SECTION 1 → PART 6
Sales & Selling Ideas For Authors & Their Books
EXTENDED BOOK CHAPTER #10 from MY SELF-PUBLISHING MANUAL by Bart Smith
INTRODUCTION & SALES & SELLING IDEAS
When it comes to generating immediate sales and maintaining long-term momentum, implementing a diverse mix of promotional strategies is essential. By approaching your launch with a structured, multi-channel sales plan, you can secure quick early wins while systematically building an automated revenue stream that sells your book for years to come. Consider using the following proven tactics to kickstart your sales engine and keep it running smoothly:
1. Advance Copies
Are you building up excitement in folks to buy your upcoming book? Order some copies in advance and send them out to those who can spread a little word of mouth about your book to their audience of book buyers. Provide advanced reader copies to relevant bloggers, YouTube channel hosts, podcast hosts, etc. Start getting reviews for your book before the book even launches. Relentlessly pursue people to review your book. Contact as many people as you can prior to launch and have them agree to post a review. Stay in touch with them up to the date your book launches. When you can launch your book day one with 10-25 reviews, that’s awesome!
2. Conduct a preorder campaign
Conduct a preorder campaign that allows you time to promote your book, build up awareness for your book, even take in some cash up front for preselling the book so that when you do eventually start selling your book, you do so with a BANG of BUCKS to kick start your marketing efforts. Treat this presale campaign like a movie trailer announcing a movie coming up this Summer or Christmas time.
3. Pricing Your Books
How much do you charge for your book? Depends, is it a business book? Fiction? Thick or thin book? While there’s no crystal ball to tell us what the magic price should be for your book, keep these factors in mind when pricing books: If your book costs you $2.50 to print, charge $9.95 for it unless it’s a business book, then $9.95 to $19.95. If it’s fiction or similar, charge $9.95 to $14.95. If it’s a big business book, charge $25 or more and let customers qualify for free shipping (on some sites) like Amazon.com. Don’t price too low, you’ll only cut into your royalties. Pricing a book semi-high still allows for bookstores online/offline to price your book above their cost leaving you with that royalty you still wanted based on what you wanted to earn from selling it. Bookstores will always lower the price of your book to compete for buyers from other websites. Try to earn a minimum of $5 from your Amazon royalties and $2 or more from 3rd party distribution channels. If possible, price your book high enough so you can earn $10 or more for Amazon purchases. Also, if you record your book, you’ll make more from that book. Add $15 to $25 to that already priced $14.95 book and you’ve got more money made from that combo-sale (i.e., book+audio). One of my books costs me $2.59 to print. I sell it for $9.95, but I sell the audio for $19.95. So, total cost = $2.59 with $29.98 gross (combo) sales leaves me a profit of $27.31 for one book. NICE!$!$!$!
4. Create a powerful sense of urgency around your book
Create a powerful sense of urgency around your book by utilizing time-limited coupons, exclusive giveaways, and high-engagement contests. Whether you offer a percentage-off or a specific dollar-off discount, adding a strict expiration date forces hesitant prospects to take immediate action rather than putting off the purchase. You can host an interactive contest directly on your website to drive massive traffic, while simultaneously offering exclusive, fast-action bonuses both online and offline at your live events. By bundling your book with a time-sensitive digital bonus or a limited physical giveaway, you give your audience an irresistible reason to buy right now, successfully driving up your conversion rates and maximizing your sales momentum.
5. Create a TinyURL.com, T.ly, or Bit.ly Vanity Link
Create a TinyURL.com, T.ly, or Bit.ly vanity link for your book that takes people either to your website book selling web page or your Amazon listing. This makes your link incredibly easy for people to remember, type out, and share when they hear it mentioned during audio interviews, podcast appearances, or live speaking events. It also allows you to track real-time click analytics so you can see exactly which marketing channels and interviews are driving the most traffic to your storefront.
6. Do a KDP free promotion of your eBook.
Get interviewed and advertise heavily during one month letting listeners know they can download your eBook for FREE NOW! This aggressive, short-term strategy drives a massive wave of downloads that instantly shoots your book to the top of Amazon’s free bestseller charts and triggers their recommendation algorithms. By flooding the market with free copies, you quickly build a large, hungry audience of readers who will leave positive reviews, share your work by word-of-mouth, and naturally transition into buying your physical workbooks, audiobooks, and premium backend services.
