8 Tips to Help You Sell Volumes as an Author

There are some Tips to Help You Sell Volumes as an Author. So you achieved that dream of being an author. You’ve done the work and paid your dues, and your book is more than a simple idea. But there’s one problem—it’s still on the shelf. People just aren’t buying it. Or they aren’t buying it as they should.

As an author, you don’t want your friends and family to be the only ones who read your book. You want it to reach as many eyes as possible for different reasons. You might want as many people to see the message your book carries, or you want to make as much money from the book as possible.

Whatever it is, your goals are valid.

But you have to sell first.

Selling your book can be tricky and very confusing if you don’t have the support of traditional publishers. You’re basically going from a field you’re familiar with (creative writing) to one you may not be familiar with at all (marketing).

But don’t fret. We are here to help.

Tips to Help You Sell More Volumes as an Author:

Here we will share a few tips to get you up to speed in marketing your book. Fiction or non-fiction, we’ll show you some tips to help you sell more volumes as an author.

Write a complete draft.

While this sounds simple, a lot of writers and authors worry about selling their books when they haven’t actually finished writing.

It’s easy to worry about who’s going to read your book if anyone is going to read it. It’s also easy to worry about how you’ll get your book across to your audience. But you can’t sell something you haven’t finished.

Before you think of selling a book, you have to first write something of good quality. This can be taken as a marketing strategy. The better your book, the better the reviews you’ll get from readers, and the more you’ll get customers.

Once you’ve written something of great quality, it will speak for itself to a very significant degree. Readers will tell their friends of your book, and those friends will tell other friends. Your book and name will go far and wide without you realizing it. So keep in mind that making sure you finish your draft and writing it will have great quality is a marketing trick you shouldn’t ignore.

However, don’t overthink the quality of your work before it’s finished. Everything happens in steps.

Make a professional book cover.

Everyone says you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but nobody actually listens to that. People judge everything by their covers. Especially books.

When you have your draft ready, you should make sure you get a very creative and professional cover to go with it.

The cover presents your book to its potential readers. It is the first interaction they have with the beauty you’ve created. It has to be attractive enough to make people want to take it off the shelf or click on it on Amazon. When creating a cover, you want to make something that is attractive and something that captures the essence of your story or lessons from the book, while making sure you don’t give too much information. You also want to make sure you have a cover that’s related to the genre you’re writing.

If it’s fantasy, make sure you give your readers a cover that looks like fantasy. If it’s romance, make sure you present romance to them. The difference between the two is quite obvious. And if you’re writing nonfiction, go for something that points people in the direction of the topic of the book.

However, finding a professional cover designer might be difficult. If you’d like some help with a professional cover design, you can check out our cover design services.

Build an author platform.

An author platform is basically everything and anything you create or do to increase your reach and connect you to potential readers.

Building an author platform is marketing itself, except now you’re marketing yourself as an author. It’s raising awareness and spreading word about you and your craft so that people might give your book a chance.

An author platform can be anything, but in most cases, it is an online platform. After all, the internet is the quickest and easiest way to reach millions of people in a short time. The platform can be a YouTube channel, a social media account on maybe Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, or a blog. Anything that lets you create content and talk to people. However, it’s important to remember that building an author platform is a lot of work. It’s easy to get distracted and lose focus, but don’t lose sight of why you’re making it.

Just in case this interests you and you’re wondering how you can build your platform, we have a step-by-step guide to building an author platform right here.

Join a community of authors.

Having a community of authors is important in your growth as an author and a marketer of your book. You’ll have access to information, tools, resources, and support like you’ve never seen before.

The goal of this is to find people who have been on a similar journey and came out successful, while finding others who are on the same level as you are so that you can support each other. Some authors will have a wider reach. Some will know people who know people. Others will know how to get you through the doors of a massive contract or breakthrough. The possibilities are endless.

When you find this community, you must make sure you’re an active participant and not a spectator. You want other authors to know who you are, see what you’ve done, and think of you when opportunities arise. Support them as much as they support you.

Find a community of readers in your genre.

As much as you’re trying to be part of a group of authors, make sure you spare some time for readers as well. Practically all authors are readers, but not all readers are authors. There are groups of people who spend time reading and consuming new books, waiting for the next best thing.

Those people are your market.

They’re the ones you’re marketing to, and they’re who you want to make sales to.

When you find these communities, carefully observe what they do and say. See what they like and dislike. Interact with them a little bit, and if possible, get one or two of them to read and review your book. Doing this will allow you to know more about your target audience and how to reach them in a simpler way. If your book checks their boxes, they will point everyone in the community in your direction.

Attend book signings, book club meetings, and physical events.

Marketing is mostly about increasing your reach. Spreading your tentacles in every direction like an octopus. You must use every possible means of networking available to you. This is the part where you really get yourself out there to show solidarity and support for other authors. You’ll make friends and connections in a heartbeat, and you’ll have a chance to talk about yourself and your book. Some authors even go as far as sponsoring book club meetings and sharing copies of their books with club members. They become the topic of club readings and spread more awareness around their newly published books.

If it sounds like something you could pull off, you should try it.

Get organized

When you’re in the process of getting people to notice you, you’ll share a lot of things that point people towards your background and your works. Those things could be links to your profile, your blurb, your website, and much more. When you’re marketing your book, you want to make sure you have all those things at your fingertips. In such a way that you can show someone your track record in the blink of an eye. You want to give them the impression that you’ve prepared to seize this opportunity.

Organizing yourself would also help you navigate through the many aspects of marketing you have indulged in. I’m talking about the communities, groups, clubs, social media, and content. They’re a lot, and they can get confusing, but they’re not out of your control.

Write more books.

This is quite simple. If you have more books written, then you’ll have more to sell. While that is true, you have to be strategic about it.

For example, writing a trilogy will give you space to tell a bigger story while holding your readers’ attention long enough to make them buy two extra books. A good series will make them have more to look forward to, which means they’ll want to give you more money for books.

You could also have more books in your portfolio. The success of one book can lead to readers looking for more from you. If you have more at that moment, you’ll sell a lot more. So, as you market your published book, don’t forget to write more while you go at it.