Self Promote and Succeed Chapter 19: What Should I Do If My Book Isn’t Selling?

Chapter 19 what should I Do if My Book Isn't Selling? This chapter is devoted to something that happens to nearly all authors. At some point your book stops selling. It hits cricketsville. Time to scrap it and move on to the next thing, right? Well, maybe writing a new book will almost certainly make your past work sell when you market the new book. I can't tell you how many times a talk or interview about self publish and succeed is generated sales for my previous two books. It happens all the time. But let's not give up on your book that's collecting dust just yet. You've put a lot of time, money and energy into making your book a quality product, a calling card, or a tool that helps you achieve your personal career or business goals. It'd be a shame not to leverage your book to its full potential. In his book, perennial seller Ryan Holiday writes, no one can guarantee that your project will be a success, but it can be safely said that if you quit on it before your audience does, it's guaranteed to fail. If you create a really great book with a clear audience and an offer that should appeal to that audience, there's plenty you can do to get your sales numbers up, and that starts with taking a hard look at your marketing strategy. This is a process we do for our clients at Book Launchers. As needed, we call it a zero sales audit and I'm going to teach you how to do it too. Here's my step by step guide for how to analyze where things are going wrong with your sales numbers and how to fix them. If you run ads, the ad data gives you some of the information you need. If not, use your own judgment. Step 1 Metadata first, look at your metadata. To begin, focus on your keywords. Did you pick the right ones for your book? Or maybe you did initially, but the dial has moved since then and now they need a refresh. Maybe they aren't what buyers are searching for right now. My favorite tool to check out keywords is Publisher Rocket, but there are other tools like kdspy, Keyword Surfer and Google Keyword Planner. If you need more help, head back to chapter nine to review how to make the most of your keywords. You can update your book description and the actual keyword boxes, but don't go wild changing everything. I highly recommend you change one keyword or two Macs at a time and then give it a few weeks to see what happens. If you change a bunch of things all at once, you won't be able to identify the change that made the impact. Second, review the categories under which you chose to list your book. Use Publisher Rocket to see which categories your book appears in on Amazon or or try the website bklnk.com that's not a typo, it's just a really weird website link. Did your book get moved to a poor performing or off topic category without your knowledge? It happens. Also, look at how your categories themselves sell. If you ended up in a weird category, contact KDP support to adjust the category if it's on Amazon. Alternatively, if the category sells tremendously well, there may be a ton of competition that's burying your book. It may simply be that your book needs to be moved to a new category or two where it can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. If adjusting things here solves your problem, wonderful. If not, move along to Step two. Step two Amazon Ad Performance Next, how are your Amazon ads performing? Remember, Amazon's Author Dashboard gives you a wealth of useful sales data. I recommend having at least 90 days worth of AD data on hand for analysis. If you're having trouble with sales and want to see if something isn't clicking, so to speak, with your ads. This allows you to get a better sense of how the ads really perform and lets you draw reliable conclusions. First, are you getting impressions and clicks? Impressions refers to the number of times your ad is displayed and hopefully viewed when it gets clicked on or not. If you're getting impressions but not clicks, the first thing to look at is your book cover. How does your cover compare to others within your same categories or your desired categories? When you're comparing covers, look at the quality of the COVID design and commonalities in design elements like imagery and text. Are the images and text on your cover compelling and eye catching? If you find that your cover doesn't stack up to its competition, it it might be time for a cover redesign. Alternately, maybe you're getting clicks but no conversions. Actual sales to people who visit your book's page or who click on your ads. If this is the case, I recommend taking a hard look at your Amazon product page first. Look to see if you should make changes to the book's description. Does the description accurately sell the book and clearly lay out its hook? If not, start there. Next, are you using a quality author bio and photo? Compare your bio and photo to those of other authors in your category. If you're not sure, it's also worth looking at the book's price compared to the other books in its category. If it's set too high or too low compared to the competition, that could be a problem, look at your Books Also bought section. This is a good way to see who purchased your book and their reading interests. If those interests don't seem to align with your book, make sure you're targeting the right reader in your marketing. You need to teach Amazon to present your book to your ideal reader. Also, be sure to double and triple check to make sure there are no formatting, image, link or text errors on the book page. A typo or a broken link can be a real turn off for some bookshoppers. Read your reviews because this will often appear in the negative comments. Adding nicer and more compelling images or encouraging readers to include video clips to the page can be helpful. Finally, look at adding endorsements or editorial reviews. This can be a big boost to your book's credibility. Having at least three endorsements or editorial reviews is a good place to start. Of course, the