Monthly Archives: January 2023

Successful Book Marketing: Knowing When to Shift

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By Books Author Denise Turney

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Book marketing is not magic. Books don’t sell simply because you want them to. It doesn’t matter how passionate and sincere your intentions are. To sell your books, you have to take smart actions. You also have to recognize change. This article covers actions you could take to finally yield the sales you’ve been wanting and waiting for, perhaps for years. Knowing when to shift is a part of that success.

Book Marketing Keys – Consistency and Spotting Change

After publishing and marketing books for more than 20 years, I have discovered that consistency is key to successful book marketing. Another key is recognizing and adjusting to change in smart ways. Regardless of the marketing strategies that you employ, consistency and recognizing and adjusting to change play a role.

  • As a beginning step, to gain more sells, get clear about the number of books you want to sell each day, week, month and year. Write it down. Clarity is a huge part of success. You’ll see this more and more as you continue marketing.
  • Use a spreadsheet or another tracking system to build book marketing analytics. If you think this ties into clarity, you’re right. Details to add to the tracker include date, the number of books sold each day and the sales source (indie bookstore, Cushcity, Amazon, Mahogany Books, Harriet Bookstore, Barnes & Noble, etc.). Other details to include are the advertising and/or marketing resource used to gain these book sales. Book marketing resource examples are BookBub, Amazon Ads, AALBC ads, book festivals, speaking events and cultural fairs.
  • Identify book marketing resources you will try. This is where your spreadsheet increases in value. As you monitor your marketing results, you’ll notice which resources are working and which need change. For instance, you might need to adjust ad spend on one resource or you find that you need to run a marketing promo using a different resource on a different day of the week.

Pay Attention to Book Marketing Spend

Consider completing free online trainings that book marketing resources (e.g., Written Word, Reedsy, Amazon) offer. If you join discussion forums at these sites, you can gain valuable insights and tips about ways to get more from these marketing resources without increasing your spending, which brings up an important point.

Pay attention to how much you spend to meet your book sales goals. Strong book marketing resources have sales spend analytics embedded into their reports. By adding these analytics to your main spreadsheet, you can spot trends and times when you need to shift fairly quickly, maybe within minutes of reviewing the data.

Really pay attention to your spend versus book sales. To experience successful book marketing, you (or someone you hire) needs to accept facts. This is no time for magical thinking. As shared at the start of this article, it’s not enough to want to sell a lot of books. You have to take the right actions, and generally not just once, but again and again.

It’s Time to Change

Let marketing spend head in the wrong direction for too long and you could start to feel frustration, anger and even hopelessness. Yet, it doesn’t have to go this way. And even if you already are in a situation where you’ve spent more than you’ve earned, you can turn the tide. You can choose again, making smart decisions, setting yourself up for better outcomes.

Should your marketing analytics show that you’re spending $50 a day on marketing but only earning $20 a day in royalties from your book sales, accept what you see. Shift. Adjust your spend, focusing on marketing resources that yield the best return-on-investment (ROI).

Add more free marketing strategies to your sales plan. This includes speaking events, book signings and handing out postcards, bookmarks, brochures and flyers at events that attract your books’ target audience. Just don’t continue digging a hole; shift. It’s a part of the book sales process.

More Book Marketing Strategies That Work

Here are additional book marketing strategies that work. Choose three to four when starting out, noting which strategies yield greater gains for you.

  • Meet book buyers in person. Attending book festivals, writer conferences and cultural events are great ways to achieve this. To connect with book buyers face-to-face, you could also schedule speaking events. These are events where you are the keynote speaker. Looking for places to start speaking at? Colleges and universities, as well as social organizations, are places that seek speakers. In addition to teaching about a topic that your books are related to, you could read from your books or give a spoken word performance. Check online and offline event calendars, contacting organizers of events you’d like to speak at.
  • Sell and sign your books at the end of the events. To continue book marketing efforts, encourage attendees to sign-up to receive your newsletter.
  • Pass out bookmarks, flyers and brochures at events you attend. Add your author website URL to these marketing tools.
  • Send postcards and snail mail to local booksellers, asking if you can schedule in-store book signings. After you schedule an appearance, start telling your family, friends and book supporters about the event, encouraging them to attend. You’ll see that the more you help businesses, book buyers, organizations and other retailers get what they want, the more they may assist you.

Surprising Way to Sell More Books

This next book marketing strategy might surprise you, although it shouldn’t. However, it took me years to fully grasp the impact of this strategy.

To continue selling books, keep writing and publishing quality books. This may be the single most important step in gaining more book sales. Similar to how recording artists have to keep coming out with new music, to enjoy a rewarding book writing career, keep creating and publishing new quality books.

Want a long, rewarding writing career? You’ll have to shift here too. Write enough books and you’ll discover that each of your books might not be a hit with readers, regardless of how much you market them. Instead of moaning about a book that’s not well received, shift. Start writing in a different genre, about different characters or in a different style that readers prefer more.

