Source: http://bookmarketingmaven.typepad.com/book_marketing_maven/2010/08/relevance-and-credibility-key-selling-points-in-promoting-your-book.html

Relevance and credibility are two key points in any form of advertising or promotion which includes social networking. I have yet to see book marketing experts address these topics when they tell us social networking, building our list, creating groups on Facebook, or a whole gamut of other marketing ways is of utmost importance if we want to sell our book. In reality, doing all these things isn’t go to get us anywhere if we don’t have relevance and credibility to what we say or do.

Relevance: You must prove to your potential reader how pertinent, connected, or applicable your book is to them , current times/ social issues, or currently popular.

Credibility: You must prove to your potential reader you are trustworthy and an expert on the subject. This also includes your personal code of ethics, integrity and reasonable grounds to be believed.

Relevance without credibility is just hype and without substance. Credibility without relevance is boring. But combining the two together you get power.  You get the potential reader’s attention, you get respect, and you create interest in your book.

Are you frowning right now and wondering how you can do both?  It’s easy:

by: Irene Watson
Source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/strategic-book-marketing-and-roi

Authors want to promote their books and myriad ways exist for doing so. Sometimes small and low-cost advertising can be more effective than expensive advertising with grandiose promises. Whatever marketing an author does, analyzing the ROI (Return on Investment) must be the key factor.

Anyone who publishes a book is soon going to be flooded with mail and email from people and companies seeking to help you promote your book. These people will tell you how to get on TV, how to sell truckloads of books, and how to place ads that can result in thousands of sales. Authors with big dreams will want to jump at these chances, but every form of book marketing does not work for everyone, and it doesn’t make sense to spend large amounts of money on marketing if you can’t have some certainty of the results.

Let’s take a couple of examples of big book campaigns that might not be worthwhile. An author I know was recently approached by a television show looking to have authors on the program. It was a morning talk show on one of the cable networks. The producers wanted several thousand dollars to be on the program. First off, most television shows like The Oprah Winfrey Show, will pay your travel expenses and pay for you to be on the show, not have you pay them. Even so, if you feel you’ll sell enough books to make it worthwhile, you might consider it. If your book profit after printing costs is $10 per copy, and the producers want $4,000 to be on the program, you will need to sell 400 copies just to break even. You need to determine the likelihood that you will sell that many copies. How do you determine your likelihood of making a profit? Ask some questions about the show’s demographics. If the program’s viewers are predominantly middle-aged women and your book is a novel about street fighting, you probably aren’t going to sell enough books to make it worth your while. If it’s a sports show on Spike TV geared toward young men, then you might have great success selling your book on the program.

A lot of people are willing to get you an ad in the “New York Times” for a few thousand dollars or in other major publications or even create television commercials for you. Your ad might be seen by thousands of people, but is the audience of that publication or network composed of the type of people who will read your book?

If you just ask around a little, you’ll hear stories of authors who spent thousands on such campaigns and only sold maybe two books. Sure we all want to go big, but sometimes it’s best to start smaller or work toward more conservative but likely results.

Whether it’s an advertising campaign, a radio or a television appearance, selling books at a festival, or any other form of marketing, here are a few key factors for determining whether you should take the risk, or if you prefer, invest in the opportunity.

Find Out the Costs and Requirements

What does it cost for the ad, booth, or placement? Make sure you find out the total amount. Sometimes book fairs will want $100 in advance and then 10% of book sales later, or a similar arrangement. Make sure you know exactly what the cost will be ahead of time.

Calculate the Return on Your Investment

If you’re going to spend $500 on this promotion, how many books do you need to sell to break even, and how many to make it worth your while? Some authors may be content just to get the attention even if they only sell a few books. Others are content to break even, while others will feel it a waste of time not to earn at least $200, or $1,000 as a return for the investment. Determine what results will make you feel happy or at least comfortable with your investment.

Calculate the Return on Your Time

Time is money. Don’t forget to analyze the return on your time. If you sell $100 worth of books but the event is eight hours long, plus an hour to drive there and another hour back, and another hour to load and unload your car, that’s eleven hours you spent to make $100. Is a $9.00 an hour return worthwhile for you? Is spending all day Saturday at a book fair worth it to you when it means missing your son’s birthday party?

Get References

Don’t let the chance at fame stop you from making good business decisions. If someone promises he can get you national exposure for a price, ask for references. Ask for the names of other authors he’s worked with and find out what he did for them. Don’t forget to do an online search to learn more about the person or company.

Network

If you decide to spend the money for a big event like Book Expo America, are you likely to sell many books? You’ll be up against stiff competition, but money is not the only way to get a return on your investment. Who can you meet there who might help you down the road? What contacts could you make to further both your and their goals?

Never Forget the Possibilities

Don’t forget that you never know what could happen. I’ve had authors tell me about book signings where only one person showed up, but that one person was the right person—perhaps she’s the president of the local book club and gets the other twelve members to buy your book to read next month. In which case, you could look at that book signing as having sold twelve books, even if technically you only sold one that day.

