Hey guys! Thank you all so much for checking in today! I have a very special guest blogger in today, from RAD Writing. I hope you learn something from what she has to say. If you guys like her, I'll have her back on as a guest every so often. :)
~Rani
Welcome to the Jungle
Or at least jungle adjacent.
So you’ve finally picked the
virtual nits off that manuscript, run it through an editing comb or fifty,
slapped it between some glossy royalty free cover art and gotten your fan base
to trade signed copies and free editing of term papers for life for a gushing
review. Your blog is up, you have a Facebook page and you even managed to crop
a headshot that takes ten years and ten pounds off your face. Well boy howdy.
You may be an author. Now all you need to do is sell the 500 copies you keep
tripping over in your basement. Hey, here’s a thought: Amazon! Everybody sells
on Amazon, right?
Sure they do, at least theoretically.
And therein lies the burr betwixt the galloping stallion
of success and the happy saddle blanket called your book. While everyone CAN sell
on Amazon, not everyone does. My book’s been on Amazon for nine years. Ask me
how many I’ve sold. Go ahead.
You see, everybody sells EVERYTHING on Amazon, and Amazon
is in the business of making money off
stuff it sells. Just like you. Wait, what? You’re just an author? You’re not a business person? Well permit me
to show you the error of your dreamy little writin’ ways. If you want to sell
the book you have written; then you must consider yourself a business person
and your writing is your commodity, your product. And the simple truth is,
Amazon is not going to help you do this, just like Walmart doesn’t help you
sell those cool table mitts your gramma knits. Nope. Amazon is going to let you
set up an account with specific parameters, enter your information and charge
you money to use them for potential reader’s access to you. And that is ALL
they will do. Truth is, your gramma will probably sell more books on your
behalf and she won’t charge you a monthly fee to do it.
I get it. You’re excited and you want everyone to read
your tome; but if you believe in your work that much then do the right thing
the right way to get it in front of readers. Get online. Seek out local book
fairs, arts and crafts festivals, local bookstores and small publishers. Many
of these entities will allow you to show off your talent by selling your book
on consignment, allowing you to set up a booth, schedule a signing or reading
etc., or they will sell through their own mechanisms and actually work to
market you. It’s called networking and it’s something business people do. Get
some business cards made up and some touch cards with your book title and hand
them out everywhere to everyone with YOUR email contact and your website. Many
websites allow payment buttons for product sales and if you have a site, you
probably already have this option. Consider Square software and take credit card payments using your phone. The ideas are endless. Amazon isn’t the only game in town.
Trust me.
So dream big. But don’t be afraid of small starts. It’s very simple. If you are an author who sells books, you are a business person. Don’t pay a faceless entity your hard earned income to do something you can do better.
Need help? I know some great people at RAD Writing who
can assist you. They’re authors, just like you. And they’re business people.
With machetes. We can lead you out of the jungle.
Peace.
Tammy Boehm,
Associate Editor, RAD Writing
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