We build author websites all the time, and every one of them (at least for an author who already has a book published) includes one or more links to “buy the book.” After all, that’s one of the primary goals of an author website, right?

However, selling books online isn’t as cut and dry as you may thing. There are several very, very different ways of selling books, and many authors getting started haven’t really thought it out yet. So, I thought I would write this post to help clear things up a bit.

Here are the three main methods for actually selling books through the website … from the one that requires the least amount of work to the one that requires the most.

1. Link to Amazon, B&N, etc… About 90% of the clients we build sites for go with this option. It’s the simplest, cleanest and easiest way to do it. Simply include links to buy the book from your publisher and/or the major online vendors (Amazon, B&N, Indie Publishing and Powell’s). Those third-party sites will then take care of payment processing and distribution. It’s no fuss, no muss. However, there are a few downsides to this method, including the fact that your cut of the revenue is pretty small. Plus, there’s no official reporting on how many sales you get through the site, so it’s hard to measure your success.

2. Sell through PayPal. How did we ever live before PayPal? It’s an incredibly simple, easy, and affordable way to collect payment. You can set up a PayPal account for free, and then we can build a “Buy” button and embed it on your website (see an example here: http://www.dinkidiaussiebooks.com/store/). PayPal takes a small percentage of your sales price, but that’s nominal compared to selling through Amazon, etc… Be aware, however: if you’re selling the book yourself, you are completely responsible for distribution. Be prepared to be boxing and sending out books yourself.

3. Set up a full-blown shopping cart. I can count on one hand the number of authors who opted to go for this. The reasons for that are twofold: 1) it’s a lot of work to get it set up; 2) it’s a lot of money to get it set up. That said, having your own online shopping cart built into the website is quite a snazzy option. Doing so gives you lots of perks that you don’t get through PayPal, including the ability to charge tax by state/county, the freedom to sell multiple items at a time (a true shopping cart), and the consistency of your site design on all of the shopping cart pages (see http://thehealinghour.com/store/). Just like with PayPal, however, the distribution is still all on you … or whomever you hire to take care of it.

One of the first conversations I often have with authors is about these three very different selling options. Every author wants to make sure it’s easy to buy their book, but depending on how much time, effort and money they want to put into the selling process, only one of these options is usually the right fit for an individual author.

Ready to talk with us about getting started on your author website? Contact us today for a free consultation!

Someone started a conversation about this on LinkedIn a few days ago. The question was very simple:

How does one really get people to go to their web site so they can follow their blogs?

I thought it would be valuable to compile some of the responses. I will continue to add to this as I see more valuable recommendations posted…

• Write stuff people want to know. They will tend to find it.
  - Emily Veinglory
• Contact other bloggers and trade links. Participate in relevant forums and put the link in your sig line. (Not just forums for writers, but for readers, too.)
  -William Penrose
• It takes time and lots of it. But content and guest blogs work.
  -Derksen Barb
• If you build it, and search engines can find it, in my experience they do come. You can then add value with all these SEO and networking strategies.
  -Emily Veinglory
• When I post a new blog piece, I blurb it out on Facebook and Twitter and I find that if I do it repeatedly, two or three times a day for a few days, my web traffic increases commensurately – often at least 9 or 10 times the norm.
  -Linda Hales

If you have any words of advice, share them in the comments box below. Otherwise, I’ll keep adding other ideas shared on LinkedIn…

UPDATED 2/21

• So far, the only method I have found is to tweet like crazy, and tell people I have a website. I also have several people in my email contact list, and include my website URL with every email I send.
  -R Clint Peters