other big thing to look at when auditing your book page is your reviews. The book marketing experts at Written Word Media have this to say about the importance of reviews. In our research, we found that the number of reviews is more important than the overall average review rating. As long as your average rating is over 3.5 stars. This means having 25 reviews with an average rating of 4.0 is better than having 5 reviews with an average rating of 5.0 stars. Increasing your number of reviews is the number one thing that converts ads to sales. That's because a high review count helps convince other readers who are deciding between your book and someone else's that yours is the one they want to buy. If everything covered under these first two steps seems really solid but your book still isn't selling, it's time to look beyond your marketing data and into how you have been performing. Step three your Design and Product Page Take a look at the design elements to your book, from your cover to your description to your A content. They should all work together as a cohesive brand and deliver the value of your book to the potential buyer. How does your cover compare to others in your category, particularly the best sellers? Does your book description have keywords and sell in a succinct and memorable way? Have you optimized your Amazon product page, including your Amazon Author Central page, your editorial reviews, a content, and more? Look at your book and the product page as a potential buyer would and make sure it's got everything it needs to convince readers your book is for them. Interviews Sometimes when an author lands a lot of media and podcasts but their book isn't selling, we review their interviews. Often we find interviews haven't aired yet because they have been recorded months in advance of their air date. In other cases, the author failed to create curiosity or sell massive value in their interview, so even if someone watched or listened, they were unlikely to take action to connect or get the book. Remember your big picture goal for your book if you want to be a speaker, are you treating every opportunity as if booking agents for Fortune 500 companies are listening? Are you interviewing well, being concise, telling great stories, using sound bites and building relationships with the hosts? Are you consistently driving traffic back to your website and your email list? Freebie Value Add Download and or your newsletter do you mention your book in interviews and clearly communicate its hook using carefully constructed and practiced sound bites? If your answer to any of these questions is no, then it's time to change your approach and drum up some new media coverage. At Book Launchers, we include mock interviews in our media training with our authors. This is something you can do on your own with a helpful friend, family member, or colleague. The more you practice being interviewed, the more comfortable and polished you'll be when the real interviews roll around. Check out my tips for interviews in Media and Podcasts back in chapter 13, if you haven't already. In a nutshell, here are some points to hit in every interview. Answer the interviewer's questions succinctly and make sure that what you're saying makes sense. Mention your lead magnet, that cool freebie download you offer on your website to hook readers into joining your email list. Find a good place to mention your book. If the interviewer doesn't bring it up, a good interviewer will, including the book's hook and your own expertise related to the book's topic. Mention where to find the book if folks are interested in buying it. Nailing your interviews is a great way to drum up sales and grow your platform. Speaking of your platform, step 5 author platform the next thing to look at if your book isn't selling is your platform as an author. Has it grown? If it has, are you maximizing the opportunity with those new contacts to sell books, get reviews, and spread the word? If you're not growing your platform, take a look at the elements in your platform, starting with your website. First up, how's your website looking? Do you have an easy to remember landing page homepage URL for media interviews? Are you offering that value add, free download or lead magnet we've discussed? If not, it's time to add one to help drive traffic to your site. And once you have people there, you want them to sign up for your email list, so make sure the way to sign up is easily accessible. I also recommend a dedicated page for your book on your website with easy links to buy your book. Check out my tips in chapter four for using a Universal Book link. This is such a helpful tool for selling online. And now back to that email list you've cultivated through your website. You're using it right regularly. How consistently are you distributing content? It doesn't necessarily have to be every week, but once you decide the right frequency of newsletters and emails, stick to it. Also, make sure that when you send out emails to your list, you promote your book regularly, including a link to buy the book. Finally, if you've been building one, how's your social media platform shaping up? For starters, make sure your book is showcased in bios headers or elsewhere on your pages. The most important thing here, though, is to make sure you consistently publish compelling content. I gave you some great tips, so head back to chapter five if you're stumped. One of my most effective tips is to batch content so that you store up a whole bunch of goodies to post on social media once or twice a week for the next month. If you're producing video content, and you should be, this is especially helpful because prepping to shoot video, hair, makeup, equipment setup, etc. Can suck up a lot of time. By shooting several videos at once, you maximize the value of that Setup time. STEP 6 Are you selling your book in the right place? Finally, it's worth considering whether you're trying to sell your book in the wrong places. A lot of authors ask me, is