Written by Corina Martinez Chaudhry
Many authors don’t realize that having a successful book requires creating an audience even before the book is finished. Creating and keeping an interested audience intact doesn’t come just by sheer luck, but rather it is a carefully thought-out process. So how do you create this audience you ask?
You can begin by having a high-quality web presence on the internet. In this day and age, it is no longer advisable to have a business without a website as your internet card. Even if you are looking to sell your books in local markets this is important. Your web presence is your storefront and if you don’t have this tool in place, then you have just limited yourself incalculably. So not having a quality website is probably the FIRST marketing mistake that many people make.
Many writers and authors rely on other 3rd party sites such as Goodreads.com to promote their books. This is a huge fallacy. It is not that Goodreads and other websites of this caliber aren’t great, but these companies have their own agendas, and their agenda is not to promote your sales. If you depend on these type of sites to enhance your bottom-line, you might as well throw your book out the window and hope that a likely reader will snatch it up and send you money. In the literary world, these type of sites are not sufficient to create a buzz for you because this isn’t their focus. In actuality, in some cases, these type of sites may hurt your bottom line because you have no control of what is being written about your book. If you have no control then you can’t successfully steer away negative comments that may be forthcoming.
Other sites that are great to join and necessary to help increase your traffic are sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.; however, there is a technique to successfully using these type of mediums. Again, do not just solely rely on these type of applications as your only website presence because you have no control over how these companies may change over time. Some may even go out of business and all the hard work that you did on these sites can be gone in an instant. Remember “MySpace?”
If you don’t already have your own website, then you should look into getting one as soon as possible. You don’t necessarily need a customized one which can cost lots of dollars and there are many affordable ones available on the internet. Some companies offer free websites and others provide template-type websites for very little cost. In this day and age there is no financial excuse for not having your own website – one that you alone can control with marketing strategies. Some websites that you can use are Web.com, GoDaddy.com, BuildYourSite.com, and WordPress.com just to name a few. There are many others as well. Remember that if you make it difficult for people to contact or locate you, then you have already lost a sale. Having your own website is really a must.
The SECOND mistake that authors make is not understanding how to drive traffic to their site. Many people believe that just by launching a website will bring sales to their door. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If you create a website with no forethought to driving traffic to your site, it’s just as inefficient as making garage sale signs and not distributing in your neighborhood. If you don’t actively work towards steering traffic to your site you won’t be successful. You can rest assured that most of your traffic will mostly be from family and friends or those few persons that stumble upon your site by mistake. Having a website with no marketing strategy is almost as ineffective as not having a website at all.
So how do you drive traffic to your site? Well there is a method to this madness and the trick is to rank high on Google and other search engines. It is about figuring out how to create a buzz for the audience you are targeting so that they stop on your site and there are ways to do this. If you know someone who can help you with creating this marketing strategy, have them assist you with this. Remember, launching a website with no marketing strategy will only bring visitors that already know you. The intent is to get people that wouldn’t otherwise know you exist to visit your site through high rankings and various techniques. There are tactics to doing this more accurately.
A THIRD mistake that authors or writers make is to create URLs that are only specific to their book. This is all good and well for promoting a particular book; however, it doesn’t really help in marketing or branding your name as an author. In addition, if a person has never heard of your book, how would they know to go to this particular URL to purchase the book? They wouldn’t.
By creating book-specific URLs, you are missing the opportunity to brand your name as an author. Once the book has exhausted its “buzz” shelf life and the URL is no longer in the forefront, it will be forgotten. However, if you brand yourself with your name, people will come to your site because of your various writing materials and the opportunity for your readers to find previous books never really goes away. Keep in mind that “shallow” book URL campaigns serve very little purpose to helping you brand yourself as an author. The objective should be for readers to remember your name so that they continue coming to your site for new and previous books.
The FOURTH mistake is that many authors just don’t give much forethought to a marketing strategy before they launch their book. This is an area where authors fail because they don’t realize that having a marketing strategy in place is as important as writing the next great book. This involves many things such as understanding your audience and how to target those people. Most importantly, building your audience at least six months to a year before a book is launched is a necessity. If you don’t do this it’s a missed opportunity.
Becoming a best-selling author takes a lot of skill, lots of luck, and just maybe you may be put on a best sellers list, which helps to create some literary noise. But this isn’t too likely to happen without a great marketing strategy in place. If you don’t recognize this then your success will be limited.
Pushing your book in front of large audiences is how you make sales, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s done just through book signings, trekking to various conferences, and being on Facebook and Twitter. Sure, all these variables assist in creating some hype for your book, but it will not bring in the large audiences that a successful author website can bring. Recognizing that all of these things go hand-in-hand is key to successful book sales.
In summary, if your marketing strategy does not include a succinct and good web presence, a plan to increase your internet traffic, then you’ve quite possibly missed many sales. You can always contact us at The Latino Author and we’ll be glad to provide some insight as we currently assist authors with getting a marketing strategy in place to enhance their traffic.
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