Why Isn't My Book Selling?!?!

December 26, 2007

Why Isn't My Book Selling?!?!
printable version

I can't understand why my book is not selling? Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Target.com, etc. advertise the book, as I do on my website. It's been online for two years now. Why isn't it selling?!

Many authors make the mistaken assumption that putting a book online means people will actually see it and that this will automatically translate into sales. Since there are so many websites, and so many online bookstores, and so many books in those bookstores, nobody can expect sales from just putting a book online.

Marketing a book online should be considered at least a part-time endeavor. The authors who are really successful are the ones who make marketing their books a full-time job. You have to get online daily and spread the word, through an ezine (an ezine is more effective than a blog because you contact your readers directly; you don't wait for them to come back and visit your site whenever they happen to remember you're there), through networking, through requesting links on other websites, through offering excerpts for other websites and online publications to run, and through participating in online discussions about your book's topic/your book.

Assuming that simply having a book page on Amazon will mean you're going to start making money on your book is probably one of the most common misconceptions I hear from newbie authors. Nobody is going to know about your book until you start telling them about your book.