Part of marketing your books is enticing the reader. You want the reader to be so excited to read your book that he runs out to buy it. Immediately. And then tells all his friends about it.

So given this, why do so many authors have just a picture of their book on their website with a link to buy it?

No matter how compelling your cover art is, I’m not going to hunt down a book just because of how it looks. A fantastic picture on the front cover tells me nothing about the story inside. As a potential reader, I want to know something about the story and the characters, so I can decide if it appeals to me.

Listing a description of the book right next to the cover art on your site gives me the information I need to make a choice about reading it or not.

If you don’t have a description of the book there, I might just click away from your site, never to return. Don’t give the reader any reason to leave your site.

What about including a link to a different page that has a description, you ask. My question back to you is Why are you making the potential reader work so hard to get info on your books?

I can understand including a link to a separate page for an excerpt, because an excerpt is typically long. But don’t make me click anywhere to read the description of the book. Put it right there for me, so I can’t avoid reading it and getting interested in the story.

What to Include on a Book Index Page

If you have a page on your site that lists all of your books, then make sure you include the following for each book:

• Cover art picture
• Name of the book
• Series title and the book’s number in the series, if it is part of a series
• Description of the book (back cover copy)
• Link to excerpt (if there’s one available)
• Link to at least one online seller of the book
• Link to page for just that single book with more information about the book

What to Include on Individual Book Pages

If you include a link to a separate page for just that book, you can list more information on that page:

• Larger cover art picture
• Longer description of the book with more character detail
• The full excerpt, if available
• Links to all online sellers of the book
• Links to extras for the book (character studies, interviews, short stories related to the book)

You want to entice a reader into your story. Displaying your cover art is the first step, but don’t stop there. Include a description with the cover art so that potential readers can get interested in your story. If you make them hunt for information, they made choose to leave your site instead.

Your Turn

Evaluate your website. Do you have a page that lists all of your books? Do you have a description listed for each one along with the cover art? If not, add the descriptions today and then leave a comment with a link to your book page so we can visit.

Print publishing is still a long shot for many writers. So many factors have to come together at the same time to get a publishing contract.

• Writer must write a good story.
• Writer or agent must connect with the right publisher for the book.
• Publisher must like the book.
• Publisher must think the book will sell.
• Publisher must have an open slot for the book.
• Publisher must not have just published a similar book or have one scheduled for release.
• Editor, art department, marketing and the executives must all agree on and support the book.
• Schedules for art, galleys, printing and shipping must all align.
• Mercury must be in retrograde with Jupiter.
• Seven fireflies must fly in three concentric circles in Central Park.

Okay, so maybe the last two don’t have to happen, but sometimes the entire publishing process can seem to be a mystical ordeal that depends on butterflies in Kansas lighting on a specific flower to see a book published.

There are things you can do though to stack the deck in your favor and encourage a publisher to take a chance on your book.

You can bring your own audience to the table with the book.

Okay, I can hear the groans from here. Yes, that means doing your own promotion. But it’s becoming more important for writers to do their own promotion if they want to continue selling books to Big Publishing and actually have a writing career.

Demonstrating that you already have people who like your writing and are potential buyers for your books is strong proof that your book sales may be better than the average author’s. That’s a big plus for a publisher who’s always looking for better sales and a sure thing. You’re doing some of the hard work for the publisher and they may look on your novel a bit more favorably because of that.

Bringing the Audience

There are lots of options for bringing an audience to the table when you’re submitting and in book negotiations. Some are more favorable than others. I’ve listed some of them here in descending order of importance.

Previous Sales

If you’ve self-published your own print or electronic book and have sold 10,000 copies, that’s a huge amount of social proof that readers already like your writing and are willing to spend money on it. And yes, self-pubbed authors sometimes get picked up by publishers.

Remember Christopher Paolini? He’s the teenager that wrote a fantasy novel, printed copies and then sold them from the trunk of his parents’ car at libraries and schools. Carl Hiaasen’s stepson read a copy of the self-published book and Carl brought Eragon to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. The publisher made an offer to publish the first book, Eragon, and the rest of the Inheritance Cycle series. To date, the series has sold 20 million copies. Eragon was also adapted into a film by the same name.

