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Author book signings are hit or miss. Retailers spend time and money advertising. Authors spend time and money traveling to the store. Results are often less-than-successful.

How to Use Your Blog to Sell Your Book

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I've talked a bit about using a blog to make money through advertising and affiliate programs, since that's how I make my living, but what if you're an author trying to sell a book? Can a blog help you?

Of course!
Are book tours worth the time and money? Or is it more effective to do your publicity from the comfort of your own home? Although it depends on a lot of variables, I still think book tours can be an effective way of promoting a new book, and that they can be done relatively inexpensively.
If you are in sales, you have to keep selling through good times and bad. There are ways to find prospects with money, become a top priority for the money they have and close sales during tough times.
Writing a book is one thing. Publishing it is another. Promoting it is a whole new different ball game. Self-publishing your book entails a lot of effort, especially in the marketing stages, and Christian book promotion is no different.
Now that you have your eBook on Kindle and the Nook how do you go about selling it? That's where marketing comes in! No matter your feelings about marketing, it's just a process that has to be done for any product you want to promote whether the product costs money or not. Everyone has to market at some point! Marketing can be fun if you look at it the right way. Marketing is, in many ways a numbers game, but you can improve your odds by paying attention to specific aspects of marketing more than others. The following tips will help you market your eBook effectively. 
First and foremost, you must get your marketing plan put into action as soon as possible.

There are a lot of decisions to make, and often the biggest mistake made when self publishing is to put off considering a marketing plan until AFTER publishing. Writers want their book to be the best in its genre - but to stand out from the crowd, you must market your book very carefully and start early. There's a reason "Product Launch Formulas" are so popular in the Internet Marketing world - you have to get your customer's attention if you're going to get people to purchase.
Even if you don't plan to do much Internet selling, an appealing online presence is absolutely vital--and doable 

Brick-and-mortar retailers may be committed to their physical operation, but having an online presence is still critical to building and maintaining their business.

Book Trailers Generate Interest

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Two online video libraries that can help Christian retailers sell more books have expanded their offerings. 

As ChristianBookVideos.com prepares to mark its third anniversary next month, it has just posted its 1,500th Christian book trailer at the site, while Christian Retailing has added around 50 more contributors to its growing Author Corner service.
You can make the December holiday season your biggest sales opportunity of the year. And then you can do it all over again--on Valentine's Day, on Easter, and in the summer. In fact, you can do it every month of the year. It's all in thinking seasonally.

In the big scheme of things, I've noticed two types of social media impact writers more than any others: blogging and social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. You can bet I was thrilled when Lillie picked social networking for the topic of this post--I've been messing with social media in all its forms for years and enjoy the challenge of integrating it into my writing career. First, I want to remind you of the most important element of social networking:

Not a secret, often overlooked:

"Keep your promises."
This is one of the many questions I've had to answer since starting on my nationwide virtual book tour on November 1, 2006 - November 30, 2006 to promote my first self-published promoting eBook, "A Complete Guide to Promoting & Selling Your Self-Published eBook."
I have yet to meet an author who thought his/her publisher did enough marketing or who was satisfied with the royalties received. Most have the fantasy of writing the book, submitting the manuscript, and then sitting in a lawn chair next to the mailbox, waiting on those big checks to show up. The reality of publishing and the source of real income is a quite different picture.
So, your book is finally published and available for sale. You've sent word to friends and family, talked up the book on your social media profiles, and have blogged excerpts and other interesting notes about it to interested readers. You may not realize it once you hold the book in your hands, but your work is only just beginning. 
Authors who self publish sell, actually move books with social media like Facebook and a blog. I am and so can you. So forget about buzzing, engaging and "being more human" on social media and learn how to sell with it. Here are 3 things you can do tomorrow--to start making social media sell more books, speaking gigs and educational goods.
From the time I was a kid, all I wanted was to be a published author. I think I was strongly influenced by the Peanuts comic strip that had a recurring storyline where Snoopy was writing his "it was a dark and stormy night" book.

When I developed my marketing strategy for my book, The Cheap Diva's Guide to Frugal and Fabulous Living: How to Shop Smart, Look Your Best, Decorate with Style and Have Fun for Less Money!, I decided I was better off focusing on getting my book into public libraries than on the shelves of large bookstore chains. I am happy to have my book available through popular bookstores that want to order copies of the book one at a time for customers who have requested it, but I don't rely heavily on bookstores to sell my books. If every copy of the book doesn't sell quickly (without aggressive promotional efforts by the bookstore books by a not-so-famous author aren't likely to go flying out the door), bookstores more concerned about the bottom line that the brilliance of my prose might choose not to reorder my book in order to make room for newer titles.
Bring those visitors back for more, applauding you and saying BRAVO! They will create a buzz about your great site, and send you many more visitors through word of mouth. These visitors are your personal marketing force.

1) ALWAYS have a link to where your book can be purchased in your signature line. Never send an email without it. You can link to a website, your blog, newsletter, etc. as well. Keep the number of lines between two and four--it's considered good 'netiquette' especially when posting to regulated groups or forums.

How to Plan a Virtual Party by L.M. Preston

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Planning a Virtual Book Launch, a Virtual Book Birthday or a Virtual Book Tour are great compliments to a book marketing campaign. They are free, effective, and can stick around in the blogsphere forever to immortalize your book and marketing efforts.

You Are What You Write by Charles Rubin

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Writing ability is the single most important weapon you can wield in cyberspace. The words you write are your best and often only chance to create an impression on customers. Just as your confidence in an off-line vendor is affected by that person's command of the language, your prospects' opinion of you in cyberspace is affected by your command of the written word. Before you will ever have the chance to impress customers with your superior service, expertise, or follow-up, many of your prospects will decide whether or not to do business with you by the quality of your written communications.
When you are writing content for your website or for another website and are able to add links, how well do you use these links? Your two goals are to (1) increase the number of people who will click on the link; (2) improve the odds of people online who are searching for your topic of information to locate you easily.
Once you have even the spark of a notion to market online, let that spark ignite thoughts of how you'll promote your site. Have the insight to know this means thinking imaginatively about two worlds.
The Association of American Publishers' monthly sales estimates come with a number of caveats, the most important being the limited number of companies that participate--85 in all, with participation among the segments much smaller than that. Still, they have provided a useful tool in gauging how e-book sales and print sales are faring among the major trade houses (the big six all report).
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