Just as there are two kinds of books, there are two kinds of authors.  There are authors who write Fiction and there are authors who write Non-Fiction.

This post is directed to the non-fiction author.

The best reason BY FAR to write a non-fiction book is to promote your business.

This is especially true if your business happens to be selling nothing but air.  Whether you’re a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist or a consultant, when your business revolves around selling a service, then your strategic internet marketing strategy should include writing a book to demonstrate your expertise.

That’s what Andrea Hess has done.  Andrea is the founder of the Soul Realignment professional intuitive training program where she assists clients and their businesses worldwide in creating a new level of financial abundance.  She calls what she does being an Intuitive Consultant.

If you’re an entrepreneur, struggling to make more money with less effort - Andrea is available to act as your secret weapon.

Andrea  understands that she’s selling nothing but air.   So, to market her practice, she’s set up a Blog Intuition in Business AND she’s written the book “Unlock Your Intuition: How to Accurately and Reliably Access Your Most Valuable Resource.”

When you visit her blog, you can easily see she’s written a book.  If you think she might have the answer for your business, you can do one of three things:

• You can subscribe to her blog to get more “free” information.
• You can buy her book.
• You can schedule a free 15 minute consultation.

Chances are, you’ll first subscribe to her blog to get more information for free.  If, after a few posts, you like what you see there, the next step is to invest $11.53 to purchase her book.  You’ll read her book and see if she REALLY does have the answer you’re seeking.

Finally, after you’ve taken those steps, then you’ll be ready to click on the “buy” buttons she has on her blog pages.

Writing a non-fiction book can be the BEST advertising you can do for your service based business.  Combine writing your book with a blog and you have a powerful marketing strategy to promote your business.

Filed under: Author Web Sites, Easy Author Book Marketing, Marketing Basics for Authors, Selling Books, how to write a book, how write a book, write a book, write a non-fiction book | Post a comment

If you were old enough to remember the 70’s, you might remember an ad campaign from Avis.  It seems Avis was #2 in the car rental game and in order to take on #1, they decided to play up their “disadvantaged” status.

Avis’ campaign was the now familiar “We’re #2 - We Try Harder”.  The campaign lives on in various forms to this day and has proven to be a good positioning statement for the company.

When it comes to selling books online,  there is a definite #1 and #2 as well.  A while back, Angela over at Booklocker.com set off an alarm about the bully tactics being employed by Amazon, the clear holder of the #1 position when it comes to online book sales.

When you’re fishing for book buyers,  it makes sense to drop your “hook” into waters teaming with fish - in this case, customers.  Since Amazon is the biggest, it makes sense that authors would choose Amazon to promote their work.

However, many authors have stopped using Amazon because they haven’t backed down from their bully tactics.   I have included myself in those numbers for the past few months.  I began using Barnes and Noble links when I wrote blog posts promoting my book Beyond the Niche: Essential Tools You Need to Create Marketing Messages that Deliver Results.

Alarmingly, sales of my book have plummetted thanks to the change.  I was bewildered and hoped it was merely a glitch in the affiliate tracking program.  Then I logged into my author account and saw the horrible truth.

The drop in sales is alarming but today, I discovered the reason behind the drop.  I saw up close and personal what my potential book buyers have been experiencing when I tried to order a book from Barnes and Noble.com.

Let me begin this sad tale with a disclaimer.  Barnes and Noble HAS my email address on file.  I know this for certain because they are sending me special offers at that email address.

The other day, my oldest daughter expressed a desire to pre-order the third book in the Christopher Paolini series, Brisingr.  Well, in my email today  was a coupon from Barnes and Noble.com which would allow me to save an ADDITIONAL 15% of my membership price of the book.

WHOOPEE!!  Not only do I save 5% for pre-ordering AND the 15% from the coupon, I also save the hassle of fighting mall traffic as the snowbirds descend upon us again!

So, I click on the link and try to order the book.  Seems that even though Barnes and Noble HAS my email address, they don’t recognize it when I try to log into the system.  The screen displays a number to call if I’m having problems.  I am having problems, so I pick up the phone to call.

I faithfully punch in the proper number for my choice, but after punching several numbers and getting taken back to the beginning,  I never achieve the option of either  “I can’t log into my account online” or “let me talk to a human being about this”.

My stomach turns.  I now understand the drop in book sales as a result of changing my promotional methods.  I’ve been sending my unsuspecting potential book buyers to Barnes and Noble.com because of the bullying tactics of Amazon.  Obviously, Amazon is engaging in such tactics because they KNOW that their #2 isn’t trying harder at all.  It appears Barnes & Noble.com isn’t trying AT ALL!

The “Fast and Free” delivery they promise doesn’t do much good if I can’t get logged in to purchase product.

The graph below is from Compete.com comparing Amazon’s traffic to Barnes and Noble.com

So now I have a quandry - do I “stay true” to the cause of not patronizing the bookselling giant Amazon?  Do I contintue to “cut off my nose to spite my face” and continue to use the Barnes and Noble link to promote my book?  (According to my affiliate account, people are clicking on the links, they’re just not buying - now I know why!)

What would you do?  What have you done?  Which side are you on?

Filed under: Easy Author Book Marketing, amazon, Barnes and Noble, online book selling, selling books online | Post a comment

Book marketing is really no different than any other kind of marketing.  As an author, you face the same trials and tribulations every other small business person faces.  In a word, marketing your book is simply a numbers game.

Many authors launch a website or blog hoping to magically draw in hundreds if not tens of thousands of potential book buyers. It’s a good plan - after all, a successful website can attract thousands of tightly targeted visitors each month and marketing is a numbers game.  The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more books you’re likely to sell -it’s just that simple.

If you’ve already got a book blog or website, then you’ve probably discovered that simply launching a website (or a blog) is no a guarantee that you’ll be creating a sure fire “visitor attraction tool”.

Creating an effective book marketing blog isn’t hard - if you have the right tools.

Unfortunately, for many authors, building a book marketing blog is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle where you have to go on a scavenger hunt to find all the pieces.

To make matters worse, it’s hard to know when you’ve gathered all the pieces OR if every piece you’ve gathered really fits in your particular puzzle.

Over the past 2 years, I’ve launched hundreds of blogs for clients.  Some of those blogs have been for authors who self-published their own books.  At first, I thought that authors would be the BEST bloggers of all because, after all - authors know how to write!

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

While authors are, as a general rule, GREAT at writing - they aren’t well versed in the skills of successful blogging.  So while my blogging authors were creating GREAT blog content, they weren’t getting serious traffic to their blogs.  That broke my heart.

After all, there are lousy blogs out there that are getting nice visitor traffic!  A blog with great content could do even better - if the blogger only knew the secrets to blogging success.

That’s why I created the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.  The 8 Week Power Blog Launch is comprised of 56 individual lessons.  It’s a simple step by step method to increase traffic to your blog.

More traffic = more eyeballs.  Since book sales are a numbers game, the more traffic to your blog, the more books you stand a chance of selling.

If you’re an author who wants to sell books, you need a blog.   However, a blog you don’t know how to use won’t bring the needed traffic to sell books.  That’s why you need the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.

Enter the code “author” when you purchase the course and you’ll save $20 off the retail price!

Filed under: Blog Basics, Easy Author Book Marketing, Marketing Basics for Authors, blogs for authors, book marketing, numbers game | 1 Comment