Do You Just Want to Find What Actually WORKS to Sell More Books?

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hello and welcome to the broadcast. My name is Shelly Hitz and I'm an author coach that helps you sell more books without being pushy and self promotional. And that I actually help you save time by, by really setting up a system that is automated and will work for you 24 7. So today I was on a one on one call with an author and I said, okay, tell me, what is your main goal right now? And you know what she told me? She's like, I just wanna find what will work. I just wanna find that. Almost like that easy button or the magic bullet, the thing that's just gonna work easy, you know, I think that's a common feeling for a lot of authors. Have you ever felt that way? I know I have. It's like I just want to be able to know, okay, is there a software? Is there something that I can do? Is there a specific strategy? Just tell me what to do and I will do it because I want to sell more books and products. Yeah. So my one on one client, she was saying, yes, I just want to know what works. The thing is, she's a new author, a children's book author, and she's doing all the right things. She's setting up her author platform, she is building her email list, albeit slowly. She's getting reviews for her book. She has over 30 reviews now for her book. She's doing all the right things. And yet she's getting a little bit discouraged. And I know that it's a common theme, you know, that discouragement, the disillusionment, the things like, oh my goodness, like, I just want to give up. This is too hard. I just want it to be easy. And so I had to just stop and encourage her for a minute. I had to stop and just encourage her that she was doing all the right things, she was on the right path. But you know, the one mistake I saw her making, and I see so many authors making the same mistake.

You want to know what it is?

The mistake that I saw her making and I see many people making, I have made it over and over again, is the bright shiny object syndrome. Have you heard of that? It's where it's like, oh, I want to see how I can get into libraries, how I can get my book into libraries. Oh, I think I want to see how I can use Pinterest to get buzz for my book. Oh, I think I'm going to do a Goodreads giveaway. Oh, I think I'm going to do a blog tour where I contact a bunch of bloggers and have them review my book. Oh, I think I'm going to try Facebook advertising. Oh, I think I'm going to try fill in the blank. Have you ever been there? And it's just like you are always trying something new but you're never giving it enough time to really see the results from any one thing or focusing enough on one thing to really see the impact. It's so true. It's like boom, boom, boom, boom. And there's so many things we can get distracted by. I have a five day author platform challenge. It's completely free. You can sign up for it@shellyhits.com platformchallenge and I really lay the foundation of what I believe you need to do in order to sell more books. On day two, we dive deep into who is your target audience. Because if you don't know that you are going to be like shooting in the dark. It's like you're marketing blindfolded. And then I talk to you about all the different ways to really build a strong author platform. But it takes time.

To be honest. There is no easy button. There is no instant way. I mean, unless you get featured on BookBub. Because she was talking to me about BookBub today and she's like, I've heard it has really good results. And I said it does. But Even if you're one of the 5% of authors that gets featured featured on BookBub as a promotion, what are you going to do after that? What are you going to do after that promotion ends? You need to have that author platform in place, need to have that long term strategy. And I know it's not a popular topic, I know it's not popular for me to say this. It would be more popular for me. Popular, you know, my little air quotes. It would be more popular for me to say, use this little software tool and use this thing, go get this one thing and it's going to just skyrocket your sales. Yeah.