And then there’s Boyd Morrison. He released three books on the Kindle last March and within three months, had sold 7500 copies of them. By the fourth month he was selling 4000 books a month. His agent, who had previously tried to sell his novels and had them turned down, took his electronic sales numbers to Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. The publisher offered him a contract.

If you can demonstrate sales numbers like these, either print or electronic, you have a much better shot of getting a publisher to look at your novel.

Start a Newsletter

If you can write in your query letter that you have 5000 subscribers to your monthly newsletter, what do you think a prospective agent or editor is going to think? You have a built-in audience of people who have opted in to hear from you on a regular basis. Odds are much better that those people are already disposed to buying any novel you write.

Social Media Numbers

This metric includes Facebook friends or fans, Twitter followers, MySpace friends, etc. A similar caveat applies here as to the website visitors. Having a lot of friends or followers is terrific. But what matters most about your social media numbers is not how many people follow or friend you, but how many of them you can mobilize into action–say to buy your book. A Twitter follower may be following you because they like what you say, or simply because they had auto-follow turned on. If you’ve been engaging with your friends and followers and they actually respond to you, then your numbers are a lot more valuable as an indicator of potential book sales.

RSS Subscribers

RSS subscribers use a feed reader to have your blog posts delivered to them, rather than having to visit your website each time you post something new. This is great for your readers, but not so great for you. It’s easy to skim and skip posts in a feed reader, so a subscriber may not be reading everything you post, like your announcement about your latest book release. But it is a higher level of engagement than just a website visitor, so the numbers do count for something.

Website Visitors

This is probably the least compelling number, but it can still be useful. In this case, visitors to your site might read your writing and be interested in it, but they might also visit once and never return. For them to count more heavily in your favor, they need to sign up to hear more from you on a regular basis, like joining your newsletter or subscribing to your RSS feed. However, if you can truthfully report that you get 10,000 visitors to your website each month, that’s a lot better than a site that gets 10 visitors a month. Again, there’s sales potential there.

Ultimately, you want to focus on raising the numbers in all of these categories, but you don’t have to tackle them all at the same time. If you’ve just started your website, start writing the most interesting posts you can and focus on getting visitors to your website. If your website is established, try to increase your RSS subscribers or start a newsletter. Start working on your social media outreach and set up an account on a site you haven’t tried before.

Everything you can do to increase the numbers of people who are aware of you and your writing is another way to stack the deck in your favor in the publishing world.

Once Upon a Time

Jacob A. Writer decided to write a book. He wrote his book, finished it and then researched how to get it published. He discovered there were two options for getting published.

1. Try to get a publishing company interested enough in his story to publish it.

2. Publish it himself.

Self-publishing was by far the easiest route to take, he found out, but it was cursed with a stigma. Only failed writers who couldn’t make it in traditional publishing went the self-publishing route. Or so many people thought.

Jacob didn’t want to wear the label of Failed Writer, so he decided on the traditional publishing path.

He spent much time polishing his queries, refining his elevator pitches (in case he was ever in an elevator with an agent or editor), and began submitting to editors and agents in the hopes that his story would be deemed worthy of publication.

If he was lucky, if the story was good, if the story fit the publisher’s catalog, if there wasn’t already a similar story in the pipeline, if the story was thought to have mass appeal, if the story made it through all of the editorial hoops, then just maybe… Jacob might see it on the shelf at his local bookstore one day. It would take months, maybe even years, but eventually, it would be there. Readers would see it and buy it and Jacob would make a small amount of money for his labor.

This was the acceptable and traditional way for a writer to share his stories with the world. And for a serious writer like Jacob, this was the path he walked.

Then One Day

Along came the Internet and print-on-demand vendors and blogs and PDFs and smart phones and eReaders.

Writers now had multiple paths they could follow.

They could start a blog and share their daily thoughts with the world. They could write on any subject they chose and publish their own words to the world.

They could write stories and release them as PDFs, available as downloads on their website.

They could work with a distributor to release their out of print titles in electronic formats that the readers could download to their smart phones or eReaders.

They could even release novellas and collections of short stories and rejected novels that the traditional publishers didn’t want through their website or the distributors.

