Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Selling A Self Published Book Online

Posted by Anonymous on 9/1/2010 at 2:39 PM ET 125 Points
I have a client who has written a book series based on ancient Native Americans.

He is having a hard time getting book sales. I'm not his marketer, but I give him suggestions on what to do to get more sells. I don't think he is implementing any suggestions though. That may be the problem.

But my main focus is his site and its function in selling.

I was wondering does anyone have experience selling "self published" books or books in general? Are books just hard to sell these days? What are the best practices in selling a book series?

I have his site optimized for archeology, history, and ancient Native American culture, because if figured this audience would be the most interested in the subject matter of the books. The site gets hits based on the relevant keywords, but never any sales.
The site is https://peopleofthestone.com

Is it the fact there really is no call to action on the site? Is it the product? Why is the site not converting sales?

Thank you for any input.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 9/1/2010 at 4:19 PM Accepted
    Selling books is tough. I've written a few, self-published a few, and consulted on several others. Book marketing is a discipline of its own, only loosely related to marketing traditional consumer products.

    I could literally write a book about this, but I won't because: (a) others already have, (b) writing and publishing are notoriously low-margin businesses, and (c) then I'd have to market them. (Only the author can market a book, unless you are already famous, like Steven King or Bill Clinton.)

    Here are the books you need to read:

    1001 Ways To Market Your Book, by John Kremer (https://amzn.to/aIC6Ci)

    The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing, by Tom and Marilyn Ross (https://bit.ly/9QbSEH)

    If what you want is the really short answer that just lists some of the issues you need to deal with, go to www.dialoguepress.com/pubservices.htm and follow the appropriate links there.
  • Posted by marketbase on 9/1/2010 at 4:53 PM Accepted
    It is almost always a tough time selling self-published books. Yes, the site needs a call to action and the Order Books acess to be more prominent and easier to access. Most of my success with selling self-published books was to libraries. But then nature demolished whole regions of libraries (south and out west), commercial real estate went belly up and there went that market. Still, I would recommend good old fashioned post cards sent to librarians or short, visual emails to librarians (Ihaven't done that myself yet).

    Best.
    jag
    MarketBase
  • Posted on 9/1/2010 at 11:39 PM Author
    Thank you everyone for the input. I figured books were a hard sell to begin with.

    The author understands he's not getting rich off the books. I guess I just wanted to confirm books are difficult to sell and see if there was anything the site could be doing better to get any conversion.

    I'm still surprised not more people are buying from the site, because they're there looking for information on the subject of the books! They're already interested in the subject!

    I like the library idea. And I think those books mgoodman suggested would be interesting to read.

    I will make the "Buy books" link more prominant and add a definite call to action to the site.
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