Boosting Sales For a Book

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Writers sometimes ask me, usually anxiously,  what they can do to help boost sales. Inevitably, they have only one book published.

I know when I was just traditionally-published I had that underlying feeling that I should be doing more for my book.  That I was leaning too much on Penguin and they weren’t, actually, even doing all that much for sales.

As a self-published author, I think this feeling is magnified. After all, we’re 100% responsible for sales.

And I hate that anyone giving advice about sales sounds like a broken record, but…I think the  standard advice is sound.

Things we can do to try and improve sales:

Write and publish more and better books.
If sales is the primary focus of our writing (and that’s nothing to be ashamed of), then are we writing in a commercially successful genre? Should we consider a change?
Can our first book be extended into a series? Series are generally more popular with readers than standalones…and they can be easier to quickly write (setting and characters are already in place).
If our standalone seems solid and has enjoyed a positive response from readers, but just doesn’t seem to be able to get traction, we should consider a free promo first. We do this by listing our book as free on a site like Smashwords or Draft2Digital and then allowing Amazon to price match it. This only costs us lost sales and can lead to more visibility and reviews.
If, again, the book seems solid and reviews are good, we could look at doing a cover change. Since this costs money, this, to me, is something of a last resort.
Evaluate our web presence for our title. But be careful here because this can be a huge time suck. We should at least have a basic website. Nearly as important is our book’s listing on Amazon.  Have we got blurbs or reviews that we can list on the Editorial Reviews section of our book page? Is our book’s description well-written? Is our Author Central page completed?  What keywords have we listed for our title?  Is the book listed in the correct category?

These are the best suggestions I’ve got.  But the most important, to me, is writing more books and evaluating where we should go from here.  If we spend too much time and energy on the one book then we’re never going to get book two out there.

Any other suggestions for help with slow sales?

Tips for boosting sales for our book:
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Image: MorgueFile: veggiegretz

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