And the writers found that the readers were hungry for good stories, regardless of the format.

Some writers began selling their books to the masses using distributors instead of publishers. And the readers bought the books, in great numbers if the books were reasonably priced. And for the first time, writers had a solid chance at making a living from their writing without having to trudge the long path of traditional publishing.

Now they could finish a story, polish it and release it the next day, directly into a reader’s hands.

And a question arose among writers, now that there was more than one acceptable way to publish a story.

“Why do I write?”

Jacob went to his friends and asked them why they wrote.

Traditional Recognition

Jane said that she wrote because she wanted to see her book on a bookshelf. She craved that traditional form of recognition that acknowledged her story had passed the strict publishing tests and been deemed worthy of becoming a printed book stamped with the publisher’s mark. Seeing her name on the cover of a book on the bookstore bookshelf gave her the validation that she wanted. Jane decided that she would continue to submit to traditional publishing. When her first book was released, she proudly sent copies to her friends, including Jacob, and her family.

To Be Heard

Phil said that he just wanted to tell his story. He wanted his words to find an audience, no matter how small. Phil chose to start his own blog, where he posts his thoughts daily. He has also considered publishing a memoir. He hasn’t decided yet if it will be via PDF, a print-on-demand vendor or through a distributor. His blog readership is growing and each post brings a few comments. He couldn’t be happier.

To Make Money

Tammy said that she wanted to make a living by telling stories. She decided to release her stories via the electronic distributors. By telling a good story and keeping the price of her ebook low, Tammy found out that she was able to make more money in a shorter time-frame than she could via traditional publishing with its long publishing schedule. Getting paid good money to tell stories is the best job she’s ever had, she told Jacob.

To Gain Fans

Gary said that what he most wanted was to have his own fan base for his stories. He loved the idea of people reading his stories and living in the world he created. He chose to release PDFs on his website and also released ebooks through the distributors at a very low price to gain more readers. After he builds a good following he plans to pursue traditional publishing as a means to a wider distribution.

Happily Ever After

Jacob thought about how each of his friends identified what they wanted out of their writing and choose a method of publication that gave them what they wanted. Some even decided on using multiple methods.

Jacob himself had a thriller idea he had been tossing around. It was outside his normal Western genre and his publisher didn’t want it. So he decided to release it as an ebook to see how his sales went. He’s excited about the future for writers as technology makes it easier for writers to reach readers directly.

Your Turn

Why do you write? What do you want to get out of it? Is it time to change the publishing path you’re on to better meet your goals?

Ebooks are big news these days, even though they still comprise only a small portion of total book sales. Amazon reported that Kindle downloads surpassed print book sales in December 2009. Apple just released the iPad which can function as an eReader and download ebooks from the iStore.

Writers are cashing in on the popularity of ebooks. By uploading their own books to the big distributors like Amazon, Apple, B&N and Sony and bypassing the Big Publishers, they’re able to directly reach the reader and get a larger slice of the royalty pie. And the slice is getting larger. Amazon is changing its royalty rate in June from 35% to 70% (for ebooks priced 2.99 or greater) which is a huge boon for authors.

Technology has made it easy for writers to sell their stories directly to readers and reap the majority of the benefits. If you can follow some formatting guidelines, you can upload your story within minutes and be selling.

And notice that self-publishing is quickly losing its stigma of being the last refuge for the writer who couldn’t make it in Real Publishing.

If you want to make a full-time living as a writer, that is now entirely possible. Even if Big Publishing isn’t interested in your books.

Need some proof?

JA Konrath is selling 180 230 ebooks a day. He has six books in print and thirteen ebooks available on the Kindle (mostly novels that Big Publishing didn’t want). He projects he’ll make $100,000 by the end of the year. Just from his ebooks.

Karen McQuestion has six ebooks available on the Kindle (and not on any other platform and no print books) and has sold 30,000 copies of her ebooks since July 2009. Of the six, one is a children’s book and two are young adult novels. She’s proof that you don’t have to be traditionally published or have a big name to make money on ebooks.

Moira Rogers reported a dramatic upsurge in her ebook sales in December 2009 and January 2010. After months of low sales, her numbers jumped to over 400 sales in January alone on just one of her ebook titles. She says her other backlist titles on Amazon are experiencing the same surge in sales.

