Yvonne Perry Talks About Authors Selling Books

Yvonne Perry is the owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services based in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also the self-published author of six books. As part of her blog tour to launch her latest book, I’ve asked her to share some insight on how she is marketing Shifting into Purer Consciousness ~ Integrating Spiritual Transformation with the Human Experience. You may learn more about Yvonne and her book at http://shiftingintopurerconsciousness.com.

Authors Must Learn to Sell What They Write

By Yvonne Perry

Many a writer aspires to be a published author—by any method whether self-publishing or being accepted by one of the “big six publishing houses,” such as Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House, or Simon & Schuster, or one of their imprints (subsidiaries).  What most new authors don’t realize is that once a book is published, it requires a lot of time, effort, and money to market it. The book, like any other product other than toilet paper, won’t sell itself; it has to be presented to its target market over and over.

Promoting a book can become a lot like owning a business. I learned this the hard way when I published More Than Meets the Eye, True Stories About Death, Dying, and Afterlife (http://deathdyingafterlife.com) in 2005. I knew little about book marketing at the time, so the book didn’t start selling until two years later when I published my second book, Right to Recover ~Winning the Political and Religious Wars Over Stem Cell Research in America. That’s when I paid a publicist about $3,000 to do my book marketing for me.

A book is a product and must be sellable. It’s not just about packaging. A poorly-written book, with a so-so cover, or an ambiguous title/subtitle that lacks keywords is not as marketable as a page-turner that jumps off the shelf and causes the reader to say, “This is just what I’m looking for.” That reader becomes a fan and automatically starts helping you promote your book via word of mouth. If I don’t enjoy a book, I won’t write a review (at least not a positive one) or recommend the book to others.

I had a “first” when an author told me he wasn’t sure he was ready to be an author because of the time he would need to spend marketing his book. Usually, new authors have no idea of the amount of time and energy involved in successful authorship. I recommend authors do as many of the following things as possible:

• Create a marketing plan
• Maintain a blog specifically for the book
• Get domain names and build a Web site for the book
• Query to obtain radio and TV interviews
• Be available to record radio and TV interviews
• Create promotional videos and post them to YouTube and other social sites
• Conduct a book tour (in-person or online)
• Participate in the launch of other authors’ books
• Do an Amazon launch campaign
• Write and send media releases
• Write and post articles to online article directories
• Write and send articles to print magazines
• Participate in online forums pertaining to the topic of your book
• Social marketing such as Facebook or Twitter
• Comment on and link to other peoples’ blogs

I am employing these methods in promoting my latest book, Shifting into Purer Consciousness ~ Integrating Spiritual Transformation with the Human Experience (http://shiftingintopurerconsciousness.com).

In an age of social marketing, we authors are able to befriend and interact with our readers. Because I had built the buzz the entire time I was writing the book, I sold two copies of the e-book within a matter of hours after its debut on Amazon’s Kindle Store: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00821TFWI . I have a virtual tour planned for June 16 through July 5 to launch the printed version of this book. See the tour schedule at http://dld.bz/byrF7.

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Yvonne Perry holds a bachelor’s degree in metaphysics from the American Institute of Holistic Theology and provides personal coaching for spiritual seekers. The host of We Are One in Spirit Podcast, she enjoys speaking about a wide variety of topics to help people realize their own creative power. http://weare1inspirit.com.  Find a review of Yvonne's new book today at www.TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com.

Tomorrow the tour will be at Jacqueline Stone’s blog, On the Journey and I invite you to visit that site to learn more about the spiritual transition we are currently in. See the full tour schedule at http://dld.bz/byrF7 .

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second ediction of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog: