How to Use the Web to Sell Your Book

Grael Norton, publishing consultant at Wheatmark, presents on How to Use the Web to Sell Your Book. Click play to view the whole lesson.

How to Make Money by Publishing a Poetry Book

Here's the honest truth about publishing a poetry book for financial gain: poetry is likely the most difficult genre to market, so it is a very difficult way to make money. Frankly, there are better ways to make money than by publishing a book, but publishing a poetry book in most cases is definitely an expense, not an investment.

Unless, of course, you use your poetry book to make money a different way....

Let me tell you how to make money by publishing a poetry book:

I am thinking of my friend Mike Jones, a mortgage lender with Tucson Mortgage Company, LLC in Tucson, Arizona, who shared this idea with me over coffee as we discussed marketing ideas. In his spare time he enjoys making music and writing poetry and has talked of publishing a poetry book.

Does he want to publish a poetry book for financial gain? You bet! But does he expect to sell lots of copies of his book? Well, actually, he plans to give away copies of his poetry book for free to all his clients.

He will give it to people who already pay him money for his services.

Think about it. Let's say your realtor, banker, lawyer, business coach, mortgage broker, or pest control guy gives you a beautifully bound, designed, and written book as a thank-you gift for your business. The book happens to be a poetry book (but it doesn't matter what genre!), and was written by the person giving you this book. The back cover has a large picture of the person including a blurb that mentions what he or she does for business.

Because you value the service of this person, you will put that book on the shelf with all your other books. If you read it, great, but you do not have to read it, that is not the purpose of the gift. It will be forever on your shelf as a three-dimensional ad reminding you of your broker, realtor, pest-control guy, whoever! You will have a connection with him that his competitors do not have with you (his book on your shelf), and ultimately you will end up using his services more, therefore giving him more business.

That's a great way to make money with a poetry book, and smart marketers like my friend Mike know this. You see, they want to sell themselves and their services, not necessarily their book! Similarly, when you publish a book, especially a poetry book, think of ways to you can sell yourself, not your book!

If you're a business person and you want to be in front of your customers in a creative way (on their bookshelf), and you do not YET have a book written about your expertise, but you like writing poetry, what are you waiting for? Turn your poetry into a marketing tool now by publishing a poetry book!

Book Marketecture: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Creating Your Book Marketing Plan

After much time and effort, the free PDF version of Book Marketecture: A Workbook for Creating Your Book Marketing Plan is now posted on our website and available for download.

I authored the workbook and my co-workers Susan Wenger and Hayley Love edited and designed the layout. We created the workbook for self-published authors, and it starts with the basics -- how to create a marketing plan for your book. I've been in book marketing for more than 15 years and I know that when it comes to marketing your book, a well-thought-out, targeted plan can mean the difference between success and failure.

Book Marketecture is filled with exercises, activities, and resources designed to help you:

• define your unique marketing goals


• determine your key marketing message


• identify and reach your book’s specific core market within your budget and timeline

To download a free copy of Book Marketecture: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Creating Your Book Marketing Plan, visit the Wheatmark website at: http://www.wheatmark.com/free-book-marketing-workbook.cfm

We hope you find the Book Marketecture workbook a valuable tool for effectively marketing your book, and would love to hear your feedback and whether you found the exercises and activities helpful, or where the workbook could be improved. Thanks!
~ Kat Meyer
Manager, Book Sales and Marketing
Wheatmark, Inc.

Wheatmark Chess Title Achieves Master Rank

Ray Cheng’s Practical Chess Exercises captures best position on Amazon!

Wheatmark, Inc. (http://www.wheatmark.com), the independent author’s most powerful ally, is proud to announce that Ray Cheng’s book, Practical Chess Exercises, has achieved a #1 rank in the Chess category on Amazon.

The best-selling title also cracked the 1,000 mark on Amazon’s Sales Rank for the first time this week, placing it among the elite of the millions of titles for sale on Amazon.com.

Mere months after its release, the book earned admission into Wheatmark’s coveted Great Expectations program (http://www.wheatmark.com/greatexpectations.cfm)—one of the fastest sales records for a title in Wheatmark’s nine years in business (http://www.wheatmark.com/aboutus.cfm).

