Thursday, April 3, 2014

Bob is in the house!

Tonight I'm hosting the infamous Bob (Robert Wacaster), be gentle, it's his first time here... This is the man who is responsible for swiftly kicking my ass towards his (and now my) publisher, SCP. 

HOW TO SELL A MILLION BOOKS!
     I'm guessing the title of this blog post caught your attention? Are you ready to hear the secret? Lean in close now! Aaaaaannnnnnd....

                      There is no secret.
  
     I'm sure that's probably not what you wanted to read. Everyone is looking for the incredible secret of how to sell a million books. Well, a good start would be hard work. Yes, you've already poured your heart and soul into writing a book taking months, maybe even years to get your story down on paper. (Actually, I know a few people who write what they call a book in about a week. I call someone like that a "puppy mill author". Quantity is not a substitute for quality. people!) Okay, where was I? ... ... Oh yes, you've already written your best seller, and maybe even found a publisher, so what comes next? How do you get copies of your masterpiece to fly off the shelves? I'll help you out and give you a few ways to get started:
     1. People won't buy your book if the don't know about it, so you've got to figure         out ways to let people know all about your wonderful book and where they can                 get it. If you're like me, you're broke and really need to find ways to get the                     word out for free. Luckily there are ways to do that!
      A. Start your own blog. And don't start whining with the excuse, "but I don't               know how to do that!". If you've written a book, then you know how to                           write. Find a nice website like blogger.com and follow a few directions. If                       you're still confused, look up blogging on youtube.com. Trust me, you can                         find an explanation to just about anything there!
      B. Use facebook.com and maybe create a fan page. This is a simple thing. If               you're confused about how to get going with this, find and talk to another                       author who has a fan page. Hell, email me at lvyoyo@aol.com and ask me                       to walk you through it. I'm always happy to help! (And help out other                               authors if they ask you, because you never know when you might need                             help yourself!) Here's a big tip for when you do this: Create it as an                                 "Author" fan page and promote yourself as a writer. Then when you write                         more stuff you can promote it using the fan page. And don't just push the                         book, people don't want to look at a fan page that's constantly posting                             "YOU SHOULD BUY MY NEW BOOK, HERE'S THE LINK!". Post pictures of                             yourself at your computer, write something about your day, show off a                           picture of the stuff you dug out of a dumpster to eat because you have no                       money for food because no one buys your books! ... ... Okay yes, that last                       one was a joke.
      C. Get yourself on YouTube. Create your own YouTube channel, or find                     someone who already has one and ask them nicely if they will post a                               video of you, or maybe something about your books. I have my own                               channel and have posted a few videos about books recently, and I'm                               usually happy to help anyone who wants a promotional hand. I'm quickly                           learning to work with a green screen background and am actually getting                         pretty good at it! Example:

Bob's Books: Footworks, A Bus Driver's Journal

I happened to see a post on Twitter by this author and offered to make a 
video for him.He was thrilled! which brings me to the next tip.
    D. Get on Twitter. I don't post on twitter.com as much as I should. Learn what             you can about hashtags (that would be one of these things #) and use them.                       And don't just tweet every month or so when you remember, get in the                           habit of tweeting all the time. If you get enough followers and tweet                               enough things, people will notice! (I'm one of the idiots who tweets every                       month or so... maybe. *chuckle*
    E. Become a review hunter. I've written a number of book and product                         reviews on amazon.com and ever once in a while I get a friendly email                             from someone asking if I would mind reviewing their book. They're usually                       very nice and offer to send me a free digital copy of their book if I want                         one. (To be honest, don't ask me to review your book at the moment. I'm                         up to my ass with college classes trying to learn all about Microsoft Word,                         Excel, and Power Point and computer repair. I don't have the time to read                       and review right now. When I have time things may change, though.) Look                       up books on Amazon  that are int he same genre as your book and then                             email someone who did a review for the books you find and ask politely if                       they would mind reviewing your book. Sometimes this may backfire                                 because the person won't like your book and will slam you with a one star                         review. Be prepared for that. Hustle reviews from friends and family. Try                         because that always looks pretty crooked. *chuckle* The more reviews a                           book has, the more likely people are to buy it for some reason. Out of all                         the books I've written, the one that still sells the best (more than all of the                       other books I've written to date as a matter of fact!) has 13 one star                                 reviews. Of course it also has 9 five star reviews to go along with that. for                       whatever reason I still sell a total of about 40 copies a month without much                       promotion at all.
   
     So there you have it, ways to get your book selling. Use combinations of the things I just told you about. If there is a YouTube video about your book, or you as an author, post it on your Facebook page AND tweet the link to the video. Post the links to your Twitter account and Facebook page on your blog. Blog about how confused you were trying to use Twitter to promote your book. Make a video about how confused you are about blogging. *chuckle* Okay, I'm getting out of control now. Basically, use the digital world to get yourself noticed. That's the real secret to selling a million books, you get a million people to notice your work.

     And so my guest post ends here. I'll be a good boy and post my info and a few book buy links in case anyone is interested. I don't have an author page, I'm a lazy author. *chuckle* and if you have any questions feel free to email me and ask away. Many thanks to Gretchen for allowing me this time to type out a blog post while standing on a soapbox. (It was really tough to reach the keyboard!)

Books I've written:

Kiss The Darkness A story about an Air Force Sergeant who is blinded in Afghanistan and falls in love with a nurse at the rehab hospital. Extreme themes here.




https://www.facebook.com/robert.wacaster



     And finally, if you have any questions or think I can help you out with something, feel free to send me email at lvyoyo@aol.com and yes I know I need to iron my "green screen" sheet. *chuckle*






     

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for having me, Gretchen. It was fun to write a post for you! And you know if you ever need any help, just give me a shout!

    ReplyDelete