which books should i read?
anyone have any good series i should check out??
thanks

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Every author wants to be a bestseller. Here are an expert’s five easy tips on selling your book faster and smarter.

TIP # 1
Online reviews are paramount in importance when it comes to drawing attention to your book. And the best part is, you’re in control of your own destiny!
If you haven’t yet submitted your own review on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, what are you waiting for? This should be one of the first steps for every published author.

Encourage other family members and friends to review the book, too. They’re inclined to be more generous than perfect strangers, but don’t underestimate the effect of any honest review. Published reviews on sites like Amazon, Barnes &Noble, and the many other sites Outskirts Press books appear demonstrates interest in your book. And that’s a good thing! Post a review for your book today, and ask others to do likewise.

TIP #2
Enhance your online listing with Amazon.com by participating in their “Search Inside the Book Program.”

Sign up to join this revolutionary new way to merchandise your book on Amazon.com. When customers search for books on Amazon.com, actual words from inside your book — not just the author or title — are engaged to return the best possible matches. With this powerful new search feature, customers can discover books that may never have surfaced in previous search results!

With “Search Inside the Book,” customers can also browse sample pages and do additional searches inside a particular book to confirm that the title is just what they’re looking for. All of this helps authors like you sell more books.

Once you sign Amazon’s Publisher Participation Agreement and are accepted into the program, you will need to provide Amazon.com with a physical copy of each book you would like to include in the program.

TIP #3
Become an “expert” in your field and book sales will follow. It’s true that promoting a book requires a great amount of resolve, but it is also true that working smarter, rather than harder, can help reap those rewards.

By projecting yourself as an “expert” in the genre in which you write, you can open new doors for networking, doors that often remain shut without that expertise status.

How does one go about making himself or herself an expert? Easy! You already are one. The name on your published book proves it. Now just use that book as a calling card to line-up speaking engagements, freelance writing gigs, and other opportunities at a variety of venues.

Two good places to begin are AOL and the ABOUT.COM information network. Both have category-specific forums in which you can participate, and by mentioning that you are the “Author of such-and-such” within the scope of your communication, you begin to label yourself as an expert to fellow participants.
Being recognized as an expert in a technical or “non-fiction” category is admittedly easier than the largely subjective category of “fiction expert” but even if you have written a work of fiction, becoming a recognized expert is conceivable.

Whether you’ve penned poetry, horror, or romance, there is a forum in which to voice your opinion. The Internet is full of chat rooms, use groups, genre-sites, and more — all thirsty for content from published writers. You just have to know where to look. Start selling books tomorrow by being an expert today.

TIP #4
“Pay For Performance” internet advertising is making big waves lately. While most search engines feature such sponsored links, there are currently only a number of engines providing the back-end technology, and of those, only one serves the majority of search engines used by the public: Overture.

The way pay-for-performance (or p4p) works is simple. You bid on search terms (either words or phrases or a combination of both). Your webpage link then appears in search engine results relative to the price of the bid. If you’re the highest bidder, your webpage appears at the absolute TOP of many search engines. Remember the frustration of typing in a search for your webpage and never finding your link? No longer!

But that’s not even the best part. The best part is this — you only pay if someone actually clicks on your link. And since you’ve defined the search term, the people clicking on your link are already predisposed toward your subject. In essence, they’re already pre-sold.

Let’s look at an example. Say you’ve published a mystery novel about the death of a land baron in Louisiana. Not exactly a new plot, and yet millions of “whodunit” readers would be anxious to read it. Your solution? Open an Overture account and bid on search terms like “Louisiana Mystery Novel” and “Mystery Book Plantation” and similar terms. Counter-intuitively, the more vague the term, the better, since very specific searches deliver very motivated buyers to your page, and since you’re paying for each click, you want those people to buy!

That brings us to the down-side. You have to be very careful managing your bids, or it can be expensive. Do not bid on ridiculously vague and popular words like “book” because you will never recoup your money. Instead, focus your search terms as specifically as possible.

If you’ve been clamoring for more traffic to your free Outskirts Press webpage, Overture may be just your ticket. To sign-up, click below. They’ll even give you a $10 credit to begin.

Visit Overture at their website for more information.
Tip #5

Use ebooks to help promote and sell your paperback or hardback edition.

