Convince and Convert Process (session 3)

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Listen to the other sessions

Session 1 – Changing Business Models
Session 2 – Productize Your Information

Productize Your Information (session 2)

Press play to listen to Session 2

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Listen to the other sessions

Session 1 – Changing Business Models
Session 3 – Convince and Convert Process

Changing Business Models (session 1)

Press play to listen to Session 1

Download The PDF

Listen to the other sessions

Session 2 – Productize Your Information
Session 3 – Convince and Convert Process

Websites For Authors: Landing Page Dos and & Donts

Let’s start by explaining what a landing page is. Basically, it’s the default page that visitors land on when they do a search for you or your book on the Internet. Well designed landing pages can entice visitors to take action, either purchase your book, enter contact information for upcoming book signings or venture further into your website. When an action is performed on a landing page it’s known as a conversion. The ultimate goal is to secure as many conversions as possible. So, what can you do to create a great landing page? Here are  few simple guidelines to help you with your landing page.

Design It Well

As an author, you recognize the importance of having an eye-catching book cover. Well, the same things goes for your landing page. Make it visually engaging for your visitors. Don’t burden the page down with heavy, lengthy content. Instead, incorporate elements from your book’s cover into the layout. Tie-in the book with the landing page and visitors will have a clear understanding about who you are, what your book is about and how to purchase a copy.

Get A Reaction

The landing page for your book’s website is like your own personal salesperson. For that reason, you want the page to share a compelling message that makes the page unique and that will increase conversion. This can be accomplished by writing a headline like, “Only 10,000 Copies Available,” or “Read the Bestseller That Critics Are Raving About.” Additionally, you want to be direct with your visitors and state a clear call-to-action such as “buy now” or “subscribe here.” Keep them short and sweet.

State the Value

Remember that whitespace is a friend to any good landing page. More is not better. Keep your content succinct and to the point. Save the flowery language for your book and use your landing page to give short, bullet points about why your book is a must-read and must-buy. Explain what sets it apart from other books within the genre and even one or two about yourself as an author. Visitors that know value are more likely to purchase.

When you create a landing page for your book try to think about what motivates you as a buyer. Use what you know and you’ll have a fantastic landing page constructed in no time.

Blog Comments: social media for website promotion

Blog commenting is super way to build links back to your book’s website and to promote yourself as an author. Furthermore, reading blogs and engaging in feedback is an easy and effective way to generate traffic without needing an expensive advertising campaign. As an author, you’re no doubt proud of the book that you’ve written and in a perfect world you’d love to shout about it in the comment section of each and every blog that you can find. Unfortunately, blog commenting requires some consideration so that you don’t end up causing more harm to you and your book than good.

When you visit someone’s blog, take the time to read it and get to know what the blogger’s content and focus is about. Familiarity will give you better insight when it comes to leaving a more profound comment rather than commenting just for the sake of it. Avoid ambiguous comments like, “This is a great post. Thank you for writing it.” Try to leave something of value. If readers of your book simply stated that your book was a “nice read” it would be frustrating to you as an author. The same thing goes for blog comments. Make each one count.

Don’t shamelessly self-promote you or your book right out of the gate. Instead of appearing as a resource, it looks pretentious and arrogant. Add value to the blog and the conversation of others. Consider sharing other resources that are relevant to the topic of the post versus linking to your book’s website just for the sake of slapping a link into the comment.

Be considerate when you comment. If a blog post is focuses on an opinion or perspective that isn’t in tune with your own you don’t have carte blanche to verbally berate the blogger. It reflects poorly on you and it can generate a whopping size of bad publicity that will make it difficult to recover from as an author. Be a gentleman and a lady and politely agree to disagree or avoid commenting at all. In cyberspace, biting your tongue is more aligned with taking the high road than not.

Blog commenting isn’t an art, it just takes some common sense. Think before you post your comment. Once it’s out, it’s out for good.

How To Get A Literary Agent

After all your hard work you’ve finally completed your official manuscript. The big question, “Great, now what?” Well, you have two options to choose from. The first is the do it yourself method and self-publish and the second is to cast your line and hook a literary agent. For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll be looking at the latter.