Amazon the best place to sell my book? The answer is maybe, but maybe not. If your book covers a very niche topic, for instance, it's possible that your target audience doesn't buy that type of book on Amazon. You may be barking up the wrong tree. If you've made Amazon your primary or only marketplace, your target readers may be more likely to buy the book at a conference or or receive it as a gift from a corporate sponsor who's placed a bulk order. As an example, we've seen some of our authors at Book Launchers write books on niche topics for a specific professional audience, for instance educators. These authors may do okay selling on Amazon, but they tend to do much better selling directly to people in their network who sometimes buy books in bulk. In this case, sales on Amazon can grow over time through ads, but selling in bulk to managers and executives can best reach a target audience that might not think they need to learn what's in your book until it's given to them by a higher up. Regardless of whether your book topic is niche or broad or somewhere in between, it's always worth considering other channels. Chapter 16 gives you a lot of great information on where to look, including live events, panels, conferences, author readings or Q&As and speaking engagements. Ad services other than Amazon can also be a great resource. BookBub is definitely one to look at. Niche industry magazines or websites related to your topic can also be great places to spend your ad budget. There's no one step that Will Solve Sales Issues I know you want the answer to your book sales issues. I wish I could tell you it was that easy. We had a client get angry with us well after launch because his book had sold only 350 books and almost all those sales were around launch. He didn't do anything we've talked about in this book to continue to make his book move. He believed that his book was so great it would sell itself and that we must have failed him. The reality is a lot harder to face. A book doesn't sell itself even if it's great, nor will only doing one thing be all it takes to make the vast majority of books reach their potential. It's almost always a combination of strategies executed over time that result in momentum. In fact, book sales may not be the most important metric. Self Publish and Succeed isn't selling thousands and thousands of copies a year, but it's helping to build book launchers. Just this week, three potential clients read it and that was the reason they wanted to work with us. That is what matters to me more than book sales, the impact the book has on book launchers. For fun, I asked each person how they came to read the book. One of them got the book free at an event where we gave out books at our booth. 1 found my YouTube channel when searching for how to turn a book into a course, ended up watching a bunch of videos, saw that there was a book and bought it from the video mention. The other one was searching for how to hire a ghostwriter, landed on an article on our website and saw we had an audiobook he downloaded and listened to it on the same day. The fact that they bought the book or got it for free doesn't matter to me as much as the fact that we had three potential authors come to work with us in one week as a result. And it wasn't any one path that got the book into their hands either. If your book isn't selling or getting you the results you want in your business, go back to what you aim to achieve most. What should you do with your book to get those specific results? Do you need to do more book specific promotions or should you be doing more corporate outreach or local speaking engagements? Your book is a wonderful tool and these steps I've outlined will help you diagnose where you may have issues. But sales is not the most important metric for most nonfiction authors. It's the impact you want to have and whether your book is getting you there or not. When in doubt as to what else will help you in all your initiatives, work on growing your review count and doing something every single day to move your book into the hands of people who can advance your goals. This could be putting out consistent weekly content through email and social media and making sure to feature your book and where folks can buy it. Focus on driving readers to your website with your freebie download and get them to sign up for your email list where you can eventually upsell them your book if they haven't bought it already. Also, try different places to sell your book to your target audience, whether that's on Amazon or a niche industry magazine or website. From there, tracking your numbers on an ongoing basis each month is incredibly helpful. This way you can continue to see how well you leverage marketing and media appearances and how well your overall marketing efforts work. You can do this through email subscriptions and open click through rates, Google Analytics media or partnership inquiries, reviews, social media subscribers and website traffic. If you regularly manage and update your pages and your metadata, you're already doing some of the maintenance work needed to boost your sales and reach. Keep it up and before you know it, you'll reach the goals you've set for your book and your business. Remember, until you have an audience of your own, the most powerful way you can supercharge your sales impact, platform and income is by connecting to other people's audiences. This means you have to get out of your author shell. Building your network of companies, brands, people and influencers who have your reader in their audiences will uncover massive opportunities over time. Keep reading and let's look ahead to what the future holds for you as an author. Chapter summary there are six key areas to review if your book is not selling 1. Amazon ad performance 2. Book design 3. Interview performance how well you leverage your media wins and other opportunities 4. Metadata 5. Platform leveraging whether you do enough 6. Sales locations the right places with the right product.