How to Sell 1000 Books a Month

Hey, Kingdom writers. Shelly hits here and this is a really special episode. My friend Susan Neal has written a brand new book, how to sell 1,000 books a month. And the subtitle is Strategies to Boost Book Sales. And you know, some of you may think, oh, that's too hard for me. That's not possible for me. But you know what, what if you started selling 10 books a month and you've been at one book? Maybe you start selling a hundred books a month and then it gradually snowballs and grows. But this book is something that can help you whether or not you're writing a book and building your platform or and going to be using it to launch a book or you've already published books. The reason I recommend Susan Neal, and you know, I don't recommend very many people, I'm very picky about that. But Susan was part of our academy and it was Christian Book Academy that helped her publish her very first book. And now she is just doing amazing things. She's the CEO of Christian Indie Publishing association, you might know that as sipa. She also is the CEO of Christian Authors Network, Christian Indie Awards, and Cannes Marketing Awards. And then she's the director of the Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference. So she has just exploded in the Christian writing field. And I'm just honored that she was connected with us and got her start in publishing at our academy. So definitely check out this episode, get a copy of her book and get connected with Susan. She's an amazing person and I hope that you enjoy this episode.

Hello, I am Susan Neal and I am thrilled to be with you here today to discuss book marketing. So first, I want to put a plug in for Shelly Hits. I started my career in 2015 by joining her academy. The next year, 2016, I published two books and in 2017 I published a third book. It's been a decade later I published 10 books and eight, eight of them are self published. First, I want to tell you that it is not one size fits all approach, okay to book marketing. Because you may be an introvert and getting up in front of a camera would just petrify you. You'd be so scared. So I believe in marketing based on your personality. If you're an extrovert like me or Shelly, we get right up in front of the camera. We are fine with that. We're fine with radio, podcasts, television shows. In fact, we probably prefer them because it's quicker for us to do that than it is to write an entire blog or magazine article. So for those of you who are Introverts. Get that Christian marketing guide and that book that has so many resources in it and look up one want magazines that you would do well with marketing and writing an article for it. And then go ahead and pitch to them and see if you can go ahead and get your article published with them. How about guest blogging? Sure. There's people you know that have guest blogs. I'm sure there are loads of different opportunities for you to guest blog. And if you're an introvert, that that might be something that you really would be more inclined to do rather than being in front of the camera.

And book marketing is not about one single approach, it's a layered approach. For example, with my book in 2018.

My book tactic for seven steps to get off sugar and Carbohydrates, which is was to write one guest blog post, one magazine article and be on one radio or podcast show per month, every month for a year. And that's the book that I sell thousands of books of. In 2020 I changed my approach because I was able to get on lots of magazines and guest blogs, but I didn't get it on as many podcasts. So I thought, you know what, I am going to try to be on a whole bunch of podcasts in 2020. Boy, was that perfect timing.

And so I was on 30 podcasts in eight months and sold 7,000 books. And so I teach all about that in my course how to book a Podcast Tour.

Next. This journey of book marketing, it takes time. You can't do everything at once. It's a journey. Enjoy the journey with the Lord. Because being a Christian author is like being called by God. Be a pastor. It really is. You have no idea how many lives your words will influence people for the kingdom of God. You won't know till you get up to heaven. So be sure and.

Take time. Spend that time with the Lord. Know what he is guiding you to do. And then I believe doing a 12 month marketing plan. In fact, in my book how to Sell a Thousand Books a month, there's 12 chapters and in the 12th chapter we go through and have you fill out your 12 month marketing plan. You can't do everything at once. But does your book have 50Amazon book reviews? If not, then try and get more reviews. Next, do you have a free gift on your website so that readers can go ahead and give you their email and then you can write to them in an email sequence. You see a newsletter or an email sequence, it lets the reader get to know who you are. For example, I lost my health over a decade ago. And that's how I started writing healthy living books. So I recorded a seven minute video and explained what my 10 medical diagnoses were and my two surgeries that I had in like 15 months and how I lost my health. Well, that video I embedded and put it inside an email so that my email subscribers could understand more about me and the experiences that I had and how I can help them to overcome health challenges.

Now marketing it, I had to overcome the thought that it's, it's not about me, it is about furthering the kingdom of God and how I can serve my readers. So I had to get over the fact that.

Marketing and publicizing and, and pushing information about my book and stuff is not about me. It's about God. It's about the words that he gave me to write. It's about the mission he gave me the mission to inspire others to improve their health so they can serve God better. And I've done that through my books. Here's one of them. Eat God's Food. A Kid's Guide to healthy eating. Another one, 12 Ways to Age Gracefully. So I've taken the knowledge I have as a registered nurse with an MBA and a Master's in health science and put it into my books to serve the other fellows of the Kingdom of God. Others, other readers.