But I want to be honest with you, I'm not about the hype. I'm about what really works. And what really, really works is building an author platform, building your tribe, building a place for your lifers or your audience to find you and to gather, building a way for you to develop a relationship with your audience. And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to Take all your time. There are certain systems that you can set up one time and then you can use those systems 247 to continue building your tribe. That's what we're walking through. Step by step within authoraudienceacademy.com this month was all about setting up your lead magnet, which is basically building your email subscriber list. We have a challenge each month and I have a little prize for the different finishers of the challenges and each month. But this month already, four of my authors have finished setting up their lead magnets. Some have been with me for over a year. I launched a little over a year ago. They've been with me from the beginning and never set this stuff up. They finally have done it. If you just really want some step by step help and some motivation, encouragement, join us@authoraudienceacademy.com I'd love to have you, but I just want to encourage you today. If you're feeling discouraged, if you're feeling disillusioned, if you're just wondering, like, I just want to find something that works. What I had recommended to my one on one client and what I recommend to you is choose one thing to focus on for the next X amount of days or X amount of weeks. So maybe you're going to choose the next 90 days. I'm going to really focus on this one strategy. It doesn't mean you can't do the other things too, but. But it just means that you're going to have laser focus. You're going to give the time and energy that you have available. Everyone has different amounts of time and energy that they can invest in marketing. So if it's an hour a week, if it's an hour a day, if it's five hours a day, for that amount of time, you're like, I'm going to focus on this. She's a children's book author. So I said it might be a really good idea to focus for the next six weeks on really getting your book into libraries, talking and communicating and connecting with librarians, learning the process, seeing if they will buy their books, maybe doing library appearances, doing some things like that. That's a great place for her as a children's book author. For you, it may be something different. It may be that you've decided, I want to do a podcast tour and you're going to get, you know, reach out and try to get featured on as many podcasts as you can in the next 21 days or the next month or the next 90 days. What is it for you? What is that one thing you could focus on? Maybe it's just you need to have a focus this week. Maybe it's not six weeks or 90 days, but what's your focus going to be this week? Maybe your focus can be to finally get your lead magnet set up, finally start building your subscriber list, your tribe, your audience, your lifers. And many of my members, they were able just to simply set it up in an hour and a half. They'd been putting it off for months and months and months. Say, okay, if I get invited to this webinar for this thing or this training for this thing, I'm going to keep my blinders on for these next four weeks and I'm going to set up my author platform. I'm going to improve conversions on my, my book page or I'm going to. You can rewrite your book description. What is it for you? I mean, there are a million different things that we could be doing, but what is that 20% that's going to give you the 80% of the results? What is that thing? And the only way you're going to know is by focusing, doing it, following through and learn from people who have been there. Hire a coach, be part of a program. It doesn't have to be mine. You can join someone else's program where you know they've had success in the areas you want success, because success leaves clues. You can follow their systems and their strategies and it's a shortcut to success. It doesn't mean that it's always going to work the same way for every single person, but that's another option as well. All right, So I want you to be encouraged. I want you to keep taking those small, consistent actions over time that will yield the biggest results. I have a website optimization checklist. All of my trainings that are free are available on my website. If you're interested in that website checklist, you can find it at shellyhits.com free and it will take you to that page. You can find it. Sign up. Awesome. I love it. I love that. It's very specific. It's about your author platform and investing into some of these things now are going to yield results long term. Sometimes we just want those instant results. And you can get instant results through paid advertising, through being featured on blogs, on podcasts, through speaking. Speaking is one of the best ways to sell books because people are getting to know, like and trust you. So there's definitely those quick wins you can get all the time. But I want you to at least think of one thing you can do. Focused action that will move your marketing forward. So my closing thought for you today, my take action tip for you today is brainstorm a list of all the different marketing tasks and then prioritize it. Prioritize what would be the biggest impact tasks and find at least one thing that you can focus on over the next period of days or weeks. Set a goal. Set a specific goal of when you're going to get this task done. In the next four weeks, I'm going to go through the website optimization checklist and optimize my website for capturing email subscribers. That's a very specific goal. It's a very doable goal and it's something that any of you can do. It may also be something completely different than that. It could be by the end of the month, I'm going to launch my podcast. I'm going to have three, three episodes pre recorded and I'm going to have a giveaway scheduled so that it builds buzz for that podcast launch. It could totally be something like that. Whatever it is that you're focused on, you're doing, I'd love to hear from you. You can tweet me, Elliehits. We can kind of talk a little bit more. You can also find me at facebook.com authoraudience I'd love to hear what you guys are doing, how you're taking action and how you're moving that needle for forward. I like to say it's all about inching forward. It's not always about those big leaps. If you can just keep taking that consistent action week after week after week, it will yield results. So thank you so much for being here with me today and I will see you next time. Bye Bye. See you guys.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.