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How To Generate Repeat Sales With Your Self-Published Book

June 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The most valuable thing you can collect if you are selling your book from a website when a visitor comes to your book’s sales site is not their money… it’s their email address and/or other contact information.

If you have no clue how to create a website, do not worry about feeling intimidated. It is actually a lot easier than you think. There is a simple site that teaches people all about creating websites for free at www.LissaExplains.com

You can also learn a lot by doing a search for a phrase at Google.com like “how to make a website” and “free html tutorial.” You will find tons of very good free training that way and can learn how in no time. Anyone can learn the basics of creating a website in just one day.

Ok, back to collecting your website visitors contact information.

I know, I know you’re probably saying… “I’m an author. I want to write my book, sell my book and become a recognized expert. WHY do I need to get their contact information?”

The simplest answer is: Because you will NOT become wealthy from the sale of your book. You will become wealthy and achieve celebrity status through the ongoing relationship you build with your readers.

If you don’t know who they are, how can you continue to keep in touch with them – and they with you.

If you’re an expert on the subject and they already have your book, don’t you think they’ll want MORE information and MORE books from you?

ABSOLUTELY!

Your book makes you an expert on the subject, your interactions and relationships will propel you to a recognized expert and position you for long-term success – not just a one-hit wonder.

The service you need to collect email and contact information and automatically respond to the person is called an Autoresponder.

There are paid autoresponders and free autoresponders. Normally the free autoresponders paste their own marketing message at the bottom of the emails you send out.

Not the best scenario, obviously, but if you want to do this will limited or no upfront investment then a free autoresponder service will work just fine until you start to see profits coming from your book.

The service I use is a paid service called Aweber. It is located at www.aweber.com

Do your own research and find a company that meets your needs. I recommend this service because it’s been around for a long time and many of my high quality marketing friends recommend this to their clients and wouldn’t continue to do so if it was a shoddy service.

What should you do with your autoresponder service when you get it?

1) You should place at least 1 or 2 “sign up” boxes on your book’s sales page. You can offer an ongoing “newsletter” or “ezine” (as it’s called online). Or you can create a “special report” related to the subject of your book and offer it free to anyone who signs up.

The purpose of this sign up is to capture “visitor” information. This way even if the visitor doesn’t order your book, you still have their contact information and can keep in touch to promote your book and yourself to them on an ongoing basis.

Maybe they won’t buy your book, but because of your newsletter or special report, they might recommend your book to family and friends.

2) After PayPal.com and before your download page.

When looking at PayPal.com, we saw that after they took the person’s payment for your book, they would send them back to your website.

The first page the person – now a client – should see is a “register” page. This page can simply ask for their name and email or you can have optional fields like address, phone number etc. Obviously the more information they are willing to provide the better for future contact with them.

This is a different list than those in #1. #1 is a list of people who visited your book’s website who may or may not have purchased your book. These people are registered buyers.

History proves that it’s far easier to get current clients to order more from you than trying to get someone who hasn’t already ordered. Both lists are valuable – but this one is the most valuable to you for ongoing success.

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Get Ya’ Money Right: The Truth About Publishing

June 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

What up Playa? By now you should be getting the big picture. There ain’t no business like show business. But here’s the problem, you keep putting on the show, but you ain’t handling the business. If you are like many of the young artist coming-up in the game, you probably don’t have a strong grasp on the Music Industries many rules and regulations. You might have read an article here or there, or even picked up a book or two about the music business, but chances are that unless you’re a lawyer you probably didn’t understand it. Relax, I got your back. Look at me as sort of your music business guardian angel, here to help you add a little business to your show. Let’s face it, the music business is a well-oiled machine designed to do one thing, and that is make money. Throughout your career you will notice that at every corner you turn there is someone who is waiting to benefit from your talent and success. Regardless to how large you may become, you will never be able to completely eliminate the middleman. Go ahead and screw up your face if you want, but if you think you can cross out the middleman then you need to close your eyes and go back to La-La-Land, ’cause homie your still dreaming. Even when you become a Hip Hop mogul like Russell Simmons or P-Diddy, you still have answer to someone else, and they are usually making more money then you are. Alright, here is where I will stop myself because I am known for going off on a tangent about the many, many economic inequalities of the music business. So with no further delay, let’s talk about getting paid…

Get Your Money Right

Now that we have established other people are going to be making money off of your talents, lets focus on how you can begin to get your beak wet too. During the week I get a million and one emails with questions about the music business. The one question that comes up the most is, “what is Publishing and what does it have to do with me?” Publishing is quite a difficult topic; so I will explain it as simple as humanly possible. Sit down class and pay attention.

Publishing is money earned from the songs that you have written. This money comes from two separates sources.

Source #1: Mechanical Royalties-This is the money that record companies pay to the publisher for songs that have been mechanically recorded(pressed-up) on record or CD.

Source #2: Public Performance Income-Better known as performing rights, this allow others to use your music in different mediums such as; radio, t.v., movies, etc.

Pump the brakes, Playa! Your not entitled to all of the money, just a portion of it. Let me explain. All money made from music publishing is simple known as Publishing Royalties. Publishing royalties are broken down into two separate shares; publishers share and writers share. Think of the shares as a pie with two halves; the publishers side represents 50% of the pie and the writers share represents 50% of the pie, and together they represent 100% of Music Publishing Income.

The publisher is the party that collects both shares and then pays the writer’s share to the writer or writers of the song. The Publisher is the one who owns or controls the copyright of the song. This means that they have the rights to do with it as they please, such as licensing(renting) it out for movies, or sheet music. Also, granting permission to other singers to re-record it. At some point, you as a songwriter are going to have to deal with a Publisher on some level, whether you decide to self-publish or not. The main advantage to self-publishing is that your are the sole controller of your copyrights, but unless you have the time, energy, and resources to do what a publisher does, you better learn to play “Let’s Make A Deal.”