7. Don’t stop promoting one book just to start writing another.
Marketing for each book is constant, whether you’re writing a new book or not. Each book deserves to have an ongoing life of marketing to promote it and bring in the cash for you! Once you finish a project, it becomes a permanent asset in your publishing library that requires consistent, automated campaigns to keep generating sales. Treating your books as standalone income streams means you can safely work on your next manuscript while your existing titles continue to gain visibility, find new readers, and build a compound passive income portfolio over time.
8. Focus on discoverability rather than just outright selling and promotion.
Your book is a great new piece of work to be shared, but it will only be bought if people know about it and can find it easily. Therefore, post and position yourself all over the web and offline so people constantly hear about you, meet you, and get to know you and your message. This is all done through active marketing and getting out there constantly. By shifting your mindset from aggressive selling to maximum visibility, you transform your book into an easily discoverable resource that attracts organic traffic. Over time, this consistent omni-presence turns casual internet searchers into active book buyers who seek you out because your name and expertise appear everywhere they look.
9. Get Help
Don’t do all this by yourself. Hire experts in different marketing niches from Fiverr.com to post information about your book on different websites, social media platforms, you name it! If you can pay 10 people $20 each to do one online marketing tactic each month, would that be worth it to you? Outsourcing these repetitive chores allows you to leverage a global workforce to scale your promotional reach while keeping your own focus entirely on big-picture business growth. By delegating tasks like forum posting, directory submissions, and graphic creation to affordable freelancers, you can run multiple marketing campaigns simultaneously without burning out. This cost-effective strategy gives you the power of a full-scale marketing agency on a bootstrapper’s budget, ensuring your book receives non-stop, widespread visibility across the internet.
10. Make it easy to buy your book.
Provide several different buy options on your website product page for your book, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, and the Apple iBookstore. Make sure these links are highly visible, clearly labeled with recognizable retailer logos, and regularly tested to ensure they are working perfectly! Offering a wide variety of purchasing channels ensures that you never lose a sale due to a reader's personal storefront preference, allowing them to complete their purchase instantly using the platform they already trust and use daily. By catering to Kindle, Nook, and Apple users all in one centralized location, you maximize your conversion rates and capture every ounce of traffic hitting your site.
11. Ramp up your marketing and promotions around the major holidays, ...
Ramp up your marketing and promotions around the major holidays, New Years, Spring, Summer, Fall, etc. Capitalize on seasonal sales and holiday gift-giving seasons by systematically dropping your prices, offering limited-time discounts, and structuring high-value bundles to rapidly move your book inventory. Position your book as the ultimate thoughtful present by marketing it under the clear, universal banner: “My book makes a great gift!” To maximize your average order value during these festive promotional windows, do not just sell a single copy; instead, package your paperback with your audiobook, digital courses, or matching merchandise to create an irresistible holiday bundle. Blast these limited-time holiday specials across your email list and social media channels, using the natural urgency of the season to trigger impulse buys and capture holiday shoppers looking for impactful, life-changing gifts for their friends, family, or teams.
12. Run huge discount promotions on all your books, eBooks, and audiobooks if you can ...
Don’t worry so much about profiting on that new rush of sales, no. Instead, we’re looking for folks to give us feedback and a review of our books. Those 10-100 reviews from people who didn’t hesitate to download your (temporarily) free eBook might now help inspire 1,000+ real sales ($$$) in the future. Shifting your focus from immediate margins to rapid review acquisition allows you to build a powerful foundation of social proof that maximizes your book's conversion rate over the long haul. This initial wave of feedback directly updates your listing's credibility, making future organic browsers significantly more comfortable purchasing your book at full price. Furthermore, the sudden spike in transaction volume tells retail algorithms that your book is in high demand, boosting your visibility in search results and category rankings to steadily attract paying customers for months to come.
13. Launch Parties/Strategy
Don’t just start day one marketing your book with no fan fair, excitement, anticipation or publicity? Really design a great pre-launch strategy to ensure you sell books right out of the gate! Think like a movie promoter. Announce your new upcoming book and when it will be available for sale. Then, establish a launch party date when folks can come and hear all about your excitement about the book, why you wrote it, what’s in it, how it can help them, etc. This event can be a Facebook or YouTube live event or a live in-person one. Folks always love a party. Budget between $100-$1,000 (or more if you want) to plan the perfect launch party. Launching your book is an online/offline effort. Record the event so those who couldn’t make it can participate with you on the phone or via webinar after the official launch.
14. Bundle your book with other books and products.
Bundle your book with other books and products you can find that compliment your book. When sales are slow, join in on others who’s books, products and services are selling and would love to add value to their offerings by adding in your books.
15. Offer "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" or "Buy 3 & Get 1 Free" deals to encourage people to buy extra copies for their friends, family, and colleagues.