• One easy thing–you can set your social media profiles to automatically pull in your blog.
  -Shel Horowitz
• The first and most basic step, however, is quality content. We are all completely overwhelmed with information. Everyone is vying for our attention. The best way to stand out is the write something great that will create a strong emotional reaction or resonance with readers. Make them laugh, cry, scream, learn or think of something in a completely new way.
  -J Bennett
• There are some aggregator which promotes your blog/ sites address. You have to be register there your blog or site. Also whenever you write something you can share the link on facebook or other social networking sites, from where the people will come to your blog.
  -Grijesh Kumar
• Share your website on social media, share it with your friends, share your blog with other people who are using the same blog website. Link to other peoples blogs, post comments on other people blogs and websites so that they might take a look at yours in return.
  -Katherine Fish
• Generous unselfish comments on relevant blogs are a great way to build connections. Your name will be a link to your site.
  -Joel D Canfield

I just finished reading a great post by a woman named Sonia Marsh. It was titled A Successful Way to Build Your Author Platform. I’m going to take a few ideas from that article and give them a slightly different angle: how to build an author blog that can get your name and profile out there.

1. Remember what your readers are looking for. Nobody will follow your blog if you’re writing about your trip to the supermarket or what you ate for dinner. People want to get something of value out of your blog. If you’re a nonfiction writer, blog about the subject matter of your books. When possible, take stories in the news and give them your own spin. After all, you’re somewhat of an expert in the topic. If you’re a fiction writer, think about what readers and other writers would find most interesting. Would they enjoy following your characters’ lives after the book? Would they want to hear about what went into writing the book? Where you might have hit writers block? Find your niche and stick with it.

2. Be patient. I can’t tell you how many authors I’ve worked with who start to blog and then stop because they feel like no one is reading their blog. I have two things to say about that: one is that you always need to remember that the number of comments on your blog is not a reflection of how many people are reading it. One comment may be showing up on a particular post, but 100 people might have read it. The other thing I always remind authors is that a blog can take a long time to build a following. Give it 3-6 months before you make a decision about whether or not it’s worth the time.

3. Pose questions … and answer them. A blog is an interactive tool. That’s one of the wonderful things about the internet: you can use your blog to pose questions, encourage comments, etc… Make sure to end each blog post with a question for people to respond to. And then respond to the responses. By interacting with your readers, you’ll build a loyal blog following.

4. Don’t be afraid to give things away for free. You can never get something for nothing. A blog is very much an exchange: you provide your readers with helpful information and they, in return, follow your blog, recommend you to friends, and help get you the exposure you’re looking for. Give away your ideas, your advice and your words of wisdom. Readers will return the favor.

Sonia ends her blog post with the following paragraph:

The more you connect and help others, the more people will subscribe to your blog or website, and you will gradually build an authentic platform with loyal followers. It won’t happen overnight, but once people realize that you care about them, and are willing to share helpful information, all the pieces suddenly fit together. That’s when the magic happens, and you know you’ve accomplished something more than simply being an author who wants to sell her book.

I couldn’t agree more!

If you’re ready to start building your author blog or author website, contact us today for a free consultation!

I came across a great post today (which I found through an author group on LinkedIn) on BookBuzz. It lists the 12 essentials to an author platform. But for the purpose of this blog, I’m going to pull out all of the things related to the online experience, since that’s the focus of what we do.

Here are excerpts from the post that are relevant:

1. E-mail list/Newsletter subscribers. Offer a freebie on your website – the first chapter of your book, an audio interview, or a white paper or report – in exchange for a name and e-mail address…. It’s important to keep your name and topic in front of the people who are most likely to buy your book; a regular e-mail newsletter is an excellent way to do that.

2. Facebook/Twitter followers. You don’t need a completed book to create a Facebook fan page [or a Twitter account]. Post content that gets followers involved and engaged. Invite your fans to bring other fans along, too.

3. A blog plus subscribers and traffic. I’m surprised at the number of bloggers who don’t make it possible for visitors to receive their blog postings by e-mail or RSS feed. They’re missing the opportunity to generate repeat traffic – and to measure their fan base. Google Analytics and other tools and resources help measure traffic volume, too, but a truer measure of your fan base is that list of people who sign up to receive more of your content

4. Syndicated column. Whether you’re self- or service-syndicated, your column helps you create fans all over the country or the world. Similarly, a regular column in a traditional or online media outlet makes a key contribution to your author platform.