The best way to get an agent is to start thinking like one. Literary agents get thousands of manuscripts every week. The vast majority are delivered without a request and as a result, many of them are shelved for review sometime later, if at all. Keeping your manuscript out of the dust pile means networking with agents and introducing yourself first so that when they ‘invite’ you to submit your manuscript it’s because they truly want to read it and they’re expecting it.

Networking with agents is much easier today that it was in the past thanks to technology. Find out the names of the agents that you’d like to pursue and connect with them through social media. Support them on Twitter and ‘like’ them on Facebook. Interact with short, brief dialogues, but don’t make them about you or your sales pitch just yet. Once you’ve built some momentum, indicate that you’d enjoy sharing your author’s resume for consideration and review. With a little luck, you’ll have an invite to share more.

If social media networking seem a bit tedious try joining a writer’s group or even attending workshops with other published authors. Connecting with other published authors, and editors, is a good way to build relationships and even request permission to name drop. Agents are much more receptive to people who are in the know with their clients than perfect strangers.

Take the time to investigate how each agent prefers to be approached. Just because a one person enjoys receiving an unbound printed manuscript with a business card stapled to the front doesn’t mean that they all do. Doing your home work shows that you’re professional and that you’re following guideline and protocols that agents have put in place for a reason. This will set you apart from the flood of others who haphazardly submit without a thought. In this business, having a leg up is vital and rising above your competition can be just the ticket that you need to succeed.

Planning and Designing Your Book Cover: 5 Tips

Because so many authors are self-publishing these days, many of them don’t have the luxury or access to a publisher’s in-house graphic design team. Plus, technology has moved books into an online world and graphics need to be flexible enough to upload and post on the web, as well as appear in print. So if you’re getting ready to tackle the design of your book cover consider some of these tips below to make the process simpler.

1.  Research

Your book cover should appeal to your audience’s interests, reading levels and background. Knowing what they want or what grabs them can help you determine how to present your layout and deliver the message on your cover.

2. Images

Make absolutely certain that you’re using high-quality and high-resolution images in your design. You want your artwork to look clear and crisp regardless of it’s size. If you take shortcuts with your images you can potentially end up with pixelated and fuzzy graphics.

3.  Themes

If you’re an author, chances are that you’ve written more than one book or that you’ll be writing more than one book. For this reason, think about creating a theme in the designs that you build and look at ways to tie the aesthetics of your publications together. Even though your books may be about completely different subjects, your theme can bring a cohesive feel to them that lets readers identify with you as an author of the work.

4.  Typography

The choice of font that you incorporate into your cover can play a major role in giving the reader a tease about its contents. Use a script font to show off a feminine theme or an angled serif to create an Asian feel. The rule here is don’t flood the cover with too many different fonts and keep it legible. You don’t want people de-cyphering what your cover says.

5.  Feedback

Instead of coming up with just one great design, try to develop a group of three or four. Once you’ve got them laid out you can share them with others to get honest opinions about what they prefer and why. Although friends and family might seem like an obvious choice try hitting up strangers and conducting your own poll. It’s a great way to learn about what works and what doesn’t.

Web 2.0 Publishing

The advent of the web has completely revolutionized the way that books are printed, published, promoted and sold. Technology has made each of these components more accessible for the average person to use and benefit from. Instead of relying upon a publisher many authors now have the ability to do it all on their own and for a fraction of the price.

Let’s take a look at printing. Print-on-demand (POD) is a process where authors are able to upload a print-ready file to a POD publisher and when an order arrives for your book, the book is printed on the spot and delivered to your customer. Much cheaper than batch printing which include inventory storage and shipping costs. Another plus to POD publishing is that you’re not limited to just one. Use a group to determine the most affordable for you.

POD publishing transfers easily to large online retailers like Amazon.com and BN.com. As an author you can create your own page on these sites and as orders are requested you can have them fulfilled via your POD group. The general public will never know the difference and it gives writers a tremendous amount of control over the production of their books. Furthermore, you can also sell and promote through ClickBank, Kindle and on iPhone’s Smashwords – all are excellent tools and purchase points to boost your sales.

There’s been a lot said about promoting your book, but with web 2.0 the empowerment for authors continues. Instead of traditional book-signings and tours, writers can engage readers through podcasts, blogs, Google Book Search and social media. No matter how you slice it, promoting your book using various online tools and resources is a sure fire way to boost sales and build awareness about what you’ve written. That equates to exposure and more revenue for you.

