When members of the media hear about books and authors, one of their first moves is to find out more about them on the Internet. It’s become standard procedure. Since journalists and producers are always looking for stories, they want to learn about authors: who they are, what they’ve accomplished, what others have said about them, whether they’re interesting and unique, and how they present themselves.

So, reporters, editors, and producers search the authors’ names and their book titles using their favorite search engine and on the sites of online booksellers. They read everything that’s posted about them and visit their websites. From that, they start forming impressions. Usually, they’re trying to determine if this author or book would be of interest to their readers, listeners, or viewers.

In today’s media world, you must have a great website; it’s the sign that you are a professional, someone who should be taken seriously. Like it or not, your website can play a major role in how you’re initially perceived. For many, the fact that you don’t have a website will raise questions that you must overcome. So, do both the media and yourself a big favor and put up a great website.

Your Mission

A website is a tool, and its main purpose is to support your mission. Some sites can be dazzling; they can have all the new and most exciting technology, all the bells and whistles, but most visitors—especially the media—won’t go there again if the sites don’t provide the information they want. Visitors won’t waste time with sites that are all style and no substance, are not clear about their purpose, and don’t deliver what visitors need.

Before you even consider creating a website, clarify its purpose—what you want it to achieve. Know exactly what you want your site to do. If it has several purposes, prioritize them and then apply your efforts and resources to those that matter most.

Authors often have multiple objectives: they may want their websites to help build or maintain their careers, promote their books, and sell their products or business services. Experienced website designers know how to build sites that will accomplish all of your objectives. They know and can advise you on all of the elements that should be included and how they should be structured and work.

Think of your website as a storehouse of information about you, a one-stop place where the media can go to find out about you and your book: who you are, your background, your platform, what you’ve written, and what has been written about you. In this chapter, we will discuss the specific elements that your website should contain.

Author 101 Advice

Your website can also shape the direction of your writing career and move you into new areas. For example, you may wish to fill it with content that presents you as a historian, a novelist, a biographer, a journalist, a copywriter, a technical writer, a speechwriter, an editor, an indexer, or a writing coach.

Your site also reflects how you have decided to present yourself, what you wish to feature, highlight, and stress. If you wish to appear academic, technical, sophisticated, artistic, trendy, classic, or irreverent, you easily can. It’s up to you.

Remember

When the media hears about books and authors, it checks them out the Internet. So, it’s essential for authors to establish a strong Internet presence. Make sure that your site supports your mission, which can be to publicize your book. Find a great domain name that is easy to remember, and register that name with all the major search engines. Create a site that looks great and is easy and intuitive to use and understand.

Reprinted from “Rick Frishman‘s Author101 Newsletter”
Subscribe at http://www.rickfrishman.com and receive Rick’s “Million Dollar Rolodex”

Face it, times are tough! The economy blah, blah, blah. Tell me something new. The key is:

Everyone loves a bargain, especially today. And, bargains drive sales. Here’s a great way you can explode your sales:

Call a bargain what you want: a discount, coupon, sale, bonus package, gift with purchase, etc. The point is, people love it. Several weeks ago, we tried an experiment. We decided to bundle my latest title: Red Hot Internet Publicity, with an older book called Book Promotion Made Easy. By older I don’t mean outdated, I mean that it was an evergreen title, older to the list so the author had moved on from aggressively promoting it. The match was perfect and on the first launch our sales of Red Hot Internet Publicity quadrupled. I was stunned.

For many publishers, a backlist is either gold or stagnant. In either case, there’s likely a title that you can pair up with a newer one you are promoting. In the case of the bundle mentioned above, I didn’t even write Book Promotion Made Easy. So if you’re looking for pairing options and you don’t have a suitable book in-house to pair it with, consider co-promoting the titles with another author. Not only will you get a quality bundle, but if they have a list they can promote it to you can participate in their promotion as well.

The breakdown was easy, here’s how we did it. We bundled together my new book Red Hot Internet Publicity with Book Promotion Made Easy. Total value: $30.95.

Red Hot is $18.95 and Book Promotion Made Easy is $12.00.

Book Marketing Experts offered the bundle that offered both books for $20. That’s a 35% savings or $10.95.

Want to know how we did it? I’ll tell you and here’s how you can create your own special website promotions to double or triples sales from your site:

-Analyze your book and its cost.

- Look to raise the price of the bundle “a bit” to cover the cost of the add-on or bonus item. – Offer great value to your customer.

-Look for bonuses you can add in. Successful examples include a booklet, book, eBook, checklist, article or special report. An MP3 audio program or CD.

The key to success is to offer a bonus or package that is Valuable to your customers. That [value] drives sales.

-If you’re going to partner with someone to do this (and what a great idea!) then contact the author/seller. Most vendors, inside and outside publishing, love to make bulk sales at a steep discount. Often 70-80% off retail.

-Don’t want to spend money or pair up? No worries. As an author or publisher you can write your own special report, booklet, eBook, etc. Just make sure it has a significant value.

-Assign a value to your new publication. Some eBooks have a price of $9.97, $17, $17.95, $19.95, $24.50 and in some cases even higher. Set the price based on your market’s perceived value of the product.

-Round up the price. Make it easy to make a purchase and the dollars and cents clear.

We rounded up the price of Red Hot Internet Publicity from $18.95 to $20 and gave away Book Promotion Made Easy for $0.00.

It’s important, however to explain the savings clearly so the customer sees the great value you’re offering.

-Add a special landing page to your website that promotes your special offer.

For an example, here’s ours: http://www.amarketingexpert.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=104

-Link the landing page (offer) to your shopping cart, PayPal, etc.

-Fill the orders asap. Buyers are a very impatient group these days.

-Promote your package to your mailing list and if you’re partnering with someone, make sure they promote it to their list as well.

Book bundling is a fun and easy way to increase sales of virtually any book. I have found that when I pair up Book Promotion Made Easy with mine at speaking events, I quadruple the sales there as well. Two books for $20? You bet that’s a great offer and not only that, it moves books and moves them quickly.

The key is to feed into the bargain mentality that seems to permeate society. You can play the bargain game and win and the best part? As you’re selling all these books you’re also growing your mailing list, yes? As a bonus, we offered a free Twitter class to everyone who bought the bundle. We didn’t advertise it though, we told them after their purchase. It adds that special “thank you” to our message and builds customer loyalty.

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. She is the author of five books, including Book to Bestseller which has been called the “road map to publishing success.” AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically works with social networking sites, blogs, micro-blogs, ezines, video sites, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book’s topic, positioning the author in his or her market. To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at http://www.amarketingexpert.com. To subscribe to her free ezine, send a blank email to: mailto:subscribe@amarketingexpert.com Copyright 2010 Penny C. Sansevieri

I started selling my books online from my own website in 1998. For the first couple of years, more orders came in by phone than through the website. What often happened was that someone went to the website, decided to order the book, then called me on the telephone because they did not want to enter their credit card information on my website. This was probably a result of not knowing anything about who was behind the website, and also just the general unease many people had at that time with ordering online. Once they talked with me, learned I was a real person, and felt comfortable with me, they were willing to order over the phone.

I can point to an exact date when it all changed. In 2002, I was featured in Woman’s Day magazine. They mentioned my book and my website. Because I was expecting to get slammed with phone calls, I set up a fulfillment service to take orders.

To my surprise, More than 90% of orders came via the website. About 5% came by telephone through the fulfillment service, and the rest by mail or fax.

I attribute this to two things: People were starting to feel more comfortable ordering online. They had ordered things from Amazon and other large companies and understood the process better. Nothing horrible happened when they ordered online, so they felt better about ordering from other websites.

The second, and probably more important, factor was that I had credibility due to being in Woman’s Day. The people who read that magazine trust it. They assumed that Woman’s Day would not put my website in their magazine if it was a scam.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be in Woman’s Day or another major magazine to get people to order directly from you. What it does mean is that you need to establish credibility.

Here are several ways you can make your website credible and encourage customers to buy your book directly from your website:

• Have a professional-looking site. List your contact information on the site, including an address and phone number (not just email).
• State that your ordering process is secure. (It is, isn’t it?) Include appropriate logos that give credibility, such as the Better Business Bureau, Authorize.net, HackerSafe, VeriSign, etc. It couldn’t hurt to display the logos of the professional and industry organizations to which you belong.
• Mention awards or media exposure you and your book have received.
• Put up endorsements and blurbs. The fact that my book, The Mystery Shopper’s Manual, is endorsed by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association gives it and me instant credibility.
• Encourage them to order directly from you by giving them something they won’t get at Amazon. For example, I autograph books sold at my site and give customers a free PDF download with clickable links to the online resources listed in the book.

Make them feel comfortable about ordering from you, and they will. Some will go to Amazon to get a discount or free shipping, or just because they feel better ordering there. Some will go to their local bookstore because they prefer to buy that way. And some will buy from you. Bottom line, what is most important is that they buy the book. But the extra margin you get when they buy from you makes it worth the effort to encourage direct sales.

Cathy  Stucker is the author of The Mystery Shopper’s Manual, the only book for mystery shoppers endorsed by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. You can learn how to become a mystery shopper at http://MysteryShoppersManual.com/.

Even before you publish your book, you need to think about how you will sell it. Here are a few of the best ways to promote and sell your self-published book.

Send books to thought leaders and influencers. Pre-publication copies (manuscripts or galleys) may be sent to famous or influential people, along with a request for a blurb. Send review copies to bloggers, industry leaders and others who may recommend the book to their audiences. Giving away copies of your book is one of the most inexpensive things you can do to promote, and it is often the most effective.

List your book on Amazon.com. Sign up for the Amazon.com Advantage program to get your book listed, then follow the marketing information on the Advantage page to improve your book’s detail page, etc.

Do you have a web site for the book? Get one! You can set up a web site inexpensively. You can take orders on the site, or send buyers to Amazon. Set up a PayPal account to take credit card payments when you sell books at your web site, and set up an Amazon Associates account so you get a commission on orders you refer to them.

Write articles, or use excerpts from your book, and post them online. There are article directory sites that will accept your articles and make them available to web site owners and others to publish, or you can directly approach sites that appeal to the same people as your book. Of course, every article should include a brief paragraph about you and your book, with a link to your book’s web site.

Create a signature file to include on all of your outgoing emails with a line or two about your book and a link to your web site or the book’s detail page on Amazon.com. Here is an example of a signature file I use:

Cathy Stucker
Author of “The Mystery Shopper’s Manual”
Become a successful professional shopper
http://www.MysteryShoppersManual.com/

Figure out where the people who should buy your book hang out online, and get in front of them. Post to the forums they read and participate in email discussion groups. Do not post an ad for your book (that is usually not allowed) but post something useful and interesting, with your signature file at the end.

Comment on blogs related to your book’s subject matter. In general, you should not promote yourself or your blog, or link to your book page, in a blog comment. However, most blogs will link your name to a web site. People who are interested in what you have to say in your comment may click on the link and read more about you and your book.

Contact local book stores and ask about doing an event. Book stores are not interested in “signings” by unknown authors, but often a talk, demonstration or other event (that also includes selling and signing books) is of interest.

Look for other stores that might be interested in hosting an event with you. For example, if your book is about dog training (or there is a dog featured in the book) talk to local pet shops or animal rescue organizations about doing a talk and book signing. When you work with a charity, offer them a percentage of the proceeds from book sales at the event.

Send press releases to your local media. Although most of the time the fact that you have written and published a book is not newsworthy, your hometown newspaper might be interested in the fact that a local author has published a book. Stop by the offices of the weekly community paper (most places have at least one) and talk to them.

Always be on the lookout for new ways to promote and sell more books.

Cathy Stucker is a speaker, author and consultant. She can show you how to create multiple streams of passive income from your book and other content. Download a free audio program at http://www.CashContentFormula.com/