12 Tips That Will Help Beginner Authors to Sell More Books

By Barb Drozdowich

Are you looking for a collection of advice on a variety of topics focused at the needs of beginner authors when marketing your book?

 

This is a great primer of advice focused at the needs of the beginner authors.

What details are you overlooking?

What details really make a difference?

 

There is more to selling your book than just writing it.

The bookstores are filled with "how to write a bestseller" books. However, most of the books available attack the topic of writing the book, not how to sell the book – not how to find and talk to your book's audience.

 

This anthology-style book is a collection of essays on various aspects of connecting with an audience – a group of people who would be interested in buying a copy of your book. It is written at a primer to intermediate level and will address topics that are perfect for the needs of the first-time author.

 

Some of the topics that are addressed:

• How to utilize the world of book bloggers for marketing
• How to create a simple author website on a budget
• What are common marketing mistakes new authors make and how to correct them
• What is the third party seller system on Amazon
• What is Modern publishing

 

If you are new the world of writing and publishing, this book is filled with gems of information that will help in ways that no other book available today does.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barb Drozdowich
• Release date: Jan 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781990560156

Book preview

12 Tips To Help Beginner Authors to Sell More Books

12 TIPS TO HELP BEGINNER AUTHORS TO SELL MORE BOOKS

BARB DROZDOWICH

Barb Drozdowich

CONTENTS

Preface

Your Helpful Hints Are Waiting

Introduction

1. Care and Feeding of Your Blog in Three Easy Steps

2. How to Use Simple Psychology and Basic Common Sense to Sell More Books

3. The CAN-SPAM Act

4. Cheap Website Options for Authors and Bloggers

5. Technical vs. Creative

6. Five Common Mistakes and Easy Fixes

7. Top Five Tips for Author Networking and Why You Should

8. What are Third Party Sellers on Amazon

9. Who are your readers? Do you piss

10. What is Modern Publishing?

11. What Stats Do You Need to Understand

12. I Read. What’s Your Superpower?

Glossary

About the Author

Also by Barb Drozdowich

Endnotes

PREFACE

Hi there and welcome! My name is Barb Drozdowich. I’m the author of 27 books focused on the technical needs of authors, bloggers and small business owners as well as a collection of non-fiction activity books. I spent years as a professor, teaching science at the college level and then as a technical trainer in the banking industry teaching technical subjects to non-technical people. Once I started a family, I transitioned to working from home as a technical virtual assistant helping clients, mostly authors, with various technical tasks that are part of their work. The success of my students is gratifying - makes me feel I’ve made a difference in someone’s life!

Because of my immersion in the technical world combined with my continued exposure to non-technical people, I am frequently put in the position of debunking myths or correcting advice received from different sources. There are many industry experts trying to sell books, courses or services that may be experts in their field but have no understanding of the technical details that they are overlooking or dismissing in their explanation. Items or actions that are possible game changers.

For example, some time ago I was at a writer’s conference where the presenter encouraged the attendees to add all their email contacts to their mailing list. She commented, they will unsubscribe if they don’t want to be on your list. OK - point taken. But she was totally overlooking the fact that this activity is illegal in a whole bunch of countries. Maybe she didn’t know what she was suggesting was illegal, but the attendees were happily writing notes about her advice, and I was trying to pick my jaw up from the floor.

This type of thing is not unusual in my world - this confrontation with offered details that are just wrong. When I complain, I am often told I’m too picky or I am getting too much into the weeds. However, I continue to be encouraged by clients to put together books that explain a variety of topics to author and non-author groups.

This book is an example of the type of book that I create. I hope you find it helpful. If you have another topic you want me to tackle, just reach out through email or social media and I’ll see what clarity I can add to the topic you suggest. If you want some clarification, you aren’t alone. You are likely one of many.

YOUR HELPFUL HINTS ARE WAITING

Are you interested in getting some helpful hints to your inbox? As I’m sure you are aware, authors, bloggers and small business owners are encouraged to give away a free book or item to encourage people to join their mailing lists.

 My books are different - they solve a problem. Just because you picked up one of my books doesn’t mean you want a free book on a completely different topic. Because of this, I offer subscribers to my mailing list, free help - usually in the form of blog posts. I also let everyone know about new releases and helpful tidbits that will make your job easier.

 If this sounds like something you would be interested in, join me at: http://bakerviewconsulting.com/reader-list/

All that being said, if you are interested in some free books, 5 of my books are available for free from all major retailers. They are listed on the above linked page. My background is that of a teacher of science – a subject that has a lot of foreign sounding words. I always include a glossary in my books to help with the understanding of all the new words you will learn in my books. Find the glossary at the end of this book.

INTRODUCTION

This book can be considered to be an anthology of 12 of the many presentations and guest posts I’ve given over the past few years. None of this content has been previously published in book form, but all of it is material that I have presented in workshops many times. It is all aimed at a beginner audience. I hope you learn something and if so - pass these pearls of wisdom on to a fellow author

1

CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR BLOG IN THREE EASY STEPS

So…you have a blog!

Cool!

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

What’s the platform that it is built on? Is it WordPress? Is it Blogger? Is it something else?

Today were are going to talk about 3 easy steps involved in the Care and Feeding of your new blog…or your old blog if you’ve been blogging for a while.

A blog is like a car – you get to drive it if you take care of it. You know – put oil in it, put gas in it, new tires and brakes…you get the message.

So, like your car, you need to take care of your blog.

I’m sure you have heard comments about creating backups. Just like your computer or your latest novel, pithy graphics on Facebook or stern lectures on blogs tout the advantages of creating backups.

All you need is one failed hard drive and you will understand the pain of recreating work because you had no backup.

I would like to argue that there is more to the care and feeding of your blog than just creating backups.

There are in fact three steps to taking proper care of your blog:

creating backups

updating the WordPress program, theme, and plugins

checking the content

As you can well imagine, not all steps apply to all platforms, but don’t think that because you blog on Blogger or WordPress.com that this doesn’t apply to you…because it does!

1) Creating backups

Most of the people that I talk to tell me either that they don’t understand how to back up a blog or it is too technical for them…or they have a Blogger blog or Free WordPress blog and they think that is part of the service. (they would be partially incorrect)

Like with all your hard work, I think that you should take a few moments on a regular basis and create copies of this work and keep them in a different location – an external hard drive or in the cloud perhaps. This applies to your computer as well as your blog.

It is true that Blogger and WordPress.com will create copies of your blog and be ready for service issues, but what if Blogger or WordPress.com decides to shut down your site. When