The three biggest struggles of authors are “how to publish?” “how to market?” and “how to sell?”. It is easier than you think. Just follow this outline:
1. Self-publish on Amazon KDP
According to my survey where I asked over 80 authors about their main struggle one big question is: how to publish? Most often authors assume that they should publish traditionally, so they should contact a traditional publishing house. You don`t have to do this! You can self-publish and sell your book on demand. This is a very easy and fast way to get into the game. Often times authors worry also that, if they self-publish they can`t publish traditionally — that`s not true either. Andy Weir, is the author of The Martian, he self-published at Amazon KDP and sold his book first for 99 Cents. After selling a lot of copies a traditional publisher recognized the success and they published the book in their publishing house. So, it is possible to self-publish and then publish traditionally.
2. How to market your book
Writing and publishing is not the hard part. The real tough part is marketing and selling your book. This is also where most authors struggle with because they think that this is the job of the publishing house. Wrong! It is your job. The job of a publishing house is to bring the book into the bookstores but your job is to transport them from the bookstore into the house of your readers. Therefore you have to become good at marketing. The most read authors are also very good in marketing. Paulo Coelho f.e. who is constantly learning from digital marketers like Brendon Burchard how to market more effectively. Paulo Coelho is a great example of, what I call an author-preneur, a combination of artist, an author, and an entrepreneur who acquires business skills like marketing and selling. Paulo has a blog and he also collects email addresses which is a fundamental thing. The more email addresses you collect the more power you have as author.
3. How to sell your book
Selling sounds always like a bad thing for many people but you have to be clear, that selling is nothing bad. Think about selling like training. You`re giving free training and at some point you have students that want to dig deeper into the material and now you have to charge them. That`s how the world works. You have to be ok with the fact to charge money for a service like your book. You should also know the fundamentals about selling and your target audience that you want to reach with your message. Zig Ziglar wrote a lot of good books also about the topic of selling which are valuable until today. The most important thing is that you think and know what your target audience wants and then give it to them.
Don`t forget that mastering these skills is the most important thing. So, if you would rate your own marketing and selling skills what grade would you give yourself? Is there some room for improvement? If you`re somebody who wants to master these skills you can download my FREE Author-preneur Guide — How to publish, market and sell your book. Just follow this link and download your free copy: https://yakup.mykajabi.com/p/author-preneur
Ceyhun Yakup Özkardes is the creator of the online course Author-preneur — How to publish, market and sell your own book where he teaches marketing and selling strategies for authors.
Originally published at journal.thriveglobal.com