My Number One Tip for Selling Your Book, Blog Your Book

Blog Post from BruceTheBookGuy.com with a sell block at the bottom

I had a question recently from a member of my How to Publish Your Book Facebook group for my one tip. It went like this.

The Question:Hey Bruce! Hope you’re doing well! I feel like I hit a wall. I’m averaging about a book a day...not sure if that’s what I should expect? Anyway, I have about a billion ideas running through my head but unfortunately, I don’t have the time to execute them all with my full-time job. I guess I’m looking for one thing to really focus on to push sales...blog...press release.... social media...would you suggest one over the other?

My Answer On the One Thing I Would Do to Market and Sell My Book: Hi I am a fan of creating content for platforms that hangs around for a long time. Like a blog posts or web pages, YouTube videos, Linkedin post and Pinterest. Things that can be done once and shared to many places over and over, like blog posts and videos can. I like to use my book content as my blog content and then add ads on the blog for my own stuff wrapped around my own stuff.

I would take your entire book and break it up into small chunks and blog it bit by bit adding really good titles for each post. At the bottom of each post I would add a sell/bio line about the you and your book and where you can get it. Key is to have be short and have a live link to the book’s sales page on Amazon.

Google will index your book and bring you traffic. If your reader likes it they might decide to purchase a copy. You job is to give them a clear path to purchase. Use your book's content to bring in traffic about your book and wrap ads for your book around it. You can also mix in videos and other content between the posts. Be sure to also add a thumbnail image of your book cover in the sidebar area with a clear Buy at Amazon button on it or below it.

This does several things, it spreads your content out, it gets Google to index your content, and gives you info which you can see in your blog stats what people are interested in. This also gives you lots of posts to market other products like a journal or related Amazon products. The goal here is to get lots of people to see your stuff. From my own experience, you need to get 100-200 visitors to your site to make a sale. This is 1-.05%, which is about the same as direct mail marketing. If you can get 200 people to visit your site from searching for your content you will get a sale if you give them an easy way to know you are selling something and an easy way to buy.

I am also a huge fan of YouTube videos and post on Pinterest. Both of these platforms get a lot of traffic and the content hangs around forever. Videos can be shared all over the web and Pinterest just gets a ton of traffic. Video descriptions and Pinterest posts can have live links, be sure to include them

An advantage of blogging is that the content will stay visible for years. You can also easily share it across many other social media platforms. I know Facebook and Twitter is all the rage but the problem is that everything is so temporary. It just keeps rolling down out of view.

A couple of other tips for your blog. Add a resource page around your topic. You can build this out over time but I have found this to be one of the highest traffic pages on my book blogs. Find something new, just keep adding it. Google loves pages like this. Be sure to include the links.

Another tip; your content may not lend itself to this but if you are able to write about costs of things or how much money you make or something around money, you will get a lot of traffic. People just want to know about money and costs.

Another tip; put up a sample pdf chapter that people can sign up for and download. In the pdf have a book sales page with live links to Amazon. This builds your email list and gets your content in people’s hands.

If you are going to be promoting your book in social media be sure you are where your readers are. Where they hang out is where you hang out. Is it Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc?

On the second question: selling book a day isn't bad. For me a nice medium seller is 15-20 books a month, in reality that is pretty good. 200+books a year. I will be writing about repurposing your content further in this book. But adding a journal or workbook to your book and selling it on your blog can be a great idea to increase your sales.

J. Bruce Jones is the author of over 40 books. He is currently working on a new book called How I Sell 4,000 Books a Year. Sign up over on the right to get the latest pdf version. It isn't fully edited but has all my ideas.

Connection and Learning

Bruce Jones is the author and creator of over 40 self-published books. 

If you want to learn how to create your own book visit Publishing Mastery 101 and see my courses: https://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/

Come over and join my Facebook Publishing Group, ask me questions, show your books. Great place to connect with authors and self-publishers

Join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/HowToPublishYourBook/

Running an Amazon Giveaway Test on My Book Marketing Checklist Book

Here is how the Amazon Giveaway looks on Facebook

I found out yesterday about the Amazon Giveaway program and was like, wow. The program runs on pretty much any product on Amazon, yours and any other, there are a few restrictions but it is pretty broad. You can run a contest for people to win that product by clicking on a link. When they click the link the product gets reposted on their twitter feed or they have to watch a video or some other stuff.

Once you have the Amazon link you pretty much just have to spread the link around the web on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, etc so people can see it and click on it. For mine I am using my Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishing book. I have spread the link to Facebook, Twitter, and my blog.

The program works with you going to the bottom of pretty much any Amazon product page and seeing the Giveaway button and then just filling out the form. You have to pre-pay for the product that you are giving away plus shipping. When someone clicks you send them to a Twitter page, or a video or couple of other things. Basically Amazon sends you a link and you spread it around.

The Amazon Giveaway button at the bottom of a product page

The program runs for 7 days and/or a number of clicks that Amazon determines fits for your book. You also have a number of options that you can select on how the prize is awarded. I am sending people to the intro video for my Publishing Mastery 101 member site. Here is the video I sent people to



Here is the Giveaway link for the Book Marketing Checklist for Self-Publishers Giveaway, active until Nov 23, 2017 or until I get 500 clicks.