The publishing business has changed dramatically in the past few years. Today, nearly anyone can publish a acim it seems. Hundreds of thousands of new books hit the shelves every year. But very few people are successful at all in regards to marketing their books, with the average number of sales being around 200 over the life of the author. Marketing books is a real challenge for many people. In my work with hundreds of authors, I have identified 10 primary reasons why a book marketing strategy may fail.
Today the Internet is the primary source of information for book buyers. But even those who buy books in the ‘real’ world use the Internet to do research before buying in the real world. Book buyers, while doing their research, will NOT search by your name or your book’s title. They will instead search using a very generic phrase like ‘children’s book’ or ‘thriller’ or ‘spy novel’.
It is a fact that hardly anyone goes beyond page three of search engine results. Authors who hope to be visible to the book buying public must be on one of the first three pages for the GENERIC SEARCH TERM (like ‘children’s book) that describes their books. If you are not on one of the first three pages for that generic term, you are virtually invisible to nearly all book buyers. If you are invisible, nothing else you do in regards to marketing your book will matter much.
If you are using book marketing ideas and book marketing strategies that USED to work (when bookstores were the primary book outlets) those marketing strategies will most likely not work much at all in an Internet. In fact, you will likely fail.
Today, Internet sites have taken center stage in regards to being the primary book outlet. To be successful in regards to selling books today, you must have traffic to your book marketing site, and you must have a lot of it. You must know how to convert that traffic into book sales. All the traffic in the world will not matter if it does not convert to sales.
In the ‘old days’ (just a few years ago) the strategy was to tell as many people as possible that a book existed and wait for sales to come in. This ‘yell and tell as many people as possible’ strategy simply does not work today, as the Internet is search engine driven. Telling a lot of people is very hard work, is very expensive in regards to both money and time, and relies on huge numbers to produce small results.
In today’s Internet environment, the potential book buyer begins by typing a generic phrase into a search engine, in essence saying ‘Here is what I’m looking for’. Book sites are then indexed by the engines based upon how important they appear to be in regards to the generic phrase entered and in regards to how that particular site stacks up against the competition for that generic phrase.
SEARCH ENGINES decide who is important and they decide who ends up being seen by the book buying public. Think of a search engine as a yellow page directory. You will only be listed in THIS one-of-a-kind gigantic online yellow page directory if you understand and follow the SEO rules given you by the engines. If you don’t know and understand the rules, you will be at the end of the listings. And, if you are at the end of the listings, no one is going to find you, as they will likely look at just the first three pages.