Practical Chess Exercises is Ray Cheng’s first book.

“It has been an absolute joy to work with the Wheatmark team. They have been professional, thoughtful, creative, and responsive through the entire process of getting my book into print and into the hands of my readers,” he says.

For more information on Wheatmark’s services, including the Great Expectations program, and to get started on publishing your book today, call Wheatmark toll-free at 1.888.934.0888 or visit http://www.wheatmark.com.

Market Share of Online Booksellers Grows

A follow-up of sorts to my last post...

In case you're wondering what the actual market share for online book sales is these days:

try 30.5% of projected consumer book purchases in 2008.

The same source (Fairfield Research/Greyhound Books—as cited in an article in the March 31st Publisher's Weekly) expects chain bookstores to claim 32.5% of the same market in 2008.

That's a pretty close margin—one that Publisher's Weekly predicts online booksellers will close (or even overtake) by 2009.

Looks like Robert S. Miller is on to something!

Bad News for Borders

Speaking of Borders' financial troubles ...

Borders may put itself up for sale.

The company has also taken out a $42.5 million loan to help with day-to-day operations in the coming months.

This loan may complicate Borders' ability to sell all or part of its operations, however.

Barnes and Noble—the most likely prospect for buying Borders—may not be interested anyway. B & N recently reported that fourth-quarter profits had declined 9 percent.

To read more about Borders' financial situation, as well as the general pressure on booksales nationwide, click here.

Good News for Borders

Another update on the ongoing Borders kiosk saga ... this time, on prices.

Soon, customers at select Borders stores will be able to publish their books using Lulu's software at prices ranging from $299 to $499.

That's a pretty cool thing, but it's only part of the story.

My guess is that prospective customers will be especially intrigued by the possibility of their books being carried in Borders stores—which the new service touts.

I can't help but bring up the issue this raises, which I cited in my Feb. 15th post:

"A final note: I wonder how this move will affect Borders' relationship with its customer-authors? Barnes and Noble had a terrible problem regarding the customer service involved with this kind of relationship when it was a part-owner of iUniverse, another self-publishing service (customers kept asking when their books would be carried on B & N bookstore shelves; the answer almost always disappointed them).

"The problems were so severe, apparently, that they eventually led to B & N severing its relationship with iUniverse altogether last year.

"I guess Borders—a bookseller whose financial problems have been well-reported over the last few years (in large part because they completely missed the boat on online bookselling)—has decided that the possible rewards are worth the risks."

You can check out Borders' new program here.

How to Increase Your Book Sales without Spending Money

May Sinclair, one of Wheatmark's published authors, has sent us some valuable tips she learned on how to increase your book sales without spending your money. The technique involves utilizing Amazon.com's closed platform for selling books. Click here to read the article in our Author Resources center.

Sell Yourself, Not Your Book!

Here's a book marketing advice I hope you'll take the right way:

Forget about trying to sell your book. Nobody is interested in buying your book.

What people are interested in is you, your services, your cause—and not a book.

There are many, many great books. But hardly any book out there can sell itself on its own. The bestselling books out there became bestsellers not because their authors were trying to sell books.

You will sell the most copies when people you have sold yourself to will want to get you and your ideas packaged between two book covers. It is not a book they are looking for, therefore, it's not a book you should be selling to them. Sell them yourself—in the form of a book. Most authors get it backwards: They are trying to sell a book instead of selling themselves. They are using their profession to sell their book, when in fact they should be using the book to sell their professional services.

What you want to do is to market not your book, but what your book is about. Use your book to promote your business, your practice, your cause. If you are a professional speaker, sell your speaking service using your book, rather than try to sell your book using your speaking business. If you are a counselor, use the fact that you've written a book about relationships as a way to solidify your credentials. If you are exposing human rights abuses in your book, all the more you should be thinking about advancing (marketing!) your cause, not your book.

"I don't know how to market a book!" is the most common excuse I hear from authors. Forget marketing books. How good are you at marketing YOU? Are you or your service marketable? Can you sell yourself? If the answer is yes, you don't need to know that much about book marketing. When you "market your book," do not market it, market yourself. Market your practice, your services, your advice, your concept, your cause! If you do a good job marketing YOU, your book sales will follow.