The average self-published book sells around 250 copies…during its entire lifetime!
The first bit of good news is that it’s not difficult to do better than this. The people selling 250 copies of their book are putting it up on Amazon and then they don’t do a single additional thing to market it. Here are six EASY ways to sell more than the average:
- Post about your book on LinkedIn (and everywhere else you’re active on social media)
- Send out a newsletter about your book
- Buy Amazon ads (easy to set up, easy to run, and you can optimize so that book sales pay for your ad spend)
- Email everyone in your address book about your new book
- Include a link to your book in your email signature
- Include a link on your LinkedIn profile
Bonus: Here are three slightly harder, but not all that difficult ways to get more sales:
- Email 10 podcasts that target topics related to your book, or where your book or you as the author might be a good fit as a guest
- Email 10 event organizers who organize events related to your book topic, and try to get a speaking slot
- Organize your own in-person event (businesses are often happy to host these at no cost to you)
If you do just a few of these things, you’ll sell more than 250 copies of your book.
But wait, there’s more!
Sometimes all you need to sell is 250 copies to completely change your life. If one of those 250 sales is to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and she asks you to come do a presentation for which they’ll pay you $10K and then it leads to a $250K/year consulting gig (this has happened to people I know) then who cares if you only sell a handful of books?
Maybe you don’t sell any books at all. Maybe you mail them out to prospective clients, and they read it and love it and hire you or your company.
Are you an author? What has worked for you when it comes to marketing your book? What results have you received from publishing your book?
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