Be Reasonable About the Possibilities

Yes, anything can happen, but consider what is reasonable that could happen. Just because you go to a book fair in Chicago, it isn’t reasonable, though still possible, that Oprah will show up, and even if she does, what’s the chance that your book, out of the 5,000 displayed there, will be the one that grabs her eye? But it is perhaps possible that the local news channel might show up and interview you for thirty seconds for the 6 o’clock news, and perhaps you could sell twenty books as a result of that exposure.

Try New Things, Discard What Doesn’t Work, and Stick With What Does

Try something new each month, quarter, or year. If it doesn’t work, don’t repeat it unless there are clear reasons why it didn’t work that you can fix. If it does work, stick with it and keep improving it until it quits working.

Many new and old ways exist to promote your book. Some cost a lot of money; some cost a lot of time. Some cost little but pay off greatly. Always determine the possible return on your investment before you spend a lot of time or money. And always take time to analyze your results afterwards to determine whether to repeat the activity and how to make it more effective. Marketing your book in a profitable and successful way requires time, energy, creativity, and continual reassessment. I hope the advice here helps put you on the road to greater success for your book.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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Source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/working-with-book-distributors

by Irene Watson

Working with a distributor gives you the advantage of having your book accessible to multiple stores across the country. The costs incurred are worthwhile in the long run.

Authors who are traditionally published have an advantage in that the publisher already has connections with book distributors to get books into stores.

Self-published authors, however, will wonder whether it is worthwhile to partner with a book distributor. While there are costs involved that can bite into your take home income from book sales by reducing your profit per book, ultimately the result can be more books sold.
As self-published authors, we often hear that the advantage is we get to keep all the profit, rather than just a small percentage, such as a royalty of 5-10% with a traditional publisher. But what does “keep all the profit” really mean?

Let’s say you paid $7.00 to print your book and have it shipped to you, and you’re going to sell it for $20.00 plus your state’s sales tax. Had that book been traditionally published and you got a 10% royalty, you’d have made $2.00 a copy (remember you didn’t have any printing costs).

If you sell your self-published book directly to a customer, you get to keep all $20.00, a profit of $13.00 per book.

By contrast, if you sell through a bookstore, gift shop, or other outlet, you have to give the bookstore a percentage, typically 40%, although it can vary by store. At 40%, that means you receive back $12.00. That’s still a $5 profit and nearly a double return on your investment.

A book distributor is going to want a bigger percentage because it will resell your book to a bookstore that will want 40%. Typically, book distributors want somewhere around 55%, giving them a 15% profit. That means you would receive $9.00 for your book, leaving you with only a profit of $2.00 (10% like your royalty might have been).

On top of that, the distributor will order books from you that you have to pay to ship, and if the books do not sell, the books will be returned to you—frequently with bent or worn covers that make it difficult for you to resell them independently. In other words, you could end up with books that aren’t sellable and no money from your efforts.

So why work with a book distributor?

Because a book distributor can get your book into multiple stores across the country. An author can only do so much on his or her own. You can easily deliver books in person to stores in your area, maybe even in your state, but the costs of gas, postage, and your time quickly make it impractical to try to market your book directly to stores outside of your area. Bookstores in the neighboring state are not likely even to know about your book if you don’t tell them, and even nearby bookstores may not be able to, or may not want to, work with you as an individual.

Certain corporate bookstores such as Barnes & Noble require that all their stores order only through a book distributor rather than dealing with individual authors. Other stores may just prefer to order only from a distributor because it’s easier to pay one vendor than keep track of invoices for fifty individual authors. If you want your book in a major bookstore chain, you’ll need a distributor.

Will book distributors market your book to these stores? No, they won’t individually talk to each store about your book, but they regularly produce catalogs that will have your book listed. These catalogs go to thousands of bookstores across the country, and while your book is competing with the hundreds of other books in the catalog, or at least the few dozen in the same category as yours, your book is more likely to be seen by more decision makers in more bookstores than you could have done on your own.

Furthermore, bookstores are often leery of self-published authors because they think self-published authors may not know industry basics such as the need for an ISBN number. A book distributor will not promote a book that doesn’t meet industry standards so being in a distributor catalog lets bookstores know your book looks “professional.”

Your book is still one of hundreds in the catalog, but sometimes distributors have special catalogs, such as a regional catalog that will market your book to its target regional audience. You can also take out ads in the catalogs. Ads can cost anywhere from about $50 to a few hundred dollars, but if you get enough orders, the ad will pay for itself.

If you’re still unsure whether you should work with a book distributor, give it a try. Contracts are generally only for a year or two and most distributors will be willing to negotiate the contract somewhat.

The major distributors to choose from are Partners, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor, but smaller distributors exist that handle only specific regions or specialize in distributing specific types of books. Do a little research online and talk to your local bookstores to find out which distributors they use and what they would recommend.

Hopefully, your book will soon be in many more stores.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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by Irene Watson

source: http://www.sellingbooks.com/how-to-price-your-book

Finding an appropriate price for your book can be a delicate balancing act—you need to set it high enough to make a profit, yet not too high to dissuade readers from buying. With a little research and an understanding of what customers perceive as being of value, authors can find a price that will work for them and their readers.