What a Publisher can do for you the Songwriter

• Copyright your songs so your butt is covered around the world.

• Make sure your songs are used in every imaginable medium, such as: radio, video games, downloadable ring-tones, movies, etc.

• Hook up manufacturing and distribution deals for music books and sheet music of your songs.

• Register your songs with collections agencies like BMI, ASCAP, SEASAC, and the Harry Fox Agency.

• Protect you from copyright infringers trying to steal your material by sampling, file-sharing, and bootlegging.

• Develop and Promote you as a writer.

• Negotiating licensing deals on your behalf

Your best bet is to set-up a co-publishing agreement with a large publisher; this way you will ensure that things will be done correctly, without you losing your mind in the process. There are far too many types of publishing agreements to get into detail, but you have to always agree to the deal you can live with. Think long-term and your money will grow, think short-term and the next song you write may be one for Food Stamps.

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Follow These Simple Steps to Book Publishing Success

June 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Let’s begin with the process that should commence before you write your first word. Begin by reading A LOT. Read both books you passionately love and books you can’t seem to make it past page five. Then figure out what the author did in the book you loved, and what was wrong with in the book you couldn’t finish. Write down these points so they are crystal clear to you. Read other people’s books for inspiration and to
discover what you should avoid as a writer.

The next step is to plan out your book. Narrow down your subject, and then divide it into chapters. Each chapter should address a specific aspect of the problem your book is going to solve. In each chapter, break the specific aspect down into several parts. This will help your readers take in your information a bit at a time instead of overwhelming them with every bit of information clogging up the pages until they feel like they’re about to go blind. It’s not quite spoon-feeding the information to your readers, but it’s close.

The next two steps are obvious. Write your book and then revise it. And then revise it again. And perhaps again. Of course, writing is extremely hard, and writing a book can seem like an impossible task. There are many books out there that give you guidelines to help you become familiar – and even love – the process of writing and revision. Find a number of books about writing. Better yet, find a number of books about writing the specific type of book you aspire to write. These can serve as roadmaps on your writing journey.

Once you’ve written your book and revised it at least twice, show it to someone else whose opinion you respect. If you’re lucky enough to know a good editor, see if you have something to barter for him or her to go through your manuscript. Or join a writing group and let the other members critique your work.

Then take all these ideas from other people, and revise your manuscript one last time. And then stop! Put down that pen! Get your hands off the keyboard!

One of the most important steps to actually producing a book is to know when to stop writing and tinkering with it.

You’ve finally written your book! Pop open the bubbly! Give yourself a night out on the town!

Okay, now that this necessary celebration is out of your system, what do you do next?

How to turn your book into Profits

Ebooks are a revolutionary way to publish your book without incurring the costs of print production. All you need is a relevant and targeted subject and some inexpensive software, and you can transform your manuscript into a book.

The problem, in terms of actually seeing any profits from your ebook, is that the market is overwhelmed with ebooks, and many of them are not worth the time it takes to download them. Just because the ability exists to easily produce an ebook, doesn’t make it good writing.

Make sure your book does not simply rehash old material. You will injure your credibility as an author by claiming to offer valuable new insights and disappointing your audience with material they’ve read a zillion times before. So spend enough time writing and revising your book to make sure it’s of the highest quality and presents the most current information. A good book will eventually sell itself; false claims about your book will make it extremely difficult to sell any future books you may write.

Assuming you have determined that you do indeed have a quality product that answers some question or need of your target audience with NEW information, how do you know how much to charge for it? Rule number 1: Set a price for your book equal to its value. An under-priced book will only give the impression that your book isn’t worth very much.

To figure out a fair price, estimate how much time you put into creating it and how difficult it was to transform the necessary information into understandable and engaging writing. Figure out how much your time and effort is worth, and then price it accordingly. The goal is for you to be adequately compensated for your talent, your time, and your effort.

Once you’ve figured out a price that is high enough to convey the value of the book, but not so high as to be out of the reach of your target audience’s mean budget, then it’s time to offer it for sale on your website. To attract sales, you will need to develop a promotional campaign, particularly if you are an unknown author.

There are multitudes of books about self-promotion that will guide you in your efforts. Choose a plan that is both creative and professional. Learn how to write a catchy yet informative press release, and send copies of your ebook to sites that specialize in ebook reviews.

Learn how to write powerful sales copy, or hire someone to write it for you. This is an essential. You absolutely need excellent sales copy to sell your book. Make sure the copy includes all the reasons your target audience needs your book, and the benefits they will derive from buying it.

Use graphics in your promotional materials. Beautiful graphics have the power to instantly convey the quality and value of your ebook. Graphics can also convey the amount of valuable information the book contains, and your careful attention to detail. Professional graphics sell professional books. They reassure the customer that the product is what it claims to be.

Consider excerpting chapters for articles. You can offer these titbits for free on your website as a sort of demo of your book. Include an order form for your ebook at the end of the excerpted articles.

Finally, when you set-up your download link, make sure to simplify the process. It’s a good idea to offer a few bonuses that make your book even more enticing to purchase, but make sure the bonuses are valuable and high quality. Too many bonuses that are basically a load of useless stuff will compromise the impression your audience has of your ebook. The goal is to convey to your audience that they are getting a quality product for a good deal. That means applying restraint, especially when it comes to adding bonus items. Too much free stuff offered diminishes your credibility.

Make sure your book is a quality product. Make sure it is relevant and current. Develop an effective marketing plan that includes excellent sales copy and excerpted articles. Then offer your book for sale, and wait for your audience to discover you!

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