Stay Motivated, Stay Focused

And learn to spot trends and industry changes. Learn to recognize when a marketing resource or strategy is no longer working. Depending on how long you’ve been writing and publishing books, you saw this change when e-books first came out. Amazon and large bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders (remember Borders?) created change too.

If you refused to shift even while facing these changes, you might have seen your book sales drop, if not stall. To steer free of this, check your spreadsheet analytics daily. Just reviewing your analytics daily can help you know when to shift. It’s also a great way to avoid slipping into magical thinking (believing that you’re going to sell a lot of books simply because you want to).

Stay motivated through the changes and shifts by reading books that inspire and encourage you. Also, listening to tapes that help keep you focused on your goals is a way to win.

Set Your Intention for Success

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By Books Writer Denise Turney

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You need a target to hit. Without a clear goal, you could spend way too much time circling the mountain. It’s not enough to just want something to happen. To gain success, you need to know exactly what you want and why. Get specific.

What Do You Want

For example, do you want to feel the emotion “happiness”, lose weight or be wealthy? At first glance, those goals may sound clear. However, they are broad. As it regards feeling “happiness”, you could want to feel happy all the time. Aim for this and you might not come to know what shortcuts your path to happiness. You also might ignore signs that you’re headed off path as it regards key life areas.

That’s right. Although frustration, anger and sorrow are emotions that don’t feel good, they can serve as great guideposts. Think of it this way. If you were driving your car and hit a guard rail, you’d know that you were in a danger zone. Keep going, and you could suffer damages.

The same applies with emotions. Sadness, frustration or anger could alert you to the fact that you’re not working the job that you really want to work. Or those emotions (especially if they linger) could alert you to the fact that you’re in a relationship, etc. that you don’t want to be in.

Get Clear About Your Intentions

Additionally, as it regards getting specific about what you want, if you want to lose weight, narrow it down. As an example, instead of going broad with “I want to lose weight”, get more specific and develop a goal to “lose 15 pounds within three months.” Regarding the goal to be wealthy, consider narrowing that goal down into something like “I want to pay off both of my credit cards by end of the year, then grow my savings up to $10,000 or more by the end of next year.”

Those are specific “intended” goals. To stay encouraged as you pursue those goals, align rewards to the intentions. Make sure that you set rewards at markers along the way toward the goal fulfillment. For instance, you could reward yourself with a day off (actually take a vacation day) after you pay down a quarter of your credit card debt.

Of course, it would be smart to avoid using credit cards as a way to reward yourself as you work to eliminate debt. Yet, that shouldn’t be a problem, as there are so many things that you could do that don’t call for spending money. There’s fishing, hiking, bike riding, visiting local arts centers, stopping by a museum, checking out a local bookstore, hanging out with family and friends and so much more.

You Should Be Rewarded

Reward yourself by engaging in activities that you truly love and enjoy. Not only could this encourage you to continue moving forward, it could reinforce the message that you love yourself. And that’s a powerful message to get across to yourself.

After you set clear intentions, think about the reason/s that you want to fulfill the specific goal. Believe it or not, this might be where the rubber meets the road. The why of your aim and your actions might turn out to be your biggest payout.

Check out these whys as it relates to weight loss, wealth and artistic success. See if any of these whys resonate with you.

  • To live with high physical energy and to feel vibrant, hopeful and joyful
  • To enjoy physical strength and top health, opening myself up to more and more fun activities
  • To live debt free for the rest of my physical experience
  • To live debt free and build financial wealth so that I can explore experiences that bring me joy
  • To gain success creating artwork that I love to create, enough success to earn an entire income creating and selling my artwork
  • To make doing what I love, as it regards art and creativity, my life’s work

Create Powerful Whys

Keep going. Create a list of powerful whys. Connect those whys to your goals/intentions. As a note, the more powerful your whys, the easier it may be to map out a clear path or a strategy to achieve your goals and start receiving the rewards that are directly linked to your whys.

This brings up another important point. After you identify specific goals, set reward markers and establish clear whys, you need to outline actions that you are going to take to fulfill your goals. Again, you’ll need to get specific.

Here’s an example of specific steps that you could take to gain wealth. Remember to align this and other goals with one or more powerful whys to stay encouraged and motivated. If you want to gain wealth, consider taking the following actions:

  • Create a line-item budget (add mortgage, rent, utilities, credit card payments, entertainment, etc. to the budget)
  • Identify expenses that you could forego temporarily or permanently. Eliminate these purchases at least temporarily.
  • See which expenses you could substitute for lower costing items. For instance, instead of eating out for lunch, cook enough fresh food over the weekend to easily bring lunch into work.
  • Pay $100 or more extra a month on the credit card with the highest fees and interest rates
  • Complete online consulting or freelance work. Put 60% money earned from this extra work in an interest-bearing savings account. Consider investing the other 40% of this money into regulated low-risk mutual funds.

Go Get What You Really Want

Start taking the actions and see if you don’t begin to feel empowered. Choose goals and whys that are rooted in love. Also, when you break goals down, set powerful whys and intentions as well as reward yourself along the way, you could feel energized enough to tackle two to three goals simultaneously.

