The Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book - Lessons Learned - 2016 - 2017

The Zbooks.co Successful Authors Podcast

Lessons Learned in 2015 and 2016 plus the Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book

Well my friends, I couldn't get an interviewee on time -this- time, so here I go alone! 

Hope you like it and remember it's available on iTunes HERE.

                                             

Show notes:

Top Ten Ways to Market Your Book

1. Word of mouth - or better said "Influencer Outreach"

I ask you this:

What's easier, tweeting something 10,000 times, or getting an influencer to send one message to his/her 10,000 followers?

Steps

1- Start a spreadsheet.

2- Make columns: Influencer Name, Influencer Website, Influencer Email, His/Her top 5 posts.

You are building your DREAM TEAM here of the top influencers in your niche. The people you would most LOVE to have promote YOU!

3- JOIN HIS / HER MAILING LIST!

4 - DO one of their tutorials.

5- Report the results to him/her.

Basically you must develop a relationship (at least a cyber or online relationship) with this person and help them. If you do one of their tutorials and show some good results, they will LOVE to show you off on their website and then promote your book too!

Advantages

You get promoted to an influencer’s list of 10k+ !

Disadvantages

None - aboslutely none.

2. Publish a free book or cheatsheet on amazon which is linked to your “full” book.

This is the most awesome technique — and my favorite method. As long as your free book is on amazon, it is "sitting" there collecting leads!

Steps

Go here: I will be teaching this in a live 7 Day Challenge - sign up here! !

Sometimes called the “perma free” model, you publish a book or preliminary material for free and it acts as the tip of your book funnel. Funneling readers to your other — paid books.

Advantages:

• You can test your titles and keywords on the actual platform(!) before you pubish the full book.
• You BUILD your list before launch — for FREE!
• As long as your free book is on Amazon you are getting free traffic to your blog or book landing page!

Disadvantages:

• None! What are the disadvantages of publishing a book? If it bombs just unpublish it!

3. Your own website/book landing page/author page - A MUST!

Get the SEO right and you will have a constant stream of views - for FREE.

Get the offer right, and you will have a constant income!

This is actually the preferred method if you are publishing a high value information product. E.g. Pat Flynn sold his book on his blog which helped people pass the LEEDS exam. He made 8,000 in the first month!

And our very own Zbook’er Jean-Yves Ponce does the very same, and sells his book as a pdf on his website.

Steps

See this post and podcast

http://www.zbooks.co/2015/11/the-most-awesome-seo-blueprint-ever_9.html

Advantages:

• You don’t need to promote yourself. Your audience is Google and Bing and all the other search engines.
• You can charge a MUCH HIGHER price than if you put your book on Amazon. Pat Flynn charges $24 for his .pdf!

Disadvantages:

• It is very tricky. SEO is a pseudo-science and has a HUGE learning curve.
• You are totally at the mercy of Goog’s whims. They change their search algorithm constantly. If you think you can game them — you are definitively wrong.

4. Facebook ads - still the KING of paid advertisement

This is my new favorite method, and as you know by now, the subject of my signature course Facebook Ads for Authors Crash Course.

You can see the posts on the blog, and soon the guest post on Kindlepreneur.com .

Long story short:

I use these to build up my list for launch, about 3 months in advance —  and they work like magic!  

Once you get the targeting right, it’s like turning on a faucet!

Steps

Get your FREE training here!

http://bookmaster.co/fafacc-a/

Advantages:

• You build your list FAST!
• Your list stays “warm” and you have high open rates.
• You can reach a lot of people around the world at the flip of a switch.

Disadvantages:

• It costs money, -BUT- this is almost not a disadvantage; because when you are A-B testing your ads, you get subscribers even from the less successful ads = awesome!

5. Email drops

Everyone is going to tell you BookBub here, but BookBub costs over $300 AND - does not accept any book without 75 reviews.

My platform of choice: BuckBooks. As you saw in my last mail, it works!

My recommendation:

Do a Buck Books promo, and when you finally get 75 reviews on your book, THEN apply at BookBub.

Nothing can beat BookBub’s list — they have over a MILLION subscribers!

Steps

7. Blog Tours

This is my next conquest, and I will be trying this for Be Freud and report back to you.

For now, here is an awesome article with the best resources:

http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2014/02/greg-strandberg/

8. Forums "Arbitrage"

This could be any forum, everyone thinks of Facebook, but I have found FB to be the LEAST effective.

The most effective is a forum for your niche, like The World's Largest Poetry Site or the Kboards (go there first!)

Reddit is supposed to be very good too but...

Pinterest is gaining on them all and leaving them in the dust, check out Nick Loper's latest podcast with a very successful blogger who is really acing it with FREE pinterest methods.

9. Tools

KdRoi is very good here, it submits to over 30 sites!

Wesly Atkins the mastermind behind KdSpy and KdRoi is constantly updating the tool and adding sites. As it is, when I use the tool for my funky non-fiction books I get at least 10 or more sales.

That’s not ground-breaking, but it’s not chopped liver either.

10. Hybrid technique

ALL of the above or a combination thereof!

If you want results NOW as in really right now — TODAY:

I recommend doing #2, #4, and #5.