Develop Business Skills for book biz; what to do?

You develop the skills as follows:

  1. Trial and Error
  2. Learn From Others
  3. Look For Patterns

The skills to learn are:

  1. Marketing
  2. Sales
  3. Customer Services
  4. Accounting
  5. Adaptability
  6. Time Management
  7. Determination
  8. Resourcefulness
  9. Creativity
  10. Strategy

How to look at marketing:

Awareness > Leads > Prospects > Sales = Loyal Customers

Brand > Creator > Content > Build = Loyal Customers

  • Marketing
  • Accountability
  • Squeeze Pages
  • Opt-In Pages
  • Email Follow Up
  • Offers
  • Memberships
  • Loyalty Program
  • Customer Specials

Awareness on:

  • Google
  • Blogging
  • SEO
  • YouTube
  • Forums
  • Social Media
  • Influencers
  • Think Outside The Box > Guest author a blog post on someone else’s site, guest on podcast, author a guest email newsletter, webinar, ebooks

Sales generation:

  • Free trial offers
  • Discounts
  • Urgency

Look at your progress after 12 months, and take an inventory.

Classify your book:

  1. non-performer books
  2. mid-list books
  3. take-off books / bestseller books

Identify the lowest hanging fruit:

  • current trends
  • outdated packaging
  • past winners
  • prioritize first-in-series

Spend 1-2 hours each week focusing on a backlist book and creating a plan of action:

  • pricing
  • taglines
  • cover
  • description
    • Do this to:
    • increase income
    • grow brand / exposure
    • generate leads
    • test everything

Focus on sales conversion.

100 clicks > 5 buys = 5% conversion

  • Change blurb of a book first
    • Set baseline
    • Change one at a time

For change a blurb first.

PAID ADS

  • Facebook
  • Amazon
  • BookBub
  • Others

EVENTS

  • Sales and Freebies

BOOKS

  • Prequels
  • Back Matter

First In Series
(longer series is better)

  • Maximize conversions before running ads
  • Learn as much as you can and test, test, test

Sales Checklist

  • Plan ahead
  • Publicize it
    • Ads
    • Social media
    • Newsletter
  • Stealth sale for testing purposes

Do captive book matter

More income opportunities:

  • Box Sets
  • Special Editions
  • Serialized Content
  • Expanded Distribution
  • Audio Content
  • Foreign Language (non-English)

Lead Generation

Email address for a free book (via a book funnel)

Give every genre its own pen name.