The Basics of Book Marketing and Selling More Books

You know how there is the ABC’s of different tasks, right?

Well, today I’m going to teach you the T-O-C’s of book marketing. I will be sharing with you some of the bare bones, basics of book marketing and selling more books.

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THE T-O-C’s of Book Marketing

As authors we think of T-O-C as Table of Contents, right?

This however has nothing to do with your book’s table of contents. This is something that can help you understand the framework of what it’s going to take to sell more books.

Here are the T-O-C’s of book marketing that will help you sell more books.

T is for Traffic

The T is where we start and T is for Traffic. This is where most authors struggles and some stop here.

Traffic is driving new customers to your website, lead magnets and book pages. It is establishing your audience, your tribe or your lifers.

Traffic can be many things. There can be different ways to get traffic. Here are some of the most common ways that you get traffic from different sources.

Traffic from search engines. My site, TrainingAuthors.com gets a lot of Traffic from Google.

Traffic from social media. I teach a lot about social media marketing because it’s free, and it’s a great way to get Traffic.

If you go to 7DaySocial.com/Free, I have some templates for you that you can use on social media. In my training, 7 Day Social, I teach you how to set up different tweets and posts that will be able to bring consistent sales on continuously.

But like with anything else, you have to see what works for you best.

Traffic from Amazon. You can get Traffic from perma-free books on Amazon. I have many books that are up like that.

Traffic from guest appearances. This is a huge way to tap into someone else’s audience and invite traffic to your own lead magnets.

Traffic from podcast. You can get traffic on iTunes because people are constantly searching for different topics.

To be honest, it is going to take a little bit of time, work, and sweat equity to set it up. But once you set it up it will work for you continuously. I love to teach you how to create something one time and let it work for you over and over again.

I created the Author Automation system. This system will help you find new customers that are interested in your topics, on a daily basis. And it works on autopilot!

This is not a trick. I have used this system since 2012, and it is free.

It’s not Facebook Ads or anything like that; it is a free strategy.

I taught this within Author Audience Academy in our Take Action Challenge this month. It is also part of the Author Automation System so you might want to check it out by joining my academy.

What are your favorite ways to get traffic? And can you think of a way to get traffic that have worked for you?

O is for OFFERS

So, you have the Traffic. What follows then? You then have to make Offers.

You need to have calls to action. You need to make Offers to that Traffic.

Ask people to sign up and get to know your products. Offer them what you have.

If you have something that’s going to change someone’s life, potentially help them and make their life better, don’t be shy about sharing it. However, you don’t want to over share either.

What I see is authors going from one extreme of never asking people to buy their books or the other extreme of annoying people to buy their books.

We want to find that happy medium. We want to find that place where there is enough offer and not too pushy.

You can actually give free Offers, like free trainings or free books.

Offers can be your book or it can be a tripwire offer—which is somewhere between $7 and $97 or it can be your core Offer. It can also be products of other kinds.

The important thing is you have to make offers.

So what kind of offers can you make? Are you making enough offers? Do you ever ask your email subscriber list to buy your books?

You can’t go to the extreme of pushing your offer again and again but you have to be able to let your subscribers know what you have.

C for Conversions

After getting Traffic and making an Offer, you then have to think about the Conversion.

When you’re making really good conversions then you can make sales which means you can make more money and help you reach more people.

Sometimes people have really good traffic so the traffic is not the problem.

Some are also making good offers. They are doing it in a way that is relational, and not bullhorn on the side of the road. They are making great offers with their great product that is solving a pain point. So the offer is not the problem.

Sometimes the problem is the conversions, when someone gets to your page they are not buying.

So what is the disconnect? What are the issues that are causing a disconnect with the conversions?

Conversion is basically the amount of people that see your book on Amazon compared to the number of people that actually buy it.

So usually, you should have at least around 2-3% Conversion rate. However, it varies. Some can have high conversion rate while others can have almost zero.

The good news is you can improve your conversion rates.

Copy writing is a good way to do that. This is writing skill that specializes in writing to sell, to persuade, and to get someone to take an action.

Personally, I am taking courses on copywriting and doing things to grow in this skill.

There are simple things you can do to tweak what you say, and write your book description in a way that it catches the attention of the readers. This can improve your conversions.

So many times we market blindfolded which is just like shooting in the dark. We end up trying all these different techniques, and we don’t even look to see what’s working or not.

If we only take time to look, how much Traffic we are getting, the Offers we are making, and the Conversion rates it brought, it will tell us a lot about the system that works for us.

Here are some other recommendations that I want to share with you about marketing your books.

Build an author platform

I recommend that you build an author platform.

I have thousands of people now on my email subscriber list and I can send out one email or a series of emails over 3 days and I can sell hundreds of books during a book launch.

If I didn’t have this system it would not be that easy for me.

Building your author platform gives you more options rather than just depending on organic traffic from Amazon.

Find what marketing strategy works for you

You have to find what works for your niche, your tribe and your audience. You can always do research on other books in your industry and see what is selling well.

See what makes them sell more. Is it the topic?

Right now free KDP promotion days aren’t working like they did in 2012. However, I do recommend using them if you’re a new author and you’re working to build your author platform.

I have a blog post on my site TrainingAuthors.com that will give you my strategies. I encourage you to go there; it’s the pinned post on the home page.

You can have a book for free and in your book have your calls to action to an offer that’s a lead magnet, a free training of some sort—something that they really want that’s related to your book. This will drive that free traffic to sign up to your email subscriber list.

That way you’re building your tribe, you’re building your list, and you can then email them when you have other books available.

Series can work magic

Another strategy that’s really good with free days is if you have a series.

So, if you have a book series, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, you could have the first book in the series free and then at the end of the book say, “collect them all,” or, “read the next book in the series. Then you have a link specifically where they can buy your other books.

Tap into Global Market

I remember in my very first blog and website for teen girls I would get visitors from all over the world.

I got emails from Venezuela, South Africa, Japan, and they would read my book and they would email me.

You tap into that global market if they read English.

Another way to do this is to get your books translated into other languages. I teach this inside AuthorAudienceAcademy.com.

I had one of my books translated to Spanish, so then it means that I can reach a different market on the Amazon Spain site. People are going to be more interested in a book if it’s in their language.

You can have different opportunities to connect with sites and things that are for that specific country, or that specific geographic location. And you can have them do promotions for you.

There are so many things you can do, but those are just a couple quick things that came to mind.

I don’t recommend that you get obsessed with your book sales and your rankings. That can actually lead you on an emotional roller coaster when your sales and ranking go up and down.

I have been on that roller coaster ride myself. But you do need to know certain things, and certain stats. I’m excited to be sharing a lot more in AuthorAudienceAcademy.com through the Author Automation System.

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