Secrets of Successful Author-Publishers

Success
Dreaming of becoming a successful writer?  In writing and publishing are certain steps that will help you to tremendously to improve your chances of success.

.

Start With Maximizing Your Foreign Presence – For FREE.
To maximize your presence in overseas Amazon Kindle stores, set up an Author Central account in each of those country-specific sites where your book is available.  As Amazon divided the world in single countries, announce your Countdown Deals, new book launches or Free Kindle KDP Days in several languages: Order a short translation of 10 tweets in Spanish, French, German etc. for $5 / 200 words for example at Fiverr. Make sure they are done by native speakers of the languages.
The countries with the most usage of e-readers, according due to a survey of Bookboon are USA, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark etc.

.

Write More Books!
Did you notice that all of your online book sites, be it Amazon.com and Apple’s book sales pages or those on BarnesandNoble.com (they show even several slots with books in the same genre), have a listing at the bottom of the screen that says “Customers also bought” or “People who bought this book also bought …” and then it shows all the books of your competition.  They are listed on print sites or e-book sites (or both).

If you write more books, say between three and nine books, and readers like what you do, guess whose books appear in this paragraph?  Yours!  If you only publish one book, then those slots get filled with books, written by other authors.  These book suggestions show that readers who liked not only, but also bought these books.  A great example of a very prolific writers with more than 20 books is Jan Scarbrough.  Just click on one of her books, scroll down and you will see lots of her other books shown under “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…”

.

Write More Short Stories.
Authors such as Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, James Joyce, Alice Munro…  They all write or wrote not only books, but short stories.  It might take years until you have written so many books that only yours show up as suggestions at online retailers.  An even better way to promote your writing is to write and sell short stories as e-books.

Unlike book publishers, short story publishers only hold onto exclusive rights to the story for a limited period of time.  After that period of time, either the rights revert to you or they become non-exclusive.  Read more about book contracts and rights in former blog posts.
You license your copyright for a certain period of time.  After that – specified by your publishing contract – you can then put your short story up as an e-book or put it in an e-book collection of your own (or both), without having to remove that story from the place of first publication.
One more reason to never sign a contract for life, or as long as a “book is in print” – with e-books and POD, a book will never go out of print these days.  If you self-publish your short stories you can do whatever you want and don’t need to wait until your publishing contract expires.  Short story markets will allow new readers to sample your work. Readers, you would never ever reach without…

.
Sampling is the Best Way to Hook a Reader.
Retail businesses known the importance of sampling. Sampling in grocery stores work. I almost always buy these food novelties after I can try them.  Then there are the many samples arriving in the weekly flyers, and personal products, such as shampoo or body lotions get promoted through hotels to their guests.  In the past some publishers would offer the he first chapter of each book in their new book listings, but they only handed these reading samples out at book fairs or to bookstore owners. However, barely anyone read them.  Now, readers can download samples of any book published electronically.  If you like the writing sample, you will most likely buy the book.

.
Write FREE e-Books.
It doesn’t need to be a full-length novel, just a bit more than a short story.  You certainly can implement all your other book’s sales page links, your Social Media links and even ready-to-click tweets about your book. Readers want to know more and interact with the author who’s book they are buying – not only see ads with the message: Buy my book, buy my book, buy my book … Readers rather want to see samples of your writing before they purchase more of your books.

.

Make sure that not only your books, blogs and short stories, but also your social media content has substance, and that it adds real value for your audience.  Write interesting blog content, real-time social media engagement, great images and videos, interesting info-graphics to increase visitor loyalty.

The most important trait for a writers is perseverance: content, communication, and commitment.  Having courage, a plan, patience, discipline, faith in yourself, a long-term perspective.  Success will flourish as long as you nurture it.

<><><><><>

Social tagging: > > > > >