Writing a book is more than just communicating your message.

It’s also about the marketing strategy to get people to buy in.

Here are three things to consider:

1) Write your book as if you are talking to that one ideal client. Trying to appeal to the masses might be viable for a fiction book, but for a non-fiction book, you want engaged readers that feel the book is written just for them. It's a great idea to write down what your perfect reader looks like in terms of demographics, as well as what their personality is and what they want.

2) You need to know what sort of journey you want to take them on. It's hard to get rich just on book royalties. That’s why the worst thing you could do is get them to pay attention to you and not have anything else to sell them. For most authors, the real value of their book is in opening doors to other opportunities, like starting a conversation with the reader, engaging them, and getting them to sign up to talk more with you.

3) What format will you be selling your book as? Digital? Physical? Audio?

Think it doesn’t matter?

Think again.

We have another client, Dr. Warrick Bishop, who wrote a book called Know Your Real Risk of Heart Attack. Originally, Dr. Bishop planned to sell his books for $34.95. That's how he thought he would spread his message. But the challenge is that the cost to get a sale of the book, coupled with administration and shipping, makes it an expensive strategy to implement.

So, we took a different approach and decided to build a funnel for the ebook for $4.95. We upsell the audiobook for $9.95, and around 20 to 30% of the traffic will buy the upsell. With this strategy, we found that offering the paperback as an upsell to an eBook just didn't work. This was mainly because of digital-first readers who don't like physical books, but see an audiobook as an additional or complementary option.

Join us next time when we will discuss 5 marketing strategies for making the most out of your book.