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Finding Your Readers

March 31, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager Selling books is, in the beginning, about building buzz for your book. Later on, as your book builds momentum, you won't have to work so hard to tell everyone about it. In the early stages, though, you need to get that elbow grease (or the scroll-y ball in your mouse) working for you.

Building buzz for you book means building up a network of people who are interested in you, your topic, and finally your book.

This is true for fiction and nonfiction.

It's more obvious with nonfiction because your book is specifically about a topic we can point to: bridges, bottles, sales, education, etc.

With fiction it's about the themes of your book.

Let's say your book is about keeping cockatiels as pets. Where do you begin finding people who might want to buy your book?

The easiest place to begin is online. It's fast, it's inexpensive, it never closes, and it doesn't require assembling people in a physical room at a particular time.

Using online opportunities like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter is the best way to find people who are talking about cockatiels.

You can do this by simple keyword searches: on Google, you can search cockatiels (and specify to only search blogs if you want), on Facebook you can search specifically for groups to join, and on Twitter, you can search at search.twitter.com for the phrase cockatiels.

As you find virtual sites that talk about cockatiels, begin joining in those conversations. As you grow relationships there, you can begin to say things like,

"in my book that I am just finishing, I talk about certain feeds that have shown to cause kidney trouble with them. I'd say, my advice, is to stick to low-fat seed-based diets."

Does it say to read your book? Nope. Is your book out yet? Nope. Did you offer valuable information to people who may in the future want to read your pending book and establish trust with them? You betcha! Did you leave room for more questions like, What kind of feeds can cause kidney trouble? Aha! Yes, you did, you wily commenter!

With all of these networking forays you want to establish certain things.

• you are not ONLY trying to sell them something
• you DO have something you might want to sell them
• you HAVE the information they are interested in
• you ARE TRUSTWORTHY and HELPFUL
• you ARE AN AVAILABLE RESOURCE that has MORE TO SAY

There is nothing more irritating to a blogger, groups on Facebook, or those following you on Twitter than to be deluged with comments that are only aimed at selling something. You'll be blocked, unfriended, and removed from comments with a swift kick as a spammer.

So how do you go about selling them your book? You provide a link to your website or blog that has lots of information available on it about cockatiels. And there just happens to be a link on that website or blog about your book coming out soon. And you can even write stuff on that website or blog where you mention your personal excitement about your upcoming book release.

This accomplishes a few things:

• establishes that you are an information source freely available
• gives readers a chance to experience your writing style
• gives readers a chance to be converted into book buyers without the hard sell
• makes them feel like you are a cohort or friend

In the end you want to establish a report with interested communities that are using the web to discuss the topics you've written about. They will be a key ingredient to spreading the word about what you've said, your writings, and most importantly, your book when it happens to be for sale!

The Best Series: The Rest of the Story

March 26, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

There were a few things that Jim Best wanted to highlight at the end of his presentation.

The first thing was that Amazon keeps adding features to help you sell more of your product on their site. An example is the new Author Stores. So make sure you keep your eyes peeled for new strategies. Along side their new features, he noted that Amazon was bit slow to propagate a few areas and that patience was needed:

• Discounts
• Look Inside
• Pairing
• Exploring Similar Items
• Also Bought/Also Viewed
• Key Phrases
• Amazon Staff Reviews

One of the most interesting things that Best presented, aside from his Top 10 Tips, was his lists of what did and did not work for him as an author trying to push his book in a very busy industry.

  » Continue Reading This Article...

The Best Series Tip No. 10: Keep At It!

March 26, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

The Best Series is based on a presentation by Wheatmark author James D. Best, author of The Shopkeeper, The Shut Mouth Society, and the upcoming release Leadville. Best has offered 10 tips on how to use Amazon to sell your book and we'll look at each tip in depth in a series of blog posts.

"Until you become the next Nelson DeMille, it's a long, hard slog."

Book marketing isn't a turn-key business. You can't just wave your flag and declare, "I wrote a book, read it!"

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The Best Series Tip No. 9: Be a Good Amazon Citizen

March 26, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

The Best Series is based on a presentation by Wheatmark author James D. Best, author of The Shopkeeper, The Shut Mouth Society, and the upcoming release Leadville. Best has offered 10 tips on how to use Amazon to sell your book and we'll look at each tip in depth in a series of blog posts.

• Always polite
• Your writing is being judged
• Don't fake it
• Be a little edgy
• Professional in communications with Amazon

  » Continue Reading This Article...

The Slow Burn

March 25, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

Earlier this month, Wheatmark tallied up all the Great Expectations authors, authors whose books have sold 2,000+ copies, to see who was doing what.

As we scanned the titles, the sales numbers, the publishing dates, and the dates the letters welcoming them into the program were sent out, there was one very surprising and, frankly, exciting trend.

It can take months even years for a book to become a success.

While the meeting went on and my attention strayed, I couldn't help thinking about how this was such a different concept than traditionally published and released books.

With traditionally published books, the book is pushed out for a season, if that long. Since most of us aren't James Patterson, when our books are put on the shelves, they rarely get the long-term shelf life most of the famous authors do.

This means books, particularly ones without huge marketing budgets behind them (don't assume your publisher is going to offer marketing support for very long) get kicked out to make space for the newer titles.

When you publish your book yourself, you have control over its life expectancy. The title will be available for purchase unless you decide to cancel it.

The independent author's best channel for sales is online. Without having to fight over shelf space, you only have to fight for an audience--what we call your author platform.

Building an author platform and audience can take time. With self-publishing, you have that time.

Most of the Wheatmark titles do bang up business the first few weeks the book is out. Friends and family of the author dutifully order the book and authors often buy up a bunch for their own sales, signings, and such.

After the initial extravaganza however there is usually a slowdown. In a bookstore, your slow-selling title would be replaced on the shelves. But because you have control, you can double up your efforts and begin marketing your book to other online audiences, take time to find radio interviews, and have a flexible speaking schedule because you aren't dealing with a make-or-break deadline.

Everyone knows the fable of the tortoise and the hare. Self-publishing your book makes it possible for you to be the tortoise: slowly and steadily building your reader base to help drive demand to your book.

And we all know who won that race.

For more marketing tips and to help plan your marketing strategy, check out our free marketing workbook.

The Best Series Tip No. 8: Drive Demand—to Amazon

March 24, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

The Best Series is based on a presentation by Wheatmark author James D. Best, author of The Shopkeeper, The Shut Mouth Society, and the upcoming release Leadville. Best has offered 10 tips on how to use Amazon to sell your book and we'll look at each tip in depth in a series of blog posts.

Tip No. 8: Drive Demand--To Amazon

• Author websites and external blogs
• Join organizations focused on your genre or specialty
• Give books away to opinion leaders
• Book fairs and signings
• Book cards
• Email campaigns
• Selective advertising
• Google Adwords

One of the great things about Amazon is that you can get your book listed there. You don't need an agent, a publicist, or anyone else trying to schmooze your book's way onto a brick-and-mortar store's shelf space. All you have to do is get it distributed on Amazon and you're in business.

  » Continue Reading This Article...

The Best Series Tip No. 7: Review Amazon Products

March 20, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

Tip No. 7: Review Amazon Products

• Product reviews


• Listmania


• Customers who bought this item also bought

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Rain or Shine, Book Festival a Page Turner

March 19, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager Three very sleepy Wheatmark employees and one Wheatmark employee mother set up the official Wheatmark booth in the early hours at this year's Tucson Festival of Books, March 14 and 15.

It was the first year, so we didn't know exactly what to expect. For a moment, we were jealous of Bookman's sweet Ikea living room setup. But we only had time to be jealous for a moment because, although Tucson is known for its sunshine, it started raining.

Clamoring for the dry protection of our booth, we set out books for display, arranged the chairs and prepared the cookie tray.

Slowly the sun came out, and so did, well, everyone.

What a success! From our own authors who stopped by the booth to visit with us (and did some excellent work talking to prospective authors and sharing their experiences with them) to the hoards of people who apparently will do anything for free stuff, we were a busy booth at a very busy event.

Our booth was next to our friends at Literary Partners Group who lured in the kiddies with a giant stuffed tiger (no match for our free pens, cookies, and water) and an author dressed as a pirate. Several of our authors that work with LPG signed books in their booth, but also mingled with our staff as well. As Wheatmark authors know, working with us, you get a whole team to back you that often becomes a supportive group of friends by the end of the publishing process.

One of the things that means so much to Wheatmark, a Tucson-based company, is to get to be a part of our community. The festival was a great way for us to let everybody know what we're about and to meet all the creative people who have a book inside them.

We hope that this will become an annual event, and with the kind of turnout we experienced all weekend, we don't doubt it will be.

Please take a moment to visit our Flickr stream to see photos from the weekend! And thanks to all of our authors who joined us and to all our new friends!

Can Your Readers Find You? Provide Author Contact Info

March 17, 2009 by Atilla Vekony, Publishing Information Manager When you publish your book you are entering a conversation with your readers. Because you are starting a conversation, your readers--your conversation partners--will want to get in touch with you and provide you with valuable feedback that will move this conversation along.

You should add your author contact info to your book so your readers could get in touch with you!

We as book publishers receive lots of requests from readers to pass messages on to our authors, which we do as a courtesy to you. This is proof that your readers need to be able to contact you, otherwise it's just a one-way conversation.

What should you include as contact info?

The single most important contact information you should include in your book is the link to your website. For example, you could say, "To contact Jane Doe, visit her website at http://www.author-janedoe.info." Naturally, the website would list either phone, email address (email forms are great!), or even a post office box, depending on what level of information you feel comfortable with. Unless you are selling something, email contact should be enough. If any of your contact information changes later, you won't need to update your book, just update the info on your website.

You don't have a website or blog? You should have one, but for now include your email address in your book. If you don't want to give out your personal AOL email that you use to keep in touch with your family and friends, create a special email address just for your readers. For example, your book would say, "To contact Jane Doe, email her at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)" or another email address. (Then think about having your own blog or website.)

Where to include contact info?

The best place to include your website or email info is on the back cover. Everybody looks at the back cover when they read a book. Just in case, do include it on the copyright page as well.

Your readers want to get in touch with you, and it would be rude not to let them!

Editor Interview: Book Cover Design

March 02, 2009 by Wheatmark, Admin Wheatmark book editor, Susan Wenger, was recently interviewed on "The Creative Penn" blog about cover design. She discusses the importance of typesetting, cover title decisions, and imagery. 

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