General Interest
Help in salesI finally published a small book of poems in November. It’s a beautiful book and I’m very proud of the results. The problem is I haven’t sold any. What is the solution to getting the book in the hands of people who like poems and books. I had friends and workmates look at it and everyone wants me to give them a copy no one seems to want to buy. Any advice is appreciated. The book is titled "Poetic Life" by Janine Storey. Take a look and ideas? Janine, Thanks. 
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You need to actively market your book Janine, hardly anybody will stumble across it in the Blurb bookstore and buy one. As a starter search the forums for "marketing", you will find many discussions on this topic including success stories and advice on ways of going about it. …..Tony |
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Thank Tony. I’ll give it a look. I did have someone ask me where can I get your book, I said download it or order. Reply. I can download or buy it from where??? That’s when I realized maybe people don’t know where to find it. Thanks. So I’ll research as you suggest. And market. |
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A few basic ideas- mention your book on your blog, facebook, twitter and other social media tools. Blurb does provide some great tools for that. Do be respectful of each media’s rules and, perhaps more importantly, customs and practises. Most people who follow a personal twitter feed will unfollow when the adverTweets™ exceed 1 in 4. Clearly identified business accounts can be more aggressive. Second- search the web for websites and blogs that discuss poetry (or any particular theme or subject you cover) to see if they would be interested in doing a review. Also see if there’s a local paper/website that might cover it as a ‘local story’. You should never (in my opinion) pay for a review other than the cost of sending a copy. There are a variety of web and print journals that will accept poetry submissions although more and more they want perviously-unpublished work. I see that you only show a few pages in the preview- although I generally don’t show all pages, I try and show a chunk of ‘real content’ so that people can get a sense of it. |
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Thanks again, great tips, I had more than half visible and people kept reading and telling me they wanted to read more, so I realized they were reading at will but with no further interest, so over time fewer and fewer pages were visible, might open up more pages this week. Thanks for the review tip too. |
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I commend to show always the whole book. Would you buy a book in a bookshop where they tell you you can leave only through the first 15 pages ? |
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Good point I’m thinking about that. Thanks, If I were in a book shop I would flip through and read a few sentences here and there. Then decide to buy. Very good point. |
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Why would anyone buy your book if they can flip through the entire thing in what amounts to an ebook format in the Blurb preview window? Give people a taster, but if it’s good enough for people to want to read it all (or even better, to have a copy on their bookshelf), don’t sell yourself short by giving it all away in the preview. |
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Thanks jayhawk appreciated this encouragement. I agree I shouldn’t sell myself short, I love this book even though its mine, it really is a beautiful book internally and externally and people who’ve purchased it just say such nice things. |
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Janine, maybe you could put on this forum where we can find your web site. Take every opportunity. May even find a buyer here! David |
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Great idea David. Thanks. You and anyone can find the book by going to http://www.englshfashon.com/ and clicking on the link above the book, its a new site so be patient with me while I get it up and going over the next few months. I’m still figuring out which direction to go with it. Take a peek let me know what you think. Feel free to give ideas on the website even. |
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My experience is that sales of “real books” are not affected negative by online publishing or the book preview,quite opposite. Think of the very successful book version of weblogs (The satorialist or Ai Weiwei) I have only started recently to offer ebooks as well and sold some. I cannot say whether the book preview cannibalises the ebook. In theory that szenario seems very likely. I think it depends on the page count and the amount of text etc.. |
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Thanks everyone for all the advice given. I’ve had such a great time with my first book. I’ve some people who’ve gone to the website I’ve set up and then asked me to get them the book since they didn’t want to deal with getting it online. And so I have either given it to them or popped it in the mail as requested, everyone so far likes my book, I’m happy about that. The website seems to give people a chance to peruse it and get an idea of the books content. So though I’m just getting started with this I’m already planning my second book. Don’t have any big sales to brag about but that’s ok too, |
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