That’s not all. You pursuing and fulfilling your goals could inspire other people to go after what they really want. In fact, don’t be surprised if colleagues, relatives and friends start noticing a positive change in you. They also might start to ask you how you changed.

This is a great time to share the power of setting an intention for success, including how setting clear goals, identifying clear whys and outlining action steps offers amazing energy to your pursuit. A strong why, rewards and clear intentions and action steps can fuel you throughout this world’s ups and downs.

Take Advantage of the Temporary

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By Journal Writer and Novelist Denise Turney

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Photo by Andre Moura on Pexels.com

Love for happy times to last forever in this world? Wish that those sweet, loving moments in your romantic relationship would go on and on, without an end? Oh, if the good times lasted forever. If your favorite emotions and experiences stayed with you permanently while you journeyed through this world.

Most Of Your Journey

Yet, that’s not how it goes. Good times don’t last forever in this world, but neither do challenging times. That’s very good news. What do you think?

To make the most of your journey here, start taking advantage of the temporary. As a first step, approach situations with the mindset that, despite how much you like or don’t like an experience, it -won’t go unchanged. Accepting this could keep you from jumping from relationship to relationship, job to job, worship center to worship center and so on.

Admittedly, it took me years to learn that nothing last forever in this world. Here, everything changes. Look back over your life and you might see that, although you suspected this was the case, you didn’t really believe it.

In fact, you might have thought that there was a special person, great job, best town, etc. that you could connect with and enter a state of permanent bliss. Of course, you could keep looking. Over time, you might start to notice that you’re moving in circles, looking for a permanence here that doesn’t exist.

Options

Here are some ways that you could take advantage of the temporary. Whichever options you go with, keep an open mind. There may be nothing that helps you to stay in the flow better than an open mind.

  • Wake with a spirit and mindset of appreciation. A very simple way to pull this off is to raise your hands as soon as you wake and simply say, “Thank you!”
  • Consider the people who helped develop experiences that you enjoy. For example, before you head to an amusement park, concert, festival, etc., pause and think about the event organizers, promoters, ride builders, artists, etc. who helped bring the event from idea stage to reality. Let yourself appreciate how these people, whether they know each other or not, worked together to create an experience that you are about to absolutely love.
  • Be fully present when you are wherever you are. You will never be in that exact place in the same exact state/perception again. Even if the walls, ceiling, sky, grass and trees look the same, so much has changed since the last time that you were there.
  • Pause before you eat a meal. Instead of only speaking grace, actually see the farmers working the soil, planting seeds and tending to crop. And see truckers delivery produce and other food to stores. Visualize grocery store stockers and cashiers stocking shelves and checking you out of the grocery store line. All of this and more may have occurred before the meal you’re about to enjoy made it to your plate.
  • Give thought to doing the same as it regards other areas of your life. For instance, you could think about the engineers, technicians and factory workers who designed and built the automobile that you drive. Allow yourself to see the many different people who work hard to help you gain the experiences that you treasure and enjoy.

Appreciate Temporary Experiences

The above actions can help you to see more clearly how temporary experiences are. Additionally, the above actions could help you to live with much deeper appreciation. Keep at it, and you might start to marvel at what’s happening in your life.

Also, to take advantage of the temporary, coach yourself. Teach yourself that you won’t have forever in this world to take advantage of opportunities. This doesn’t mean that you go through every door you see. It’s smart to pause, pray and wait for Higher Guidance before you walk through an open door.

Once you receive an internal “green light”, take smart action. In other words, don’t stall and sit back and try to talk yourself out of what you want. Go for the right things! That open door you’re looking at right now might not stay open.

Life Without Regrets

This brings up an interesting point. Among the things that people say they regret when they are facing the end of their physical journey is the fact that they didn’t do what they really wanted to do while they were here. The end of the road is not the time to realize you didn’t live your own life.

It’s also not the time to finally accept that you spent your days sacrificing (doing what you thought others wanted or needed). If joy is your strength, you’re going to have to consider what causes you to experience joy. Then, you need to allow yourself to have these experiences.

Because joy and love go together, these will be experiences that are rooted in goodness. So, take advantage of good open doors, knowing that those opportunities might only be temporarily available to you. Athletes might get this lesson more frequently than others. Smart athletes know the importance of taking advantage of good opportunities as soon as they appear.

Look Up

On the flip side, taking advantage of the temporary means that you don’t get bogged down with focusing on challenges. You don’t let undesirable experiences shift your focus off of love. Another thing, you don’t live as if you expect a bad time or a challenge to last forever. As someone told me at a worship center years ago, “trouble don’t last always”.

Did I ever gain lots of encouragement from hearing her say that. It’s true; trouble doesn’t last forever. But neither do good times stay exactly the same forever here. You might be doing yourself a favor as you practice appreciation and steer clear of believing that trouble will last. Set yourself up for greater success by moving from opportunity to opportunity, refusing to bind yourself to a current or past “good experience”.