What do you think sells books? Would a big full colour advertisement in The Age be worthwhile? It might be but you need to weigh up the return on investment. It’s been so long since I took an ad out of that calibre that I don’t even know what it costs. Possibly a couple of thousand dollars? How many books do you need to sell to break even, let alone make some serious sales?
I like to look at the way I find books in order to work out how to help others sell theirs. The last book I read was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It’s not a current book. In fact, it was published in 1953 and the copy I have is a 50th anniversary edition that I bought at an opshop. Now don’t go yelling at me for buying a second hand book. The whole idea is that we get people reading books any way we can (second hand, friend of a friend, library, bookshop). If they love your books enough, they’ll go buy their own copies.
Why did I read Fahrenheit 451? Because I have heard that it’s a good read. A classic. Was it a good read? I’d say it was but not something that I’d gush about, mainly because it’s not the usual type of book that I love. But now I can tick it off my ‘to read’ list. And I don’t feel as though I am missing out because I haven’t read it.
Ever heard the acronym FOMO? Fear. Of. Missing. Out. This is something that we really need to take notice of. Why did Fifty Shades of Grey sell in the millions? Because people talked about the book and people wanted to grab a copy for fear of missing out. Nothing to do with quality of story or excellent writing but word of mouth.
Recently I was on the train. Three teenage girls were sitting behind me talking about a coffee shop. One of the girls hadn’t been there and was told, ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve been there!’ I can bet that the coffee shop isn’t that special but now that girl feels left out and she will make an effort to go there.
This is what we need to do to generate interest in our books. Problem is word of mouth is hard to control. And how do we generate it in the first place? Over the next few blogs, I’m going to explore this problem. I’m not sure if I have the answers but I might come up with a few strategies to create word of mouth.
First step is to make sure that your book is discoverable because once word of mouth starts if the book can’t be found then that momentum is going to stop as soon as it started. This means have it in as many places and on as many platforms as you possibly can so that when someone Googles it, there it is for sale.
Blaise the book chick