Start by building your author website. Everything else branches out from there. If you’re ready to get started, contact us today for a free consultation.

I must start this post with a confession: I come from a web content background. I was working on website content development and content strategy back in the 1990s. A lot has changed since then, but one thing hasn’t: content still is the staple of the internet.

I’ve told my nonfiction authors time and time again that blogging can make or break their website. And it’s true. A blog is one of the best ways to keep a website fresh, informative, and yes, full of fresh content.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, I just read an article in my trusted Internet & Marketing Report which cited a case of a lighting company that discovered the importance of content on their site. Here are a few excerpts from the article, written by Larry Lauck, of AmericanLightingAssoc.com, which sells lighting equipment:

Things are changing rapidly in our industry, and customers were having a hard time keeping up. … So we made a huge leap: We scrapped our website and created a new one. … this time, we put the industry news our customers were thirsty for front and center. … We put links to articles on our main navigation bar so visitors could spot them easily … then we added short weekly webinars on the changes in the industry … Focusing on providing the info our visitors needed has paid off immensely. Traffic to our site has increased significantly, and we’re getting incredible feedback from visitors.

See? Content made all the difference. Not only did it increase traffic to the website, but it also helped build a stronger, more trusting relationship between the company and its customers.

There’s no doubt that creating content takes a lot of work on your part. But that’s the point: it’s by putting in that effort — and offering your followers valuable information for free — that your relationships are built.

Nonfiction authors should take note. If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to create that blog. Write regularly about issues in the news related to the subject matter of your book. If you have some expertise in the field, all the better. Offer news, opinions, analysis, etc…

By using your website as a source of content for your readers, you’re helping to form a relationship beyond just seller/sellee. You’re building a trust, a follower, and (hopefully) a life-long reader of your work.

What can be more valuable than that?

Everyone wants their book mentioned all over the world of social media. After all, the more you’re talked about through blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc… the more exposure you and your book will get. That can only be a good thing.

But how do you keep track of how the word about your book is spreading across all the social media channels? That’s where this new tool comes in…

According to Publishers Weekly, Books-A-Million is teaming up with CoverCake, a a Silicon Valley based technology startup focused on book publishing, to create “a technology platform that can track overall and specific responses to titles and publishers made on multiple social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Goodreads and YouTube.”

Best of all, the technology uses sophisticated algorithms to aggregate vast amounts of data so that it can:

• provide a list of all relevant comments and posts
• categorize all comments as positive, negative or neutral
• deliver an aggregate score of total comments
• break down the level of activities on each social media site
• isolate the individual posters on all the social media networks who are mentioning the book

Jeff Costello, v-p sales at CoverCake, told Publishers Weekly that by using CoverCake, “publishers and marketers can track individual titles and get specific data on how many people are posting about a specific title on Twitter, say, on any other social media site. Users can track the online discussion around genres—biography, fiction, travel, romance and so on—the gender of readers for a specific title or specific publishers and authors. CoverCake scans data and provides numerical assessments as well as color-coded graphs of activity across abroad range of social media channels. Using their account dashboard to navigate the site, users can even retrieve the specific posts, comments and reviews from Amazon and other sites.”

Watch the demo below of how the tool works:

I think this is going to be a really helpful tool for my clients going forward!

A GREAT article was released over the weekend in the Houston Chronicle. In it, they covered a variety of authors and the creative things each of them are doing to promote their books. Here are some highlights … don’t be afraid to steal ideas!

Kayt Sukel
Author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex and Relationships
Release date: January 3, 2012

• We kid you not …Kayt Sukel stimulated herself to orgasm while an fMRI scanner tracked the flow of blood to her brain. Her first-person story about this ordinarily intimate act appeared in New Scientist in May, under the headline “Sex on the Brain.” Talk about a viral book promotion!
• Sukel tweeted questions to her followers, hoping to elicit comments that might provide fodder for the book.
• She held contests on the book’s Facebook page, “This Is Your Brain on Love.”

