WISHFUL THINKING
More often than not, book authors who were new to the industry and flying on their own, posted their book on Amazon and then did what I characterize as wished, hoped, prayed, and sprinkled pixie dust on that uploaded book, expecting sales to magically appear because the book was listed on Amazon. Period.
MARKETING? WHY?
Many of those authors did little else to market their book. They didn’t know how, didn’t want to do that task themselves, or thought marketing was a real drag. They may not have money to hire someone knowledgeable or available to assist in promoting them or their book. They didn’t have time to dedicate to marketing or to filling orders on their own, and many other reasons kept them from doing any marketing of their book.
WHERE'S THE MAGIC WAND?
After all, the book is on Amazon. Won’t Amazon be marketing the book? Those are small samples of reasons that prompt the disappointing results. And yet, authors still choose to have Amazon be The Answer to getting their book out into the world. After all, the author has taken however long to WRITE the book. Now it’s time to hand it off for the behemoth that Amazon has become to do the heavy promotional lifting, in the mind of many authors
BUT, BUT, BUT...
As a book author, you’ve got a business to run, a website to keep current, a life to live, and people who want a piece of you at every turn. There’s no time or energy to market your book, so it seems. Besides, as it turns out, you’re quite satisfied you sold over a thousand copies of your book this past year (or two), all from its availability on Amazon and some from bookstores, even though the single copies through those distribution channels can be returned, often in non-saleable condition at that.
YOU NEED THE MISSING INFO
Speaking of those thousand books, has it occurred to you that you have no idea who bought those books, since Amazon doesn’t give you any information at all about those buyers? A thousand books, one at a time is NOT the only way books are sold. Unless you were ahead of the game in your thinking or was well-advised by one of your book advisors, those buyers have no real way to find you without doing a bit of research to hunt you down on the Internet. Do they really need to work that hard to reach you?
THEY'RE A TIME-SAVER THOUGH
And yes, Amazon processed the order from start to finish, captured the contact information of of the buyer, packaged and shipped the order to the customer, and sent you a very small portion of what the buyer paid Amazon. After all, Amazon took care of all that “back office” activity for you. Oh, and did I say that Amazon paid you a very small portion of what the buyer paid Amazon?
THERE'S GOTTA BE ANOTHER WAY
What if you had appropriate, simple ways (notice the plural) to capture the name and contact information of your customers who loved what you wrote that they bought from Amazon? Imagine you having that name and contact information, and gathering that in a very high-integrity way.
INCREASING REVENUE
It would mean you’d have a list of people who were interested enough in your book to buy it. Does it make you wonder what else you might be able to offer them for sale in a related topic or genre to those same customers? And that you would be able to keep 100% of the profit for those direct non-Amazon sales of related products. Plus you get no returns.
DIFFERENT PATH, DIFFERENT DESTINATION
The great news is that there are ways (plural, as I mentioned) to quietly and strategically gather such vital details whether your book is done, still being written, or the publication date was years ago with content that’s still useful.Some book advisors know some of the ways. As a fact, the odds are very high that they know different and fewer ones than I do merely because we have traveled different professional paths.
ONE POSSIBILITY
More and more book advisors suggest offering a bonus right within the text of your book that guides the reader/buyer to your website. At your website they can collect a bonus from you in exchange for providing their name and email address.
BOOK ALREADY DONE?
That works wonderfully if you’re still writing your book or finished writing it and are willing to pay a graphic designer to have the bonus offer added to a page in your book. Of course that presumes you can think of something of value to offer that’s downloadable from your website. There are many helpful things you can offer as a bonus, and we’ll help identify good ones for your audience.
JOIN 'EM
Amazon can also actually be of help to you without ever realizing it when your book is already done and for sale on Amazon’s site, or it can be helpful even before you’ve written one word of a book. It is a high-integrity strategy that’s not intended to be anything other than a straightforward action you take to achieve your goal. No rules get bent, and no animals are harmed in the process. And I’ve got a lot of suggestions about that for you.
SOLVE THE MYSTERY
Are you chomping at the bit to find out what those ideas are? If so, clear your schedule for an hour to join me on a Zoom call on Tuesday, November 28 at 10am PT/1:00 pm ET For the moment, save the date. The page for more information will be https://www.TipsProducts.com/amazon and the link will be live and available by the end of this week. After all, Tuesday, November 28 at 10am PT/ 1:00 pm ET is not very far away.
BE MY GUEST
I’d love it if you would please be my guest at this session. That’s right. I am making it available to you at no cost.
BY THE WAY...
There will be no recording available. And I don’t know when/if I’ll run this again.
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