Think of e-books as a teaser. With a lower purchase price and more immediate gratification, many people are inclined to give an e-book a try when they might pass on a traditional paperback. Furthermore, if they like the e-book, 80% of people end up purchasing the “real” book, too!

There are three schools of thought concerning the way in which e-books should be sold.
1 – Some believe that e-books should have a very low purchase price, somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.00 for the entire book.
2 – Other believe that e-books should only contain excerpts, or sample chapters of the full book, and that they should be provided for free.
3 – Still others believe that e-books best serve their purpose when the entire e-book is given away. This encourages word of mouth about the author and the book, which in turn helps support additional book sales and really shows dividends when a subsequent book is published by the same author.

Whichever course you follow, there is little doubt that e-books are beneficial to your promotion efforts. If you don’t yet have an e-book, what are you waiting for?

Technorati Tags: Book, selling, tips

Social networking allows means of promotion that authors cannot afford to ignore. There are millions of social networking sites, which make author promotion not just easier but even more fun. If you’re a published author such as I am, you may have heard different opinions about this from your peers. Some praise social networking as the “dawn of a new age” for author promotion. Others believe that social networking is a waste of time and will only give you promotion to a certain degree. There are points to both opinions but I find the last completely untrue.

I’ve been using social networks for years and only recently began to really pump up my book promotion through them. Being an author in the business for almost twelve years, I can tell you that online promotion works and today, social networking is the best brand of online promotion an author can use. The reason that some authors say social networking hasn’t brought them much exposure is because they do not know how to use them. There is an art to writing but there is also an art to effective publicity and exposure.

These are simple tips that will help you find readers on any social network you join. I’ll use My Space as a primary example.

Tip 1: Treat My Space as a database of potential readers.

Do a search for readers who are interested in books that you write. Go to the search section of My Space and do an extensive hunt for readers who read books of your genre. For example, if you write mysteries, in the search bar, type in “I love to read mysteries”, or “mystery books”, or “my favorite mystery authors”. What will you get in return? Lists of profiles of people who read mysteries and even detailed info about their favorite authors. How does this help you? Simple, most times people who read your genre are always looking for new books. Maybe they know of your new mystery, maybe not, either way you’ve found your audience. Reach out to them by sending friend invites. Do not send personal messages advertising your books. Even if you want these people to buy your book, do not resort to spamming. Most times just sending a friend request and allowing them to check out your page is enough. So, you’ve gained a potential reader and if not, you’ve at least gotten exposure to someone who wasn’t aware of your book.

Tip 2: Join the groups and discussions and participate.

I know writers are busy people. Whenever someone asks me advice about promotion, I throw up social networking in a minute. I tell them how they can’t just add friends or pop into the site once a month and expect to gain exposure or book sales just by being a member of a network. Authors should take social networking seriously. It’s a must-have for publicity and you must put as much time into it as possible to see positive results. You’ve got to participate and this is what some authors do not understand. The key is to promote yourself as well as your book. Join the groups and accept group invites. Participate in the groups as much as you can but do not plug your book. Just being in the group and participating will bring you exposure and possible sales.
You’ll receive more friend invites and invitations to more groups. You’ll gain exposure to media contacts that maybe in these groups and that will lead to publicity for you. You don’t need to plug your book at every turn. Sometimes showing people that you’re a real person and not just an author will bring you more fans than you could ever hope for.

Tip 3: Use your book cover as your profile picture.

What’s easier than promoting your book by having your book cover to be your main picture? This way, wherever you go or post in that network, people will see your book. Seeing your book cover is way more interested to readers than seeing your face. You can have your personal picture on your profile page but use your book cover to identify yourself throughout the network. This will definitely attract readers to your page. They’ll check in simply to see about what you’ve written. Once again, you’ve gained a potential reader. And if not, the least you get is exposure.

There are many tips for making social networking work for you. You should use it as a serious form of promotion, nothing to take lightly. Some authors claim they don’t have time to keep track of their social network sites. Do you have time to sell books? If you are serious about gaining book sales in an era of technology, you need to make time for promoting yourself online. There isn’t an excuse as not having time. Authors should remember that effective publicity is for the long-term. You want your books to continue selling and to stay in print for years to come. The least we can do is to keep our readers focused on our products. We need to promote ourselves as much as our books. If we lose interest in our own work, how can we expect readers not to? Last but not least we need to be patient. Good things come to those who’ve put in the time. Better things come to those that wait.

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