your Market

Swarm is a fancy word for "sharing" but it's a lot easier to say than "multiplying your marketing efforts."

As an author, you have specific needs that most of the major book publishers can't provide. You want to build your own audience and garner consistent sales. Your agent wants you to focus on writing and not pushy market research. The editor at Random House is happy with your book as long as they get their monthly royalty checks. And so on, and so on, until finally all the pieces fall apart.

You're going to need a plan. This is a step-by-step guide to help you get your book reviewed and purchased by readers who want to read more books by you.

Step 1: Find Your Market

It's really hard to sell a book if you don't know who your market is. What are the type of people who will appreciate your work? It's easy to say something like, "everyone likes a good story," but that doesn't tell you much. A better approach would be to take a look at your favorite authors and find out who their audience is. Do some research on the popular genre and sub-genre authors. You can also ask around about which authors are well know for the types of books that you write.

A list of genres can be found in the back of many writing books or on a website like goodreads.com or Amazon. You can search for "best selling novels" or "top selling books" to get a good idea of what's popular these days. As you study the data, look for patterns, like movies versus romance versus science fiction or whatever your genre might be.

If you're working on an epic fantasy, you want to find out about the best selling epic fantasies. If it's a thriller or mystery, you want to learn about the best selling books in that genre. Don't limit yourself to these influences; there are thousands of people buying books each year and you can find lots of readers for your work by simply searching Amazon and Goodreads online. You'll get a lot of hits on your first search, but keep going until you're ready to give up!

Step 2: Build Your Readership

The next step is to build your readership. This is the most time-consuming and difficult part of marketing. You need to create opportunities to get your potential readers' attention. Plan to spend up to half of your time on the entire process: building an audience, getting reviews and getting those readers to buy your books.

Social Media is a great way to build your audience. If you already have Twitter followers or some Facebook friends, then you have a great start! It's time to find some more. This can be done by offering free copies of your book (more on that later) and as you do so, network with new readers. As they like what they're reading, they'll be likely to follow you on social media sites as well as look for more work by you in the future.

You can also use social media to join in conversations about your genre. When you read, you'll notice that many other people are talking about the same books. You can jump into those conversations and join in the fun. Be sure to share what you're reading or writing and ask others for their work as well. You may find a new fan!

The best way to build your audience is by having a website or blog that is all about creating relationships with readers who like the types of books that you write. It's important to find a professional writer's site that you can use as your guide. Keep your posts clean, relevant and focused on your readers. Don't push sales messages at readers or try to sell them something – simply connect with them about what you're reading or writing.

Drop by the comments section of other authors' blogs and websites, asking them questions about their books or just writing a few lines about what it's like to be an author in today's market. Make friends with fellow writers who comment and have fun!

If you are a published author, then you have an established fan base on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers. This is a great place to start. Buy some ads for your book and let your fan base know about it. They'll drop by and buy because they want to support you!

If you're an indie author, then you need to spend some time attacking the best sellers on Amazon and Goodreads. This can be difficult because trends come and go quickly, but if you stick with it, you'll find that people who buy books look at the reviews before they buy. If you can get some solid star-ratings from readers who genuinely enjoy the type of books that you write, then they'll be more likely to purchase your material over that of another author simply because they trust what others have said about your writing.

Step 3: Get Reviews

Once you've been writing for a while, you'll start to see that your readers are signing up to review your book. This is great! Most of the best reviews for your book will come from the readers who liked it the most, so be sure to ask them to leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Google Reviewers is also a good way to find some reviews. If they offer an honest appraisal of your work, then great; if not, then move on!

The reviews can help improve your ranking in Amazon and Goodreads and even help get you noticed by others in the publishing world. Read all of the reviews, then do three things. First, get someone to help you fix any mistakes or errors that are in your book. Second, write an email response to the reviewers and thirdly, write a thank you note to them.

Do not respond to reviews that offer incredibly mean or nasty comments. If they are asking questions about your characters or plot or premise, then answer them honestly but do not bad-mouth anyone else's work in the process. You may be angrier than they were when they wrote their review and you should keep your cool.

Most importantly, do not pay for reviews. Even if you can't get an honest review from someone who loved your book, then it's likely that you'll get a bad review from a paid reviewer. If you do pay for a review and Amazon or Goodreads catches on to it, then you'll have problems with your ranking and credibility.

Conclusion

There you have it: a few of the most basic tips for selling books online. Keep in mind that the landscape is always changing and there is a lot of advice available on this topic. The above steps will help you to get some momentum going, but as time goes on, you'll learn more about what works for you and your writing.

What did you think? Does any of this sound intimidating or like work? It doesn't have to be! You can have fun with marketing your book by simply learning through experience and participating in conversations with other authors and readers. As they enjoy what they read, they'll naturally want to talk about it with others and share your work through the process.