Lee Goldberg has been following JA Konrath’s ebook success and has been experimenting with the covers of his backlist books available on the Kindle to see the effect on sales. So far, his sales have increased with the new covers and if his sales continue at their current rate, he’ll earn $1400 in royalties in April.

Ellen Fisher released her first ebook on Amazon in February 2010 and had 27 downloads. She released two more ebooks and ended March with 889 downloads.

There is amazing opportunity for writers with a good book, a good cover, an appealing description and low price to make money on Kindle sales. And this isn’t even counting the other platforms, like the iStore, B&N and Sony.

Your Turn

Do you have any ebooks available on Amazon or on other ebook platforms? How have your sales been?

If you don’t have an ebook on Amazon yet, why not? What do you need to get you started?

If you’ve been following Joe Konrath’s blog, you know he’s been experimenting with ebook sales for a year now. And he’s had tremendous success so far.

In fact, he’s now advocating that writers should not ever sign away their ebook rights to a publisher, because they can make more money by listing the books electronically themselves.

But is his experience typical? To provide another view on ebook sales, Mark Terry has written a guest post on Joe’s blog detailing his experience with selling an ebook.

The overall summary?

Joe is certainly selling more copies of his ebooks than Mark. They both discuss the possible reasons why in the post and in the comments.

I think the main reason is that Joe has done a ton of promotion for his books, both print and electronic. (Sent 7000 letters to libraries, visited 1200 bookstores, did a 100-blog tour in a month, and traveled to 39 states speaking at writing conferences, conventions, and book fairs.)

If you want to have large ebook sales, promotion is a key component. People can’t buy a product they’ve never heard of.

Internet Promotion for Ebooks

If you have an ebook for sale on the Kindle or any other electronic distribution platform, try these suggestions for getting the word out about your ebook.

1. Put links on your website to all of the locations where readers can buy your ebook. Make the links prominent – put them in your sidebar and set up a page on your site with a description of the ebook and links to buy it. Make it easy for readers to find your book and get a copy.

2. Send an announcement about your ebook to your mailing list. If you don’t have a mailing list, start one on your website so you can gather email addresses of fans interested in your stories.

3. Post an announcement about your ebook on your blog.

4. Write a guest post for someone else’s blog and have a sentence about your ebook in your author bio at the end of the post.

5. Cross promote your ebook with another ebook author. Trade first chapters of each novel and place them at the end of the other person’s ebook as a teaser chapter. Be sure to include a link or location where your ebook can be purchased.

6. Give out free copies of your ebook. Yes, that seems counter-productive to making money with your ebook, but the more people that get hooked on your writing, the more future sales of your books, print and ebook. If you’re still leery of giving them away for free, look at Joe’s blog. He lists all of his ebooks as free downloads on his website and he’s still selling loads of them through the Kindle store.

7. Make subtle announcements about your ebook on your social media networks, like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, as well as any genre sites, book tagging or review sites that you belong to.

8. If your ebook is on the Kindle, join the Kindleboards community and interact with Kindle readers. Put a link to your ebook in your forum signature.

9. Join other eReader forums, like MobileRead and Book Summit. Do a search for “Kindle forum”, “iTunes forum”, “Nook forum”, or “ebook forum” to find others to join.

Remember, you aren’t aiming for a hard sell. You just want to make people aware that you have an ebook out there. Ideally, you want to draw them in with a catchy description of the book to entice them into checking it out.

The more mentions of your ebook out in the Interwebs, the better the chances of new readers finding your stories.

Your Turn

What promotional methods have you used or seen used for electronic books? Did it work well or not so much?

Social media is the new hot thing. You hear about it everywhere. But what is it and why would a writer want to use it?

What is social media?

Social media is any website or application that allows people to interact with each other. Common examples are chat rooms, forums, commenting systems, review sites, audio/video sites – any place where people can respond to each other.

You’ve probably heard of the big social media sites – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. But there are many more. Hundreds more. Every time someone dreams up a way for people to connect online, another social media site is born.

Why do I want to use it?

The big question for writers, though, is why do you want to use ANY social media sites?

Social media is about being social – meeting new people, making acquaintances, developing relationships.