Create a holiday, seasonal, or event explosion with your book by using these high-volume retail incentives. Most people instantly recognize BOGO (buy one get one free) offers or similar multi-copy deals, making them incredibly effective at grabbing the attention of potential buyers who were originally planning to purchase just a single copy. By framing your book as a multi-pack solution for team gifts or holiday stocking stuffers, you naturally increase your average order value and shift inventory much faster. This volume-based strategy not only multiples your revenue per transaction, but it also multiplies the number of physical books entering the market, drastically increasing your word-of-mouth reach and backend customer potential.
16. Cross Promotions
Promote other authors to your list and let them promote you to their list. This reciprocal strategy allows both parties to instantly double their marketing reach without spending a single dime on advertising. By introducing your audience to trusted peers who provide highly relevant, complementary value, you strengthen your own credibility as a resource hub while systematically absorbing fresh, warm leads from your partner's network. It is a true win-win arrangement that continuously injects highly qualified, eager buyers directly into your respective sales funnels.
17. Time the announcement of your new book with a major event ...
Time the announcement of your new book with a major event in the news or entertainment industries like a movie release, international trade show, or prestigious award ceremony. Aligning your book launch with an already trending global conversation allows you to naturally hijack the massive media attention, search engine volume, and hashtag momentum surrounding that specific event. By positioning your book’s topic as a highly relevant commentary, companion guide, or counter-perspective to what is actively dominating the headlines, you make it incredibly easy for journalists, podcasters, and news producers to book you for timely interviews. This strategic newsjacking framework transforms a standard book announcement into a highly relevant, pop-culture news story, generating an explosion of organic traffic and immediate sales that would normally cost thousands of dollars in paid advertising.
18. Think outside the box ...
Think outside the box by looking for marketing tactics completely outside the book industry, such as the music, entertainment, tech startup, or big-brand corporate worlds. Analyze what other highly competitive industries are doing to launch their products and systematically spin those exact same high-impact activities for your own book marketing gain. For example, you can borrow the music industry's concept of releasing "teaser tracks" by dropping single, high-value chapter snippets on social media to build viral hype before the full launch, or mimic tech startups by offering "early-access beta reader" passes to a select group of fans to secure early feedback and build an eager launch squad. By studying guerrilla marketing, streetwear "drop" culture, and corporate brand positioning, you can inject fresh, disruptive promotional strategies into the publishing space that make your book stand out dramatically from standard, predictable author marketing campaigns.
19. Advertise your previous books in new books you publish.
I always make sure to do this. Your latest release will always command the highest level of reader attention, making it the perfect billboard to showcase your entire publishing catalog. By adding a dedicated "Other Books By This Author" section or putting targeted, chapter-ending promotions in your new book's back matter, you can easily funnel captivated readers directly into your older titles. This internal cross-promotion turns every single new book sale into an automated gateway to your entire library, allowing you to steadily build a compound passive income stream and maximize the lifetime value of every reader who falls in love with your writing.
20. When taking pictures with people who bought your book, always hold your book up (around your chest) so it can easily be seen and the cover read well.
When taking pictures with people who bought your book, always hold your book up so it can easily be read and seen. Make it known to the world that someone has actively purchased your book by positioning the front cover prominently at chest level, facing squarely toward the camera. This deliberate framing ensures that every casual group photo instantly doubles as a high-impact piece of marketing materials that you can blast across social media or host in your online media room. Capturing the proud, smiling faces of real buyers holding your work creates an infectious sense of social proof, signaling to every prospective customer scrolling through your timeline that your book is a must-have resource worth buying right now.
21. Rinse & Repeat
It takes up to 8–10 exposures to a product before people finally take the plunge and buy what they were pitched. Don’t give up if your first attempt doesn't result in an immediate flood of sales. You must consistently repeat your marketing efforts to the same audience every so often to stay top-of-mind and capture those who just weren't ready to buy the first time around. This ongoing repetition steadily builds trust, breaks down buyer hesitation, and ensures that when a prospect finally decides they are ready for your solution, your book is the very first resource they think of.
CLOSING THOUGHTS & YOUR EXECUTION PLAN
What other high-profit sales ideas and creative strategies can you brainstorm for your book? Don't let those flashes of genius slip away—jot them down immediately in your master marketing plan, build an execution strategy around them, and take massive action when the time is right! Continually expanding your promotional toolkit is the secret to building an unstoppable publishing empire, so keep your eyes open for fresh inspiration, update your checklist often, and never stop driving your sales forward!
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