There are two sides to this. Firstly, you need to research your audience before you start writing, so you should have a good idea who will be interested in your book. Secondly, they won’t buy it if they don’t know about it – so you need to work on your promotion.
These two activities top and tail the whole book creation process.
Audience research
This is one of the first tasks you do. Look at Amazon and see what books in your genre are about and how they do in sales and recommendations. When people buy one book on a subject, they often buy others; that’s why Amazon have that ‘People who bought this book also bought …’ section.
However, Amazon is not the only online bookseller, so it may be useful to look at Nook, Kobo, iBooks, etc.
The other, less scientific, but equally important, place you can research is with your social media connections. Engaging them in your book development will help you to ensure your book is focused on what they really want to know more about.
This doesn’t mean that you change the subject of your book to meet the reader’s needs, but that you cover the things people most want to know about and provide your unique take on these topics.
Your book launch
Your audience are not telepathic – they won’t know that your book is published, unless you tell them!
If getting that Amazon Best Seller stamp is important to you, then you’ll need to do a number of things.
- Choose categories (up to three) and aim for at least one to be reasonably narrow, so there is a better chance of getting your best-seller ranking without having to sell hundreds or thousands of books.
- Put together a social media campaign in the six weeks preceding publication day to spread the word.
- Also an email campaign to your list to let them know the publication date and any special promotions you’re doing.
Some people like to have an actual in-person launch event, although this doesn’t usually happen on the actual publication day.
If you really want to get lots of purchases on day one, you can put together a bonus bundle for day one purchases. This is usually a reduced price for your book, plus additional goodies. These might include ebooks, reports, checklists, etc., access to exclusive webinars, and/or a draw for a higher value item (a course, a product – e.g. a tablet or ereader).
If you’re offering a massive amount of value, you’ll get a lot more sales on your launch day.
Marketing magic
Marketing isn’t a one-off. You’ll need to continue to promote your book, via social media, email, maybe online ads to keep the momentum going. People have very short memories.
Take your book to networking events, do occasional special offers, volunteer to speak at relevant groups around your book’s topic.
If you keep it visible, people will buy it.