In a nutshell, think of web 2.0 as a term that describes how writers can become more self-sufficient. Being able to do things on your own shouldn’t be viewed as a burden, but as a way to guide readers to your book and keep them engaged beyond the writing.

eBook Marketing Tips

As important as it to plan a marketing strategy for the paper and ink version of your book, it’s equally vital to develop one for your ebook version. A well-crafted ebook marketing plan can determine the success or failure regarding the quantity of copies downloaded and sold. Before you embark on an ebook promotion, consider incorporating some of the following techniques to supplement your strategy.

Build a Website

If hearing this reminds you of a broken record then that’s a good thing. Times have changed and it’s crucial that you have build an online home to for your ebook to reside in. Once you’ve got your site up and running, make sure that there’s either a dedicated page or subdomain exclusively for your ebook. Give readers plenty of details, features, benefits and testimonials that highlight your ebook’s contents.

Advertising

The internet makes advertising affordable and customizable for any budget. You don’t need a Superbowl-sized pocketbook to get the word out. Sign-up for a Google AdWords account and explore some of the price models and options available. The nice thing about a pay per click campaign is that you only pay for the visitors who actually click through your ad link and visit your site. Compared to traditional advertising (i.e. newspaper ads, TV spots, etc.), this is a more cost-effective way to drive traffic and create awareness about your ebook.

Connect with ClickBank

Click bank is a fantastic resource that makes it very easy for authors and writers to sell and promote their ebooks. They are connected to more than 10,000 publishers and have 100,000 active affiliates that are ready to co-promote what you’ve written. There is a small fee involved to establish an account, but it quickly pays for itself with the rapid sales of your ebook. Visit ClickBank for specific details on how to get started.

Article Marketing

Create articles that are closely related to what your ebook is about and upload and publish them to  article directories like Ezinearticles, Buzzle and Suite101. For each article that you write and publish you have an opportunity to create a short byline that can be used to promote yourself as an expert and you can include a link within the article’s contents to bring traffic to your ebook’s sale page on your website.

There are so many ways to promote your ebook. Use traditional marketing strategies and customize them to fit your needs and work in an online capacity.

Book Marketing Plan: Create One In 5 Steps

Developing a marketing plan for your book can be frustrating if you don’t know exactly where to start. Fortunately, whether you’re creating a marketing plan for a restaurant, a new skincare cream or a roofing company, the core elements of the plan will never change. As long as you have some of the basics down, you’ll be able to assemble a solid plan that will help you market your book and help you achieve amazing results. Here’s a summary of what you need to consider before putting pen to paper.

1.  Research Your Consumers

You need to know what people are buying, where they’re buying and how they’re buying. Selling what people want is what will get them to purchase. Hit the web and look at historical trends for books in your niche. Look for commonalities among them like simple plot line, memorable characters or outstanding publicity blitzes. Use what you learn and apply it to your own plan.

2.  Make It Easy to Distribute

Even though you’re an author who’s created something tangible that you can touch, hold and keep, most of the world is electronic based. This means you’ll need to come to your audience and make your book searchable, portable and shareable. Do this well and your book has the potential of becoming a viral phenomenon.

3.  Create a Sense of Urgency

As your gathering and researching for your marketing plan, consider creative ways to make your book a stand out from others. There’s quite a bit of competition so start getting clever about how you’ll sell your product. Think about promoting a limited quantity available or only allowing people to purchase if they buy two at the same time. There are many unique ways to get consumers excited and compel them to act.

4.  Set A Budget

Once you get your creative juices flowing you may find yourself with an arsenal of great marketing  ideas and strategies for your plan. Unfortunately, they’ll all probably come with a price tag. Decide what you can afford to do and what you can’t and get realistic about costs. Your book needs a website, but anyone who’s offering to build you one for less than $500 highly questionable. This is an instance where you get what you pay for.

5.  Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

Whether this is your first book or your fifth, it doesn’t hurt to connect with a successful peer and ask them for advice and insight. People love to teach and share with others. Send an email or pick up the phone and ask others what made their marketing plans a success. Use what you learn to focus your own book marketing plan.