Seven Success Secrets of Successful Authors

If you are not the author you want to be yet, incorporate the following seven success secrets…

Please feel free to comment and add your own secrets and the end.

1. Treat your book as a business.

You spend many hours creating a masterpiece to help your audience. It follows then, you need to set up a regular time schedule to market and promote it. Do at least three High Level Activities (HLA’s) each day. Write a sales letter for each book. Create free content such as a blog or newsletter for people to opt-in at your site to build your targeted data base, so you can stay in touch with your audience.

2. Create a line or two about your book in your email signature file that goes out with every email you send.

After your name, title, and benefit statement, add something like: Author, “Write your eBook or Other Book–Fast!” Include your address, phone, and social media marketing links to get network further.

3. Invest some money in book marketing coaching.

Start a promotion bank account before you finish your book, so you can share your book with thousands and feel confident about its distribution. Buy a book with the coach inside. Contact a bookcoach about online marketing, and how you can do it well in just 4-5 hours a week of your time. Avoid expensive mistakes. Schedule a low-cost half hour session to see if you are a match with a coach that will get what you need.

Invest as much time into marketing as you do in the writing of your book. Without it, your book and your business you want to market with your book will stagnant and even die.

4. Set a dollar goal for your book each month.

Don’t count copies sold. Count each month’s book income.

Make an enthusiastic goal a lot higher than you think you can do. And, create a realistic goal based on your actions. Put your goal near your workstation to remind you of what you want. Don’t price your book too low, so you’ll appreciate an easy, profitable experience–getting what you deserve for all your work.

5. Take a teleseminar on how to market your book.

Teleseminars are simply seminars via the phone (conference call) with email support. These low cost and low time investments can make your book the great seller it should be. Your audience will want some tips from your book, and you can divide them up over several one-hour phone teleseminars. Teleseminars are a great way to sell yourself and your books, and a great way to attract new clients. Discover this inexpensive way to market via the phone and email. How convenient!

6. Don’t get fooled by high-cost services.

If it’s too good to be true, it isn’t true. Watch out for big expensive programs to get to be #1 on Amazon. That may be more work than the results you’ll get. Or, when you hire someone to do it all for you, it can cost $8000-$15,000 a publishing project, often with small results. When you hire a publicist, you may pay from $1000-$3500 a month. Results are what count. Check out a coach who knows who provides what for what cost. Save yourself grief in time and money lost. Check out what services fit your budget, and get a realistic picture of what your results will be before you sign on the dotted line.

7. Learn more about online book marketing and start using it.

Think about reaching hundreds of thousands of your audience every week. When you give them what they want–free information–at your website, they will eventually buy. Ask your coach about the top ways to get targeted visitors to your web site–social media marketing, blogs, and advanced article marketing.

Many clients come to me and say they are discouraged their book didn’t sell well in four months. Replace doubt with patience for the process. Success takes many months, but once you get it, the internet keeps it multiplied for you.

Many authors with talks, ads, or press releases. These don’t pay off well for the time and effort put into them. Realize what’s working and what’s not right now with your book marketing, and take action steps to change it.

Keep your marketing efforts going every week. OK, take a vacation too, and delegate what you can to a VA.

My own experience in 2010 includes a 57% increase in traffic to my book writing, publishing, and marketing site from Linkedin for four months and growing. I dropped what wasn’t working and checked my web stats at Alexa.com, now as low as 340,000 (that’s good) and Google to keep myself going in the right direction.

Knowing these secrets of what successful authors practice can help you receive the same recognition, branding, bigger visibility, sharing your good message, and creating a wealth stream to be envied by your peers.

If you want to be sure you’re heading in the right direction to be a successful author, check out Judy’s social media coaching or her breakthrough book coaching.

And if you haven’t done so yet, join Judy’s site to get fresh, updated, and useful content.

Published on July 5, 2010 at 9:40 AM by Judy Cullins

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(C) 2012 Judy Cullins. Skills Unlimited Publishing.