Sales Continue

It is nearly a year since I reported that building a platform for a new book via blogging before publishing worked for me. I can now add that this approach results in continuing sales, at least it has for my book. I continue to get good traffic to my blog and sales continue steadily.
I am now trying something else. I am posting my first book, which I didn't build a platform for before publishing, on my blog.  I'll report later if this results in a pickup of sales for the first book.

Second Book is Selling

My second book is selling. This supports building a customer base while the book is being written via a blog and web site. Some of the buyers have favorably commented on this approach. It is also interesting that almost all of the buyers make their purchase at Amazon.com even though I market the e book store of Create Space equally with Amazon.

Second book published

My second non fiction book was submitted for publishing at the end of November. I used Create Space,the Amazon subsidiary.The Create Space web site made it so easy it wasn't necessary to talk to a person. The web site walks users step by step through the process. I downloaded their Word template and pasted my material into it. I also used one of their cover templates. This site is also more generous with royalties than the company I used previously. Best of all it's free unless you want to sell on channels other than Create Space's e-store and Amazon.

Second Book

I am writing a second non-fiction book. This time I started a web site and a blog a year before I expected to publish. I am hoping the blog and web site traffic will build a market for the book when it's published. So far the blog traffic has build up over time as I had hoped. I am doing more of the book design myself this time. I plan to publish with Create Space and am using their free templates. This is working fine so far.

Library Workshop and Book Signing

I finally got around to doing a book signing at our local library. Since there are not a lot of traditional working people in our area I could not expect a large audience. The librarian came up with a great idea. I held a workshop for managers; especially managers of volunteer organizations. The library publicized it it and the attendance was pretty good. I enjoy doing work shops so it worked well for me. Sold only a couple of books but that is what I expected. I am thinking about offering to do a similar workshop in a neighboring community.

First E-Book Sale

Authorhouse.com, the publisher of my book, offers an E-book version as well as hard cover and soft cover version. The E-book sells for less than half of the cost of a soft cover so I expected people would buy more E books than conventional books.  I was wrong. For months no one bought an E book. I finally had the first E book sale recently. I guess people would rather have books in hand than read them on a computer screen. I would prefer to have people buy the E book as I get twice the royalty compared to conventional book sales.

First Royalty Check

An exciting day. I received my first royalty check. It was for the first quarter of book sales and, while not a significant amount of money, it was exciting to get a check. I have downscoped my book marketing as I found I just don't like doing it. I missed my art. At my age I don't have to spend time doing things I don't like at the expense of not doing things I like. So I have gone back to drawing and painting and am just maintaining an active blog related to my book. Also decided that a second book that I am thinking about will be done as a series of blogs or ezine articles. That way I do the writing, which I enjoy, and I avoid the hassle and expense of publication plus I don't have to think about marketing.

Finally, Something Goes Right

I had a great experience on December 9. I had a radio interview about my book with a web radio. It was with Street Vibes Mix Radio, which has a "Writer's Block" interview with authors every Wed night from 8 to 9 pm. The interviews were helpful, asked good questions and followed up with lots of friendly comments. There is also a Street Vibes Ning site. Go to  http://streetvibes.ning.com/ There you will find info and links to the web radio. Good group of talented young people. I enjoyed talking to them.

Homework in selecting publishers

It sounds obvious that an author should do a thorough job of investigating publishers before making a selection. I set out to do just that but "things happen" and I made some mistakes. One was not really thinking through the pricing of my book. My publisher gave me some minimum prices and I was able to increase them as I wanted. I sure didn't think this through. I wanted as many people to buy my book as possible so I picked a very low price with a minimum royalty. I forgot to consider the costs of shipping in my decision. It's not really a problem as I didn't expect to make money on my book although it would be nice to recoup my costs. It turns out that with the low costs I selected it's not possible for me to directly sell books at as low a price as the publisher. The reason I want to directly sell some books is to be able to sign and inscribe books for long time friends as associates. I can do this but I either have to sell the books at a loss or charge my friends more than they would pay the publisher. The reason is there are two shipping costs involved when I sell books direct. I have to pay shipping from the printer to me and then from me to the buyer. The shipping cost from the printer to me is more than the discount I get as the author. I should have increased the royalty enough that I could sell books at an equal or lower price than the publisher. Oh well, another lesson learned.

Book Blog Updates

I finally learned a better approach to adding blog posts and getting readers to the site. It should have been obvious but then maybe nothing is obvious to people that are new to a subject. I now add my post but also put a related post in LinkedIn  and Facebook groups, and sometimes Twitter, with a short intro and link to the post. The key that I had missed was the short intro that introduces the topic in a way that draws attention. Sometimes I use a question that I then give my answer in the main post. Other times I seek the opinion of others on the topic I am addressing. I haven't actually compared statistics but I think this is helping bring readers to my book blog and hopefully some will then go to my web site and buy the book.

Another Lesson Learned; Maybe

I expected to see a bump in visits to my book blog after my book and I were featured in an area newspaper. It didn't happen. Then today I see a big bump in visits. Now I can't remember what I did yesterday that could account for it. I need to keep a log of some type to learn what works well and what doesn't work.