For a writer, a wider circle of friends and acquaintances means a greater opportunity to sell books.

Here’s why:

Not everyone who knows you is going to buy your book. A sad truth, but realistic. Let’s say that 10% of the people that know you will go out and buy your book. If 10 people know you, that’s 1 book sale.

Now let’s say that 1000 people know you. That 10% is going to give you 100 book sales.

Increasing the number of people you know, and who know you, via social media can give you two main benefits:

1. It enlarges the pool of people that know you and know about your new book release (because you will have told them via blog, email newsletter, or social media announcements).

2. It increases the possibility that some of those people will like what you write (because you’re hanging out with people who read your genre) and buy your book or like you well enough to buy your book just to support you. So instead of 10% of your circle buying your book, maybe 25% buy it.

A book-buying example

Let’s imagine:
You’re going to buy a book and you have two good prospects to choose from. Both sound intriguing and you can’t wait to read one.

Book A is written by a well-known author that you don’t know personally.

Book B is written by an author that you follow on Twitter and Facebook and have talked to through tweets and wall comments. You’ve followed the book’s progress as the author wrote it and talked about it on Twitter and Facebook. You’ve witnessed the author’s struggles and celebrated her triumphs as she worked on the book.

Which book are you going to buy?

In my case, if I’m equally interested in both books, I’m going to buy the book from Author B first because I feel like I have a relationship with Author B and I want to support her efforts as a writer.

Social media gives someone the opportunity to get to know you as a person. Who you are, what you’re like, and what you’re passionate about. And we’re more likely to support people that we know and like.

Your Turn

What social media sites have you used and what was your experience with them?

As we’ve discussed over the last few posts, you need your own website when you get published. You could get by without one before the Information Age, but not now.

Now you need a place where readers can find definitive information about your books and about you. That place is your website. Your own acre of prime Internet real estate.

But you don’t want to wait until you have a book contract in hand before you start your website. No, you need to set it up and get it working for you now, even before you’re published.

What will your website do for you?

• It will provide the most current information about you for agents and editors considering your work. (Yes, they do Google you!)
• It will show that you’re a professional writer who understands how important the Internet is to our digital world today.
• It will start building your fanbase through stories on your site and your blog where you share your words with readers.
• It will serve as the “homebase” for all of your promotional efforts, giving readers one place where they can always connect with you.

How do I get a website?

If you don’t have your own website set up yet, and you’re not sure where to start, I can help. I’m launching a new service for writers to help you get your website setup.

For $39, I’ll setup your website for you and get you started with information on what to do next. There are a few caveats, so check those out.

I have time to do 11 10 setups right now, so that’s how long the offer will be open.

If you don’t have your own site yet, check out what I can do for you and get your site set up today. (Okay, actually within a few days, ’cause I’m fast, but not THAT fast.)

If you’ve decided that putting a blog on your writer website is right for you, congratulations. A blog can be a terrific traffic draw, bringing people to your site.

So what do you blog about? Try some of these suggestions.

Project Journal

This is probably the easiest topic to blog about for a writer. Just write a summary of your progress on your current novel. Talk about your word count goals and whether you met them. Describe how the plotting process is going, or about what character development you’re doing. Share how many pages you edited or what story you just submitted.

Using your blog as a project journal is a good way to track your progress and keep a record of what you’ve worked on. And it’s proof you’re actually writing!

Writing Journal

This differs from a project journal in that you’re writing about writing, not about a specific work in progress. You can share lessons you’ve learned about writing, thoughts on industry news, tips about craft topics (like plotting or point of view) that you’ve discovered, or the emotional ups and downs of being a writer. Essentially, write about your own personal insights into writing as a career or a hobby.

Craft Instruction

These kinds of posts seek to educate your blog readers about writing. Post about tips and tricks that you’ve tried or thought about trying. You can post links to writing resources. Create Top Ten lists for character creation techniques or the best sources for coming up with novel titles. Share editing techniques that you’ve read about.

Book Events

If you’re a published author, post about any events you’ll be attending, like book signings or writer’s conferences. Don’t forget to include any online events, like blog tours.

You can expand your posting to include events for authors in your area or virtual events for authors in your genre.