The other day I was talking to an author who had written a short historical book of about 100 pages. The book was priced at $29.99. I suggested to the author that her book was overpriced. She responded by saying, “What price should I charge for my three years of research and writing?”

This author’s response made it clear that she was looking to get a return for the work she put into writing the book, and that is understandable, but she failed to consider what her readers are willing to pay. If authors want a return on their work, they need to get it through the quantity of books sold, and less so on individual copies. When a potential customer looks at a 100 page book, he is not going to see that it took three hours to research. He’s going to see 100 pages, which will take him about two hours to read. $29.99 is a lot of money for two hours of entertainment when you can go to a movie for about $8. How much is two hours of entertainment or information worth? I would have priced the book maybe at $14.99 myself, but the author clearly thought her information was worth more. I will give her that her book is the only one I know of on the topic so some people might be willing to pay more for the information in it, but I don’t think too many will want to pay $29.99.

I once attended a conference where several bookstore owners discussed how authors could work with bookstores to sell their books. Two of the owners disagreed about whether the price of a book mattered. One owner said that if people wanted what you had to sell, they would pay what you asked. (In the case of this history author, because her information was new, that might be the case. I doubt it would be, however, in the case of a fantasy author when there are thousands of fantasy titles to choose from.) The other bookstore owner pointed out that people will tend to buy the less expensive book if there are two on the same subject, unless the more expensive book appears to be of higher quality to make it worthwhile.

Higher quality might mean a hardback book, or it might mean something beyond text such as pictures, graphics, or colored photographs. A 100 page coffee table book or a graphic novel can be sold for a higher price because they are perceived as having higher quality because of their attractive look and that they have more than just straight text.

So just how do you determine an appropriate price? The best thing authors can do is to visit a bookstore to compare books similar to their own. It is better to go to a physical bookstore, not an online one, because then you can see and touch the books and compare them side-by-side. For example, if you’ve written a fantasy novel, look at the other fantasy novels in terms of content, size, and price and try to price yours somewhere in the middle. Granted, if you’re self-publishing, you may not be able to compete with the $6.99 mass market paperbacks put out by big fantasy publishers like TOR, but perhaps you can sell your book for $12.99 to out-price the hardback fantasy novels and the larger sized novels.

In general, it is best to price your book in the middle price range. You don’t want to overprice your book so people won’t buy it, but neither do you want to price it lower than most of the other books in your genre, especially if it’s self-published, because readers might dismiss your book as not being of value.

Some cases do exist for pricing your book on the higher end. If you are an established author in your subject matter and have already had some success with previous books so that customers will be loyal to you despite the price (within reason of course: you might get away with $29.95 when your past books were $25.95 but charging $39.95 may turn customers away). In the case of the history author above, she might be able to sell her book for $19.99 because its subject matter is unique, but I still think $29.99 is too high.

When setting price, you also need to take into account your cost, your profit, and what profit you will end up giving to bookstores or book distributors. For example, if you pay $5 a copy to print your books, is $19.99 a good price for selling them? A bookstore will want 40%, leaving you with $11.99 for the sale, a profit of $6.99—still more than double your investment. A book distributor will want 55%, leaving you with $9.00 for the sale, a $4.00 profit and still an 80% return on your investment. Just make sure you take those numbers into consideration before you price so you don’t end up losing money when you sell your book through distributors and bookstores. If you price your book in this case at only $9.99, you’ll only get $0.99 profit from bookstores and the distributors will take $5.50 leaving you with $4.49, a loss of $0.51 per book.

Remember, you can always drop the price. If your book is $19.99 and the bookstores are getting 40%, while you want customers in the bookstores to buy your books, you can also sell your books independently on your website or at various book festivals or art shows you attend for $15.99 and advertise that it’s a special 20% off just for this book signing or art show. Customers will then think they are getting a deal, and you can still make a profit. Remember, once you set the price on your book, you cannot raise it beyond the price printed on the cover (at least not until you do a second printing), but you can always sell for less.

Another option is to offer special or limited editions or hardcover copies of the book. An author might print 1,000 paperback books to sell at $19.95 each, and then print an extra 50 to sell at $29.95 each. The hardcover copies might cost $3 more to print, but you make an additional $7.00 in profit. People are more likely to buy hardcover copies over the paperback version for gifts, and they will also feel they are getting something special and more likely to last. You can do a small hardcover print run to see if the hard covers sell and then that may help you determine whether you can raise the paperback price if you reprint.

With a little research into book prices you can settle on a price that will benefit you and your readers. Don’t be afraid to ask for the advice of other authors and bookstore managers. The research and time spent determining your book price will be well worth the reward in books sold and profit gained.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

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This audio-visual presentation recognizes the need for publicity and promotions to achieve success on getting the attention of prospective readers. It also enumerates how the media, through sending out well-written press releases, can help self-published authors in achieving increased awareness for their books.

Produced by and for BookWhirl.com, the video was conceptualized and edited by its own video marketing team.

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