Another Paper Article

A second area newspaper printed an article about me and my book. This one said they would print something if I sent them a press release. I did, along with pictures, and they printed exactly what I sent, including a typo neither Microsoft or  I didn't catch. Now I have enough confidence to send a release to other area papers. I haven't checked yet to see if the article increased traffic to my web site or resulting in any spike in sales. Let you know later.

Newpaper Articles

The article resulting from my interview with the reporter for our local weekly paper came out today. I am impressed and flattered. Hope all articles are this nice.
I wrote a press release for a regional daily and an article is promised in Saturday's paper. If it turns out as well as the article in our local paper I'll be confident enough to send press releases to more regional and national papers.
When I wrote the press release I remembered everything except the most important item; where someone can buy my book. I had to send a corrected press release. Good thing I am starting locally where I can get away with my dumb errors.

More Dumb Mistakes

The lessons learned continue. All the advisers of on line book marketing say to use Twitter to direct people to your Blog and your Blog to your Web Site where they can buy your book. Good plan. Four weeks after I had these plans in place, or so I assumed, I was driving home when it dawned on me that I may have made a stupid error. Right. When I checked I found that I had included all kinds of links in my web site but no links in the blog back to the web site. Thus people that followed my Twitter posts to my blog had no way to find my web site without a search, which isn't likely to be very successful given the newness of the site. It's fixed now. Just in time as my book is finally available for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. However, at considerably more cost than on the publisher AuthorHouse's site.

Interview With Reporter

I had my first interview with a newspaper reporter about my book. The reporter is the sister of my next door neighbor and she goes to our church so we are friends. This is good as perhaps she'll have pity on my being a novice. It wasn't my first interview but the last one was some time ago and really left a bad taste for reporters as that one had an axe to grind and really didn't care about my views. It's not fun to have your views distorted for someone else's benefit. I have higher hopes for this interview. I also see that another area paper had a nice article today on a local author and her new book. She is using the same epublisher I used. Maybe I'll contact her and share experiences. I need to get in gear and contact the other area paper to see if they will do an article on me like they did for the other new author.

There Must Be A Better Way

All the book marketing advisers recommend joining many groups; one said as many as 50, and checking them each day. I am finding this a very time consuming task and since it is impolite to turn every comment you make into a blatant pitch for your book it is not a very rewarding task. I don't mind the unrewarding part but the time it takes is getting to me. I need to find a way to keep this type of work to about an hour a day. There are other things to do in life. I know I need to work on ways to better link my social network sites and maybe follow more blogs. I think it's easier to follow blogs as they can be syndicated into Google Reader or Yahoo where it is easy to check on a large number quickly. If I find any way to streamline this process I'll share it.

Start Book Marketing Early

I recently read a piece advising authors to begin their book marketing campaign a year ahead of their expected publication date. At the time I thought this was way too early. But upon more reflection, and working on marketing of my book, it's beginning to look like good advice. I expected to work an hour or two a day on marketing. It's turning out that it takes more because I didn't do enough preparatory work ahead of the publication date. Too late now for me but if you are planning on marketing via the web I also recommend that you start months ahead of publication rather than weeks like I did. I also came across a site with good advice on web marketing that I'll share here. It's by Maureen Hume and the site is http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2009/10/easy-affordable-marketing-by-maureen.html.

An Important Web Site

I learned of a great site for new authors from someone on twitter. If you are a new author and expect to be faced with marketing your book as I am check out. http://www.authors.com/profiles/blogs/the-usage-of-social-media   There are additional important posts for new book marketers, e.g. check out the posts on Sept. 3, 13 and 25.

A Twitter "Aha"

I think I am figuring out twitter. I started a twitter account because the book marketing advice said to. I flailed around for a week or so before I got a hint that to acquire followers you need to follow people. Then I had to learn how to find people that I wanted to follow. More advice was to download tweetdeck; which I did  and that helped some but not to easily find the people I am interested in. Finally, I asked another twitterer and got the answer on how to use tweetdeck. It worked and I am not building followers. More importantly I think I am beginning to see how to use twitter and why it's valuable.There are many things that we do that have  to do with either sharing information (our blogs and web sites) or seeking information (e.g. via search engines). However, there are some types of information that need to be shared with people directly and some types of information that other people can supply faster and easier than by other means. This is where twitter shines. It connects you easily and quickly with other people that you want to share information with or seek information from. It takes some investment of time to build the right connections. I see this as a winnowing process. Follow many people then some of them will follow you. Many will drop you and you will drop many but over time you can build the right connections with people that you want to share with and that you want information from. Now, I am going to try this approach for a week or so and see if it works as well as I think it might.

Library Book Signings

I visited my local library today and talked to a friend that arranges the special events. I wanted to know the etiquette of book signings. I found that an author can either be invited or ask for the opportunitiy. It is alright, at least at my local library, to bring books to sell. They prefer that you give them a copy rather than having to buy one- not surprising. Finally, they don't pay unless you happen to be a best selling author that demands to be paid.
As soon as I get a book in hand I will revisit my library and arrange a signing.