Photo Journal

While you don’t always think about pictures on a writer’s blog, creating picture posts can be a fun alternative to posts of just text. You could post just pictures, or include a paragraph or two of description or context for the photo, if you wanted.

Post a pic of your writing workspace each day or pictures of inspirational pictures of landscape, animals or people in your life.

For fun, print out the pages you write each day and stack them up. Take a picture each day of the increasing stack and post it. Good motivation to keep going when you hit the middle muddle in your story.

Book Reviews

Book review posts could be reviews on writing books or on fiction books in and out of your genre. If you’re posting reviews on books in your genre, be aware of potential consequences for any negative reviews. I’m not saying you can’t post negative reviews, but you should be sensitive to how such a review may be received by the author. None of like to receive negative reviews of our work. And you may need a glowing blurb from that author in the future. Just something to consider.

Your Turn

What kind of posts do you put on your blog? What posts do you enjoy reading on a writer’s blog?

A blog is essentially a web log or journal. Blogs started as online journals and have evolved into useful business tools, in addition to being a way to share your thoughts with the world.

For a writer, a blog can be a great way to keep in touch with readers, and share details of your writing process or upcoming releases and events that you’ll be attending. A regularly updated blog makes a site look cared for and active.

How Often Would I Have to Blog?

A blog requires regular updates to stay fresh and some folks don’t feel like making the commitment. to frequent posting. Keep in mind though, regular doesn’t have to mean daily. You could maintain a weekly or monthly schedule, if you prefer.

The key is to keep to your posting schedule, whatever it may be. People will get used to your schedule and anticipate your next post if you’re consistent.

And if you’re only updating monthly, maybe put a note on your site letting folks know that’s how often you blog. That keeps people from thinking your site is dead because your last post was a month ago.

Should You Start a Blog?

The answer to this question comes down to how often are you willing to update your blog?

If you don’t have time to maintain even a monthly posting schedule, I’d suggest you don’t put a blog on your website.

Instead, start a mailing list and email out updates and book release information to your readers. It serves the same purpose as a blog – to provide information to your readers, but there isn’t the same expectation of regular updates as with a blog.

If you do have time to post regularly, then yes, start a blog. Visitors to your site will appreciate seeing updates from you on your writing and your books.

Your Turn

Do you have a blog on your website? What’s your posting frequency?

It’s pretty much accepted that a writer (or any other small business) needs a website these days. The real question for many writers is “how much will a website cost me?” After all, most writers aren’t made of money.

The good news is that it is pretty inexpensive and easy these days to put up a website. If you want to go the shared hosting route and just have a blog, the cost can be free. Go to one of the shared sites like WordPress.com, Blogger or LiveJournal and you can be blogging immediately.

If you want your own website with full control over it, you want to go the self-hosting route.

To set up your own site, here’s what you’ll need:

Domain Name

This is the “address” of your website. janedoe.com, for example. To register a domain name (aka buying a domain) costs between $9 and$15 per year, depending on where you get it and if they’re offering any deals for buying additional services from them.

When registering a domain name, you can get it pretty much anywhere. There are many companies that will handle the domain registration for you – GoDaddy, Domain.com, Register.com, etc.

Many will offer additional services in addition to the domain name – like business registration and private registration. You don’t really need any additional services though private registration is nice. For a small fee, the domain registration company will list their own information as the contact for your domain, keeping your name and address hidden. A nice feature for when you become wildly famous and need some anonymity from zealous fans.

Hosting

After you’ve purchased your domain name, you’ll need somewhere to host your website. This means signing up with a hosting company – GoDaddy, HostGator, BlueHost, DreamHost, etc. Hosting runs from $5 – 15/month. You can sometimes get a lower price by paying for a year or two in advance.

Also, before you buy your domain name, check to see if the hosting company you’re going to go with offers free or reduced cost domain registration service. You could save a few bucks that way.

What Else?

That’s it. You need a domain and hosting to set up a website, so for about $10 to get your domain and up to $15/month to run it, you can have your own home on the Internet.

Sure there’s some set up involved in getting your site running, but the overall cost isn’t that expensive.

Your Turn

If you don’t have your own site yet, what are you waiting for?