Thanks for visiting this page which lists tips for
you to write and market your books successfully and
covers possible reasons why many people may not be
buying your books.
Following my tips might help you increase your
sales.
General Book Writing Tips
• Before you get started writing a new book, outline
or write down notes on what you want to do on a flash
card or something else handy, especially if you have a
lot of material and ideas to organize and you don’t
want to omit anything important.
• Another nifty thing you can do is write notes in bold
type below the regular content for your book, and delete
those notes once you write about something pertaining
to those notes in your book or story.
• Finally, it helps a lot to plan ahead how you will begin
your next fiction novel or short story. On your first day
writing this feature, prepare to devote at least ten
minutes to the opening, as it can take lots of time to
figure out exactly what you want to write to make a
strong beginning.
• Write your books in Microsoft Word, pay attention to
prompts from the spell check feature and thoroughly
proofread your manuscript and make the necessary
edits before publishing your book if you don’t want to
hire an editor. I recently passed up buying a book
because it had too many errors in the first chapter,
notably words in which the first letter of a word was
separated from the other letters.
• For easier reading, use a 12-inch font, double-space
your paragraphs and keep the paragraphs short. Using
a tiny font plus writing too many long paragraphs and
making them single-spaced can cost you sales and in
some cases where you make a sale, it can lead to a
negative review.
• I don’t buy books which have too many long,
single-spaced paragraphs and 10-inch font, and thus
provide an unpleasant reader experience; the fact I
find most books like this is the main reason I have only
bought roughly five books online the last two years,
approximately. Remember that readers can preview
your book before buying it in most cases, especially on
Amazon.
• Make sure your readers won’t get confused. For
example, you shouldn’t create a scene where there’s a
confrontation and someone is attacked then jump to a
scene where the assailed person is hanging out with a
friend or partner unless you make it clear both of these
people are being held hostage by the person who made
the attack in the previous scene. Any confusion in your
book may lead to a missed sale, or in the event of a sale,
a negative review. If you opt to write a fiction book in
first person, let readers know who the main character
is at the beginning of the first chapter.
• Let some of your dreams guide your book creation
decision making. After waking up from a scary or
inspirational dream, consider whether you want to
write a novel or short story on it; if the answer is yes,
mentally go over everything you remember about the
dream immediately then do this again about five
minutes later to permanently lock in what you
remember. By following this step, you’ll always have
ideas for your next fiction books and prevent writer’s
block.
• Once you begin writing a book, maintain whatever
pace you’re comfortable with over the next several
weeks or so.
• Save your work during and after each writing
session. I save my work onto a file in my flash drive
then email a copy of what I have completed to date to
my email.
Action, art, blurb, research, enhanced creativity
• When you write a fiction novel or mini-novel, it’s
critical to provide action in your first chapter – the
closer to the beginning of that chapter, the better.
• Surely you’re familiar with the phrase “Don’t
judge a book by its cover”. Many readers do in fact
do this; if any book you self-publish doesn’t sell
well and you think your cover may have something
to do with this, change your book cover.
If you don’t want or can’t afford to pay someone to
design your cover, you can find artwork you can
download for commercial and personal use free of
charge through Shopify. Make sure the actions of
the characters or objects you choose for your cover
match the title and the story line of your book,
particularly if it’s fiction.
• Having a great cover can help get more readers
to notice your book online but they may not be
persuaded to look inside your book, let alone buy it,
unless you “sell” the book to them. Solid book
summary copy is just as important as the cover.
Your blurb, or book description, is the place to
encourage people to purchase your book.
The font for your title should be attractive
and easy to read all the way through.
Make this summary exciting and highlight the
strongest points of your book without giving
away too much information. Paying attention to
the back covers of traditionally published books
you read or browse can help you hone this crucial
book copy writing skill; it’s more critical to have
such a powerful blurb for fiction books than it is
for nonfiction, self-help books.
• Constantly conduct research to find out how
to have more author success.
• If you’re a fiction author who loves to watch
exciting movies, let them enhance your creativity.
After Reflecting on how the latest great movie you
saw began and ended and how it flowed between
the beginning and the end then going over the
scenes which were the most compelling, try to
incorporate this into one of your fiction works
without fully copying it.
Promotion
• If you don’t do anything to promote your books
you likely won’t get anywhere past a few sales at
the most and will therefore have wasted your
time writing the books. A powerful way to
promote your books is through your own author
website. I recommend creating your site through
WordPress.org and paying about $2.59 a
month to host your site through Dream Host.
Make sure to start an email list through your
author website and make sure to offer a free
content magnet such as a helpful self-help book
you have written to persuade visitors to give you
their email address and sign up for your
newsletter. If you opt to set aside a page to list
your books, I recommend splitting this page up
into multiple sections, putting each individual
book under the category it belongs to so that your
visitors/prospects have a better idea of what each
book you have written is about and don’t neglect
to make a purchase from you so easily because
they’re confused; this can also help attract more
visitors through Google classifying your works in
its search engine rankings based on the
heading/category you post your writings under.
• Other book promotion avenues include using
book promotion websites, promoting your works
to friends on social media and participating in
Facebook writers groups.
Where to publish your works
• If you wish to self-publish your work, submit
each book you complete to Bookrix or the
Amazon DTP program.
• If you wish to traditionally publish your work,
please read “Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book
publishers, Editors & Literary Agents” first.
• If you want to have your work turned into a
movie, acquire movie script writing software and
buy a copyright for your completed manuscript
through The Library of Congress or US
Copyright Office before submitting it to film
producers.
Selling your books in multiple formats
• The more avenues you provide readers to buy
your books, the better – this includes e-book,
paperback, hardback and audio book formats.
• I sell my books as e-books through Bookrix
and as paperbacks through Amazon DTP – this
program now enables authors to publish
hardbacks containing 75 to 550 pages.
Patience
• Anytime you self-publish a book, please make
sure there is a book preview or book sampling
option available to readers before linking to your
book and marketing it.
• It isn’t smart to risk losing a sale to someone
who can’t preview your book.
Avoiding unforgivable errors
• Some readers such as myself can’t let certain
errors slide.
• For example, you don’t want to get “their” and
“there” mixed up and use them in the wrong
context.
• An instance of this I found while reading a
book was “tears streamed down there faces”.
“Their” should have been used instead.
• Use “no more” in the proper way. For
example, you shouldn’t write “I don’t have no
more to give you” because that’s using a
double negative, and it’s a pet peeve of mine;
instead, write “I don’t have anything more to
give you”.
Avoiding profanity in your books
• If you use a cuss word, especially the F word,
just once in your books, that may cause some
readers to drop your book.
• You may be thinking, “What do I care if a
reader stops reading my book altogether? I got
his/her money and that’s all that counts.” Well,
that reader will likely buy no more of your books
and may even write a negative review.
• If I find too many instances of profanity in a
book I buy online, I’ll write a review containing
fewer than five stars.
These are the steps you can take for more author
success. To view my most relevant post on
making more time for yourself as an author,
click here.
I learn a lot as a fiction writer by reading articles from
Now Novel. You can find their blog here:
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