How to sell the first 100 copies of your book
Writing a book is difficult. It can take hours, days, weeks, months, and years of hard work. But writing a book is easy as pie compared to actually selling your book. Besides, you have Novelize to help you write your book. But how do you sell your first 100 copies after you’re ready to publish?
Build a following early on
There are lots of different strategies for selling books. Many successful authors claim that they were able to sell lots of books by building a following early on. This means you need to publish early and often. Whether you publish your book in excerpts on your blog or another platform doesn’t really matter. If the story is good, people are going to want to know what happens next. That means they’ll come back to read your next chapter.
Of course, you may have already finished your book, so it’s a little late to follow this advice. Don’t worry. There’s still hope for you.
Write well
Good writing is subjective. One person may love your style, and the next person may hate it. But if you want to sell books, your writing should be good. That goes without saying. To sell copies of your book, you must first craft an unforgettable story.
How will you know whether your writing is good enough?
The easiest (but not cheapest) thing you can do is hire an editor to proofread your work. You could also try to find some beta readers. Beta readers can help you determine whether your book is fun to read, but they probably won’t pick up on all of your spelling and grammar errors. Of course, you should also spend some time on editing the book yourself before you send it to a beta reader or editor.
Give books away
Giving books away is advice that seems to be counterproductive, but it can actually be beneficial for you. Who should get free copies of your book?
Friends and family members: Ask them to read the book and tell others about it. They definitely deserve to get a free copy since they had to put up with you writing the book. They’ll also be extremely proud of you and happy to display your work.
Beta readers and reviewers: Ask them to read, share it with others, and most importantly, review it online for you. The sooner you work on finding beta readers and potential reviewers, the better. Your beta readers can be your biggest supporters. They’ll help you find your flaws in the story to make it better, and they’ll give you reviews once you publish. They shouldn’t have to buy a copy of the book on top of that.
Book bloggers: They’ll review your book and reach a wider audience than you can. Just make sure you send it to the right people. Someone who reviews Fantasy books won’t be interested in your romance novel, so don’t bother them.
Giving books away can get expensive quickly. The good news is that most people are happy with an eBook copy that costs you exactly nothing. However, you should make sure you give them the format they want since turning your document into a Kindle or ePub version isn’t that tricky. And while creating a PDF is even easier, this format looks terrible on small screens.
Get those reviews
Customers just don’t like buying books that haven’t received any reviews. Having a lot of reviews won’t guarantee that you sell a lot of books, but it’ll surely increase your odds. The algorithm for book rankings is complicated. It includes number of books sold as well as number of positive book reviews. You obviously need both, but it helps to start somewhere.
Give your first book away for free
There are lots of fiction writers. But there are not as many fiction writers who have published a lot of books. One of the best ways to get faithful readers is to keep writing books. And in order to attract a new reader, you may want to consider giving one of your books away for free. For example, it might be a good idea to give away the first book of your trilogy. If it’s well written, your customers will buy the second and third book. But this strategy could also work well with other stand-alone books.
The great thing about giving books away for free is that your free readers still help you increase your rankings in the online bookstore. You may also get a review or two out of it. But most importantly, it’s a risk-free way for readers to see that your books are worth their time.
Create a website
Okay, you’re not a web developer, you’re an author. But you still need a website. A website gives readers more information about you, your books, and why they should read them. It should be the first place people go. And then you have a choice about what you do with those visitors.
Some people recommend creating an email list and asking people to sign up. Others maintain that email lists are a thing of the past. And if you think about it, how many emails do you ever pay attention to? But if you’re looking for something, you’ll read information you find on a website.
So a website is a must. And it should look good, too.
Write a lot
An empty website is not useful to anyone. So you’re going to have to write a lot of content for it. You should keep it updated and let your followers know what you’re doing. And no, that doesn’t mean you need to talk about what you had for breakfast. But you can talk about your story. Where is your heroine going next? If you write nonfiction, then your website should include lots of information on your topic because that’s how people will find you.
Spend time on your book’s cover
You should never judge a book by its cover, but inevitably that’s what all readers do. Therefore, your cover needs to be amazing and get their attention. It’s a good idea to invest some time and money into your cover art. You can hire a freelancer to do the work for you if design work is not your strength (and it’s probably not considering you’re a writer). But you should definitely spend the money on high-quality images. Make sure the cover looks good on your book and on the Internet, too.
Write a killer book description
If your cover is the bait for readers, then your book description is the hook. Not coincidentally, it also includes a hook. Your book description or blurb has to sell the book. Once a potential reader has made it onto your book sales’ page, they will read or skim your blurb. It must catch their interest and hold it all the way through. Otherwise, they’ll pass on your book and keep searching.
Measure your success
This article has some good ideas for marketing your book, but not all of them will work for everyone. That’s why it’s important to measure what works. If listing your book for free decreases your sales and doesn’t boost your rank significantly, then maybe that’s not a good option for you. If your beta readers are excited about buying a paperback book from you, then you don’t need to talk them into accepting a free eBook. If you only want to write one book and have no desire to establish a huge readership, then maybe you don’t want to do anything to market your book.