|
|
| Higher Profit Through Hyperlinks The
Author of BEYOND THE BOOKSTORE
Reveals How To Market Your eBook By Doing What You Do Best—Writing! Like
most modern writers with an eBook out there to sell, one of the first things I
did upon its ePublication was to spend an entire weekend hunkered down over my
computer and throwing up a Web site! Okay, it’s not the greatest site in the
world, but it’s not the worst either. It contains free samples from my eBook, Freedom
to Freelance, links to all of my Web published articles, great graphics a la
the cover of my eBook and several of The Buzz On books I’ve written or edited,
and all in three, easy-to-click pages. So
why isn’t anybody coming?!? After all, my Web site isn’t exactly setting the
cyber world on fire. In fact, I’m lucky if I get over twenty visitors a week!
So how have I sold ANY copies of my eBook at all, let alone the numerous copies
that make my quarterly royalty checks such a pleasant cyber surprise? Simple: I
write! WRITE
ON! As
an eBook author, you’ve got the skills for your very own marketing campaign
handy: your creative writing talent. Whether your eBook is about gardening or
gothic ghost stories, you’ve got enough talent and chutzpah to have written
the book, searched out an ePublisher, and gotten your creation out there on the
Web and ready to be downloaded by one and all. So keep doing what you do best
and write some more! Take
time off from that new gardening guide or gothic novel and spend an afternoon
writing an article about your favorite topic instead. A 700-word treatise on
“how to sprinkle” or a 1,000 word vampire story will seem like child’s
play after writing an entire eBook, and as a result you’ll have a very handy
marketing tool: a brand new, original article/story to submit. CYBER SUBMISSIONS Take
advantage of the plethora of Web sites, ‘zines and e-mail newsletters out
there and submit your brand new article accordingly. Run an Internet search on
“gardening” or “gothic” and bookmark those sites that accept submissions
from frantic freelancers like yourself. Many
of these sites conveniently allow, and indeed prefer, you to submit your article
electronically. Take advantage of this fact by creating a concise query letter
and then including your story underneath it in the body of the e-mail, never as
an attachment. Format your submission for convenient e-mail reading by losing
all of your paragraph indents and placing a single space between each paragraph
instead. (Your future editor’s eyes will thank you!) OTHER PAYMENT Don’t
expect to get rich, however, no matter how many of your bookmarked Web sites
agree to publish your article. Very few, if any, of the start-up Web sites,
‘zines and e-mail newsletters you’ll be approaching can afford to pay you
much. A $5 deposit in your PayPal account and perhaps a free packet of seeds is
pretty good these days. However, your reasons for writing the article weren’t
for that extra twenty-five cents a word you wanted to charge, were they? Heck
no: you want exposure! And that’s just what you’ll get! BUCKETS OF BYLINES As
an added “bonus” for not paying you anything, most Web sites and zines will
offer you a graciously lengthy byline. Take advantage of this fact by tacking on
a low-key sales pitch for your eBook. Here’s mine: Rusty Fischer is the author of FREEDOM TO FREELANCE: The Editor of
The Buzz On Series Reveals How To Find, Get and Keep Your Next Freelance Job,
available as an eBook at http://www.athinapublishing.com/fischer.htm.
Two
or three lines is fine, and make sure to include the EXACT URL of your
author’s Web page at your ePublisher! This way, readers can easily click on
your hyperlink and jump straight to your sales information. As an added
attraction, many Web publishers allow you to keep all rights to your article or
story. This, in turn, allows you to turn around and “sell” your story over
and over again. While you may not exactly rake in the dough by publishing with
one or more Web site or zine, just think of all those handy hyperlinks you’re
racking up! THAT
WAS THEN... ...but
this is now! In the old days, you wrote an article for a magazine, and if you
were lucky, they published a short blurb about you in the back with the photo
credits and classified ads for art schools. If a die-hard reader was eager
enough to find this blurb and read it, they found out about your new book, wrote
it down, and then ran to their local library or bookstore to check it out or,
hopefully, buy it. If they didn’t lose steam along the way, that is. And
plenty of them did! Nowadays,
however, readers of your fascinating gardening article or gothic ghost story can
simply click on your sales info as soon as they’re done reading it! While
they’re still inspired with your expertise, they can easily whip out the old
credit card, type in their ordering information, and download your book before
the wind is out of their sales. Congrats, you’ve just made your first
hyperlink sale! MORE MONEY, FEWER CLICKS Remember,
however, to keep your byline short and to the point. For instance, I used to
include the hyperlink for my Web site in my byline, along with the hyperlink for
my ePublisher’s ordering information for my eBook. Why? Who knows? Vanity,
most likely. I’d spent all those long hours building it, by golly, somebody
better go visit! But once there, viewers still had to click on my book cover to
get back to my ePublisher and actually purchase it. For
most Web browsers, that is simply way too many clicks. So cut out the middle man
and list only the most vital, and profitable, hyperlink in your byline. After
all, one hyperlink per byline is a good rule to follow. If you’ve got six
eBooks out there, don’t list them all, just the most recent one. Or, perhaps,
the one that’s selling the least. Make your one and only hyperlink count, and
soon, you’ll be the one “counting” all those royalty checks! Rusty
Fischer is the author of BEYOND THE
BOOKSTORE: 101 (Other) Places to Sell Your Self-Published Book, available at
http://www.bookbooters.com/b00062.asp.
|
|
