INDIE AUTHORS: Top 2 Tips to Selling Books

Welcome to my weekly series on Resources for Indie Authors. Yes, these tips and strategies apply to all authors!

We want to sell books, right? But we’re anxious about how to actually make that happen.

For our readers to buy our books we actually need to tell them — or someone needs to tell them — about our books.

That’s called marketing. Put another way, marketing is telling someone about us or our product that doesn’t already know about us.

Let’s just cut to the chase. I’m aware that there are a lot of ways to get in front of our prospective readers. All kinds of media and mediums. Bookmarks, postcards, print advertising, radio interviews, print and web interviews, blog posts, guest blog posts, podcasts, book reviews, reader forum contributions… Whew! I’m tired. Are you?

So, I’ve picked 2 that I’ve seen work the best, and I’m using them for my newly launched YA fantasy novel: (They’re working well so far. I’ll keep you posted on my progress!)

• getting book reviews
• being a guest blogger

And here’s why:

The number 1 reason people by books is by word of mouth. Or in this case “word of mouse.”

Book reviews work well because someone who doesn’t know us, probably, has reviewed our book and shared their opinion about it. From my business training I’ve learned that third-party endorsements are the most powerful form of marketing.

Guest blogging works well because we get to use another powerful principle in our world of commerce: joint ventures. When we’re guests on another’s blog, we get exposed to their fans, their peeps, who trust the blog owner to offer a certain kind of content. When we’re a guest we get included in the trust. We get brought into that blog’s community and voila, our community gets a chance to expand.

Take Action
Find reviewers who review your genre and format. Not all reviewers will review e-books or indie authors. So make sure you follow their guidelines when you submit your request to them. Many reviewers will also do author interviews and contests.

Tip: Request reviews and for guest posts at Book Blogs, as well as at Twitter, Facebook, and SavvyAuthors.com. Also, look for blog sites specifically for readers of your genre. For example, since I write YA fantasy I’m looking for site where teens gather to chat about their favorite books.

These are my two favorite strategies to expand my reader fan base. What are yours?!

PS. Bonus tip! Check out this worthwhile e-book The Official Indie Book Reviewer List .