Do you wish you had a three-step plan for marketing your book? Can it really be that easy? The answer is: Yes! The truth is, most of us make marketing our books much too difficult. We complicate the process when it is really as simple as one, two, three. Here are the three essential steps to marketing your book – your three-step marketing plan.

Step 1: Create your logo or brand. A logo or brand is an emblem or symbol, something that represents your book. It is how consumers or clients will recognize you. For example, Nike is recognized by the swoosh, Coca-Cola by the red can with white writing, Target by the big red symbol. We as consumers recognize these well-known brands because they have established themselves with a particular emblem or symbol. As a self-published author, you should put this brand on everything from your book cover(s) to your website.

Step 2: Create your website and your online presence. A website is a must for every author. It is your home on the web and where most everyone will find you. It advertises your book and other services you provide. It also should include a Media Room for members of the media to easily download articles, press releases, press kits and information about you and your book(s). You also need an online presence. You want to show up all over the Internet. This leads us to step three.

Step 3: Network, network, network! Join social networking sites, create a blog and post articles to it, article market – get information about your book out there. But don’t just limit the networking to the internet. The great thing about our world today is we have the power to connect our online and offline worlds. So, connect online then take your connections offline. Go to networking events, attend conferences, network both online and off and watch your sphere of influence grow and your book’s sales explode.

Marketing truly can be done in three easy steps. Wherever you are in your book’s marketing plan, take the necessary steps to market it effectively. Start where you are and work your way forward.

The ultimate aim for any author is to sell books – to turn their knowledge into cash.  By the same token the publishing company is a business and is there to make money. To find a viable product to take to market and sell enough of, to recoup their investment in printing and marketing the book. Therefore in order to get published and turn your work into cash, you need to create a product that will sell, and this means thinking like a businessperson.

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Generating a Market for Your Book

When I started this project I had not realised that I was writing a book. My only focus was generating subscriptions for my website. I had got very excited because I was getting quite a few sign ups and they were responding to the first couple of lessons. This was a great result for several reasons.

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If you want to become a best selling author then, as “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyosaki has said that clue is in the world “selling”!

As an author you have to take responsibility for selling and promoting your book at every available opportunity.  You need to become good at persuading and influencing people.

One of the books I strongly recommend to people who want to become masters of persuasion is Robert Cialdini’s “Influence”.

Cialdini is a Professor at Arizona State University who has conducted extensive research into the factors that trigger people into automatically complying with another person’s request.

I am going to give a brief summary of each of these six factors in a series of six articles, that will show you how, as an author, you can apply them to sell more of your books.

Key 1: RECIPROCITY

According to sociologists and anthropologists, one of the most widespread and basic norms of human culture is the rule of reciprocation.

The rule is that if someone does something for you, you will want to do something in return.  This is commonly know as “you scratch my back I’ll scratch your back”.

This sense of future obligation ensures that relationships continue, and that transactions and/or exchanges that are beneficial to society continue.

A favourite and profitable use of reciprocity is to give something before asking for something in return. You can see this being used with direct mail letters from charities when they include the gift of a pen/address labels etc.

Although the “gift” is relatively cheap it plays upon the inbuilt human tendency to reciprocate – in this instance by making a donation!

There are many ways that you can use this concept as an author.  The use of free copies of your book as gifts to people to encourage them to give you positive testimonials, to journalists to encourage them to give you reviews and features are just one example.

Now that you are aware of this principle I am sure you will be able to think of lots of ways to use it to enhance your book sales.

As an author it is important to be visible to your target market so attending (and preferably being a guest speaker at) a relevant event on a regular basis (e.g. networking meetings, seminars, conferences etc) is a good thing to do.

These are book selling opportunities and if you want a best selling book you need to remember that the clue is in the word “selling”!

Master salespeople are adept at utilising powerful psychological strategies to influence people and here are three from my personal top ten that can be easily applied by authors to improve their book sales.

1. People will buy from people they like

Extensive psychological research demonstrates the importance of ‘liking’ in persuading people.  Master salesman Joe Girrard (In the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s “greatest car salesman”) credits liking as one of the most important factors in closing sales.  The fastest and most effective way to encourage people to like you is to use the rapport building strategies from Neuro Linguistic Programming.  People like people who are like them.  Matching the behaviour of people when you meet them will enable you to establish deep levels of liking.   When they like you they will assume that they will like your book.

2. People will buy if other people are buying

The impact of other people’s behaviour on our own is powerful.  We will view a specific behaviour as correct to the degree that we see other people doing it. It is possible to encourage someone to take a specific action (such as buying your books) by demonstrating how other people are taking that action.  Utilise this persuasion strategy by making frequent use of testimonials from existing readers/customers, and by using stories about how existing readers made the decisions you want your prospective reader to make.  This strategy is particularly effective when people are feeling uncertain.  When people are feeling uncertain they are more likely to use the actions of others as guidance.

3. People will buy if the decision is consistent with previous commitments

The drive to be and look consistent is a powerful motivator of human behaviour.  Utilise this strategy by getting your prospective reader to commit to something during your conversation and then use it to leverage a decision later in the sale.

So for example I may ask (as an author of a number of sales related books), “So improving your sales ability is important to you, isn’t it?”

At an appropriate time in the conversation I remind them of their earlier commitment and ask them for a decision.

“So as you said earlier improving your sales ability is something that is important to you, so you will benefit from the closing methods outlined in “Bare Knuckle Selling”.  Did you want a copy of “Bare Knuckle Negotiating” to go with it?”

Good luck and good book selling!

…Or in other words – how to make more money from the ‘upsell’…

What if I told you that you are sitting on profits that you haven’t tapped into yet?  Would you believe me?  Now you have your book written, the readers that buy it may be willing to buy something else from you too.  You could perhaps sell another book to them if you have more than one, or an extra service or product.  The Kings of the upsell have to be McDonalds with their “would you like fries with that?” This sentence alone has earned them millions!

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