How to Market a Book: Tod Langley

Here on the Wheatmark publishing blog we talk a lot about how to market a book. Today we'd like to share with you some efforts of one of our recently published authors, Tod Langley.

Tod Langley's book, Prince Kristian's Honor: Book One of The Erinia Saga, was released in mid-August. In just two weeks his fantasy fiction book has sold dozens of copies and is on par with the sales of some of our recently released nonfiction books that had already established author platforms.

Langley has been actively scaling the learning curve of social networking and has found a few things that are working for him and I wanted to share some tidbits with the Wheatmark blog readers.

Website
Langley decided he needed a customized website and, after a few attempts on his own, decided to enlist the help of a designer. His site includes a blog where he's been writing about his experience as an author, a bookstore link, and other tabs that take fans and inquiring media to pages with lots of interesting information on them. Take a peek at it here at www.todlangley.com

Amazon
His book was released just 14 days ago, but he already has four excellent book reviews on his Amazon page. Reviews help bolster sales as they underscore potential reader's confidence that clicking the "buy button" won't be a mistake. Wheatmark author James Best uses Amazon to sell books and we've previously written a series of posts about his efforts on this blog. Check them out here if you haven't already.

Networking
To drive traffic to his site, Langley set up Facebook and Twitter accounts. Using the two social media sites, he's been able to provide links to followers and friends about new blog posts and other bits and pieces they might find interesting. You can follow him on Twitter by searching for his profile name TodLangley. On Facebook, you can become a fan of his book by searching for Tod Langley.

Tracking it all
Langley has been using Google Analytics to track the traffic to his site and see what phrases and keywords garner more hits and also to see where the traffic is coming from. GA is free and has tons of ways to track and view data.

Here's what he had to say about his recent finds:

Hi Kat,

Seeing something pretty clearly already. Nothing earth-shattering but the stats back it up on Google Analytics.

• Author website visits peak early in the week and go up and down til Friday
• Weekends have almost no visits.
• Since 60% of my visits are direct site visits - I know people are getting the address either through Facebook or Twitter rather than Google Search or Amazon or even Wheatmark - I'd bet my input into blogs, twits, and facebook anecdotes are driving potential business.

I don't get the chance to write on weekends because I am very busy with "honeydo lists" and then play catch up on Sunday nights once I get back to my corporate apartment.

• Until you get the word out enough that interest drives itself, you HAVE to routinely contribute things of interest to social sites. You also have to re-visit old conversations and often reference your author website because you get new followers daily that don't go back in time to see your old chats.

• There is a direct correlation between social networking and immediate website visits (within 1-2 days).

What Langley is doing is exactly what I try to get authors to do: create a hub (website/blog) with spokes of communication (Facebook, Twitter, forums) that drive traffic back to the hub and help turn the axle (Amazon/Wheatmark bookstore) that propels the vehicle (book sales) forward.

Visit www.todlangley.com and read his author blog for more tips and to follow his journey. The entry about his experience with the publishing timeline is a really good one.

I'm still waiting on the post where he congratulates Wheatmark, Hayley Love, and me for being just oh-so-awesome...

Wheatmark has gathered a lot of free information about publishing and marketing into one hand area of our website. Check it out next time you get stuck!