So let's move on to a question here. So.

How.

What, what is a marketing element that most authors miss when they have a new release? Well, you know what that is? It's sending a press release. So you should write a press release about your book and you should send it to local newspaper as well as regional newspapers. It really helps if the newspaper has a faith section like this one did. See, local author publishes.

Another award winning health book. Who knows, you know, you could get into the newspaper. So that's something that many authors don't think about doing.

Let's look at another marketing element. Okay. When you have a book launch team, how many people should you try and get on your launch team? You should try and get a hundred people because about only 50% of them write a review. So I went through my old church directories, any rosters I had of old Bible studies, asked my nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, lots of friends on Facebook groups and I would just keep asking and asking till wealth. A couple years ago with my Eat God's Food A Kid's Guide to Healthy Eating book, I was able to get 75 people on my book review team. 35 of them wrote a Review. So that was really great, but I had to keep going with trying to get 50. So again, try and get 100 people listed on your book launch team. You ask them politely if they would like to. They would like to help you with launching your book. It's simple. All you need to do is buy the inexpensive ebook on launch day and write a review and make it really simple. I don't ask them to do a lot of stuff. And so that is another tip of what you can do.

Okay, here's another one. How can an author get loads of marketing interviews? It's through attending the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. So that convention is.

Annually in February and it is the largest amount of Christian media at any conference. It's amazing. Over the course of three days, there are 6,000 people who attend. It is absolutely amazing. You can get, as an author, you can get a.

Official nrb, that's National Religious Broadcasters Convention book signing, where your name and your book title is in the program for 6,000 people to see. The first time I went, I had a line that was backed up like 20ft long for 45 minutes, which was absolutely amazing. I felt like, oh my gosh, I finally have arrived as an author. And that's how I landed my first television interviews. I simply dropped off my media kit. My media kit is a beautiful two page front and back, one sheet that has my book cover on it, my bio, a description of the book, endorsements, interview questions, and, you know, contact information, everything that media would need to go ahead and interview me. So I went to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention with the Christian Indie Publishing association, and that is how I got my first television interviews. And now I'm able to contact those television stations. In fact, I was just interviewed earlier this month on two different stations that I had made contact with through nrb. So if you're interested in that opportunity and coming with me, I have a booth for authors where you get to do your book signings. And you can find out that information@christian publishers.net christianpublishers.net and just click the trade show button.

Okay. How can an author increase their website visitor rate? So this is a multifaceted marketing approach as well. But if you have different links, like remember the link for a blog, a link for a magazine article, a link for a podcast, a link for a television show, all those links then link back to your blog. Then with search engine, your blog gets higher up on search engine optimization. Now to increase your visits even more, if you write your own blog and have new content once or twice a month on your own blog that brings more visitors. And then the secret sauce is creating a couple of Pinterest pins that you add to your blog. And then you put those pins on Pinterest and then you have someone in Pinterest click it and it goes right to your website.

Do you know that I had more people visit my blog through my Pinterest pins than any other social media? In fact, more than all of them combined. So remember Pinterest.

Should authors enter book contests? Absolutely they should. So when my book 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates won the Sala Award, it.

Went from having 50 sales a month to 250 sales a month. So for all your books, be sure and add an emblem. And.

I also like to go into Amazon and write in all capital letters on the first line of the book description that it is a Sala Award winner or Golden Scrolls award winner, whatever type of winner it may be, that is always very, very beneficial.

And lastly, what should every author do to market their book? And that is to create an annual plan? And I'll tell you what, who has the best annual plan is Shelly Hitz. I take her annual planning course every year and have for the past 10 years it really has been instrumental in me.

Sitting down with the Lord. Okay, what should I work on this year? Lord? Getting a theme verse for a Bible verse to focus on for the year, getting a theme word, reviewing what I accomplished the previous year, determining what worked well and what didn't, purging what did not go well, and then decide, oh, we got to celebrate. You always have to celebrate. So have a nice dinner with your family, celebrate your accomplishments and then look at the next 12 months. Shelly always taught that in three month increments, you look at your goals in three month increments. So first quarter, second quarter, third quarter.

And then you go after you have figured all of that out throughout the year, at the end of each quarter, you want to go back to your marketing plan and you want to check off what you accomplished. You may say, okay, I'm not going to get to this one this year. I'll move it to the next year. Or maybe you'll just move it to the second quarter and then you do that every single quarter to the end of the year. It has been a marvelous approach to buy book marketing. Thank you Shelley for developing the plan it day course. It is excellent. So my name is Susan Neal and you can find out about my healthy living books@susanu the letter u neal n e a l.com if you would like to find out more about the Christian Indie Publishing association or going with me to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Please see Christian Publishers.net now. Have a blessed day and happy marketing.