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How To Sell Books

26 June 2011

To be a successful author you have to both a) write your masterpiece and b) sell it.

This can come as a shock to a new author, as it did to me when I was first asked how I would be selling my own book. Me? Sell? Surely that’s the job of the publisher?

Alas not. Well, not quite.

Publishers are great at knowing the market, offering practical advice and turning a rough manuscript into a saleable product. And they’re busy people, constantly on the run from project to project, meeting new authors, commissioning work and travelling to book fairs and sales meetings. It’s not a bad life, but it is hectic and when they are presenting your book to a client it will probably be one of 30 and so they’ll have about 10 seconds or less to introduce it.

This means that the author has to shoulder a heavy sales burden and do much of the longer term spade work to make sure they sell books, once past the initial PR frenzy.

If you have a book* you wish to sell then here are my 5 top tips to get copies flying off the shelves:

1) Be nice to people on Twitter. Some selling is okay, as we all have to make a living, but 25 robo-tweets a day just irritates people. Less is more.

2) Use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to point people to your Amazon page. If you do a good job of 1) they’re more likely to trust you and have a browse.

3) Invite people to review your book. Or just to ‘Like’ it. More traffic here does help to build trust.

4) Write another book. Nine years ago I was told that you need to publish (not just write) five books to consider yourself a fully-fledged author. There is wisdom to this, which is that publishers like to invest in author-brands and also the general public repeat-purchase books from authors they like. In combination these two facets help to sell books.

5) Do something everyday. Check your Amazon rating, write a PR piece, make a new friend, tell someone about your book, tweak your author biog…or anything else that grabs your fancy. So many people give up after three weeks, but the real pro’s keep at it for years. If you want the sales you have to put in the leg work.

Clearly this post has nothing to do with the fact that my exciting new book, called How To Keep Your Job, is available from 14th July in all good book shops, a few dodgy ones and of course (cue angelic chorus) Amazon.co.uk

It also has nothing to do with me needing to write up the submission for book five, which is due out this time in 2012.

…This post is just here to be helpful to writers everywhere.

*Or other products.

Tags: tip