• When a similar orgasm story surfaced — this time with a video (of someone else) from the same New Jersey lab — Sukel blogged about it from a new angle.
• On Jan. 3, when Dirty Minds was released, Sukel hosted a lively Twitter chat.
• She is currently working on writing another piece for CNN about her research.

Rebecca Skloot
Author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Release date: February, 2010

• Fast fact: Rebecca was actually Kayt’s inspiration!

• Rebecca began reviewing books, using her own book’s title in the tagline of her reviews for publicity.
• While she was working on her book, Rebecca started doing some freelance writing for O, the Oprah Magazine. As she got to know the editors, she took every opportunity to chat up her book and — not surprisingly — O agreed to excerpt the book when it was released in February 2010.
• After the book’s release, she did more than 200 speaking events. Two years later, she’s still on tour today.

Mat Johnson
Author of Pym
Release date: 2010

• Mat built himself quite a twitter following. As a creative writing professor, he built 40,000 followers. As a humorist, he built “a loyal, literary audience made up of magazine and newspaper writers, other fiction writers, even celebrities.” Together, he has a vast audience of fans of his writing and fans of his tweeting … that translates into book sales.

• His humorous tweets, of course, all include some degree of self promotion. And retweeting doesn’t hurt either … many of his posts are retweeted and shared with an even larger audience

Tom Zoellner
Author of A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America.
Release date: 2011

• Given the serious nature of the book, Tom decided against using social media to promote it.

• Instead, the former journalist wrote opinion pieces and reported stories for a number of publications. All of them, of course, included elements from the book.
• Several years before, he had appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his 2009 title, Uranium. And there’s no denying: TV scoops up a broader range of viewers than a Twitter feed or a Facebook page.

Justin Cronin
Author of The Passage
Release date: 2010

• With the full support of his publisher, Ballantine (which promoted The Passage at BookExpo America, by the way), Justin produced video trailers, and explored alternative advertising — including phone kiosk signs in New York and billboards in Los Angeles.

• Cronin landed an interview on TV’s Good Morning America the day the book was released.
• What he didn’t expect was what happened during the interview … Stephen King would call in to praise The Passage. Cronin says of the unexpected surprise: it was nice to “have the hand of the great father” on his shoulder.

We should all be so lucky. But maybe one or two of these ideas can turn you into the next bestselling author.

The short answer? As little as possible.

We know that you want to make money off of your book. But before you can become a bestselling author, you have to create a little buzz for yourself. The best way to start doing that is to allow people to read your book for dirt cheap. If they love it (as you’re probably pretty confident they will), and the word starts spreading about your book, then you can consider raising the price.

Consider these two separate blurbs that I found on PublishersWeekly.com today…

• The top of the Kindle romance bestseller list favors the cheap. The top five titles are all $1.99 or less, with three of the five priced at 99 cents. The titles are, in order, Wife by Wednesday by Catherine Bybee, Golden Lies by Barbara Freethy, Daddy’s Home by A.K. Alexander, Not What She Seems by Victorine E. Lieske, and Eye of the Beholder by Emma Jay.
• The Kindle Daily Deal, which drastically reduces the price on one Kindle book for a 24-hour period, featured on January 24 A Heart of Freedom by Chai Ling, cutting its price from $10.79 to $1.99. The book immediately jumped to the top of the paid Kindle charts, but what’s more interesting is the book’s staying power: as of January 25, the day after the deal with its price back up to $10.79, Ling’s book is still at number four on the chart, showing that the Kindle Daily Deal helps a book for longer than a 24-hour window.

In her blog, Ruth Ann Nordin argues that you should charge what you think your book is worth, which is most cases is more than 99 cents. That’s a valid argument. But then, in the same post, she goes on to say this:

“Now, if you’re cheap like me, you’ll be scouting out freebies and $0.99 deals. This is why I do that with my own books, by the way. I am not willing to spend more than $1.99 on a new author, and if I have to spend that $1.99, then I better really like the plot idea. If I spend any more than that, then I obviously know the author and really like them. When it comes to supporting people I care about, I’ll throw in the extra couple of bucks. But most of my time is spent looking at free ebooks. So that is why I price my books at no more than $0.99. Fair is fair, right?”

