Sell Your Book Online and More

Every author and publisher (and self-publisher) needs to sell their books in channels where the target audience is shopping. Online booksellers command a huge percentage of sales, but chain and independent bookstores still matter. If you're going to sell directly from your eCommerce, book fulfillment services are an excellent way to handle packing and shipping. Trying to do it DIY is time-consuming, and you won't readily have the infrastructure your buyers expect – for example, automatically offering online order tracking. Print-on-demand remains a popular option but heavily cuts into your profits.

When you want to ring up strong online sales, you need to be recommended by the algorithms of large booksellers. If you launch an eBook and price it very low, you'll often enjoy a sales spike that gets you going in the recommended column. Once it happens, you can raise your eBook price and begin to sell printed copies. Selling from your website directly is an excellent idea if it's built for eCommerce. You keep 100 percent of the sales proceeds and gather data about your customers (e-mail and physical addresses) that you can use in the future. If you use on-demand printing, you forfeit the data.

Selling from your website means it needs to have traffic, and search engine optimization should be a consideration. It has technical and content aspects which are crucial to understand. Working with an SEO specialist is helpful. They can guide you through the technical considerations and advise on your website's content. When you master website writing and include well-distributed keywords, you'll appear in search results. As you do, website traffic will increase, and if you've done it well, people interested in you and your book will land on your site and become book buyers.

A well-timed marketing program is helpful for both online and in-store sales. A significant opportunity will arise as your book is published and released. You can earn online, and media mentions to reach your target readers. Social media makes it possible to reach fans directly if you're well-established and sound at posting. Over-relying on social media can be risky unless you have a considerable following. Famous authors and celebrities can propel their books to solid sales with little more than their online mentions, but it works differently for most others. Media coverage and other online mentions will help mightily.