Look, if you’re an author who is already well-known and well-respected, then charge as much as you think your book is worth (after all, an ebook costs you nothing to “print”). But if you’re an author just starting out — as most of my clients are — then you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by pricing your ebook really, really low. Sure, you might not make as much money up front. But doing so greatly increases the likelihood that you’ll ultimately become one of those authors who can charge $10-$15 for an ebook and still sell a lot of them. Now that’s a profit!

Everybody wants to spread the word about their book. And getting good reviews is the best way to do that.

But getting your book reviewed isn’t always easy. Or cheap. Here are some ideas on how to improve your chances of getting kick-ass book reviews.

1. Reach out to bloggers. This is one of the post-launch marketing services we offer our authors. As part of this package, we target about 20 bloggers who have a history of reviewing books in your genre(s). We then reach out to them, inform them about your book, and really sell the idea of them reviewing it. Generally, we hear back from about 25% of those contacted and they’re interested in following up. That’s one step closer to getting your book reviewed on their site!

2. Offer free e-copies of your book. I hear from a lot of authors who have sent around hundreds of hard copies of their book, and maybe gotten one or two reviews out of it. That’s a lot of money to spend for something that may or may not pan out. Make sure you have a PDF or ebook available, and send it electronically to all of the reviewers you’re contacting. You could reach out to 100 or 1000. It’s an ebook, and it’s free, so it won’t cost you anything more than time.

3. Pay for a review. If neither of the top two options seem to pan out for you, then consider paying for a review. It won’t guarantee you a good review, but that’s another story. Kirkus is the most well-respected of the organizations that accept payment for a review, although it’s not cheap: $425 for standard service (7-9 weeks) or $575 for express service (3-4 weeks). Still, there’s nothing like a good quote from a Kirkus review to put on your homepage.

4. Go Amazon. There are plenty of Amazon reviewers out there who will be happy to review your book if you give them a free Kindle edition. Do some research to find an Amazon reviewer who commonly writes about books in your genre. Reach out to them and ask that they review your book. A great quote from one of those reviews can be a central piece of your marketing efforts.

5. Consider cross-reviewing. I have heard stories about newly-published authors who team up and review each other’s books. True, neither of them are professional reviewers. But it’s nice to have a quote or two from an author about what a great book you’ve written.

Do you have any other great ideas for getting your book reviewed? Share them with us!

We know that self-publishing is the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry. We also know that the Apple iStore is one of the most common places for purchasing self-published e-books. Well, we shouldn’t be surprised that the two are now meeting … and turning an industry upside-down to boot.

At their most recent presentation, Apple introduced iBooks 2, a new multimedia textbook platform, and iBooks Author, which is being promoted as “a shockingly easy authoring tool to create them.”

And yes, even though the tool seems to focus on textbooks, this incredibly easy system will allow authors to create any type of book and easily transform it into an ebook and put it up for sale on the iBookstore. It’s really that simple.

According to Publishers Weekly, “any author can follow the template or make up a new one and drag-and-drop prepared materials like text and video right into the new book. Once complete, a push of the button places it in the iBookstore in a digital marketplace holding hundreds of millions of credit card numbers.”

And if that’s not enough, here’s another piece of news: both the new iBooks 2 app and iBooks Author app are free. That’s unlike any other self-publishing tool or e-book conversion tool out there.

Wow.

On a side note, I’m curious to see how this change is going to impact other self-publishing big-wigs, like CreateSpace. Nor do we have any information yet on whether these books created for iPads can easily be transformed into Kindle or NOOK versions. All of that is to come, I’m sure. So stay tuned.

No matter what, though, we have to hand it to Apple. They continue to lead the pack in just about everything.