The Power of Word of Mouth
Word of Mouth. That’s the way to sell books.
You can place ads, you can send out mailers, email, you can get booked on Oprah, you can camp out on the top of the tallest building in town until you sell enough books, but nothing gets you sales like good ol’ word of mouth.
(That Oprah thing, though, would be really good to get the word of mouth started…)
So other than Oprah, how do you get word of mouth going?
As an author, there are lots of things you can do. One is public speaking. People are more likely to buy your book when they have actually seen you in person and maybe shaken your hand afterwards. And if the book is good, they will likely tell their friends.
Notice the italics in that last line: if the book is good.
Ah, therein lies the rub. If you want people to talk about it, it had better be worth talking about.
The same principle holds true for social media. If the book, or your website’s other content, isn’t good, nobody is going to talk about it. Or if they do, they won’t say nice things.
You can generate a lot of free word-of-mouth publicity by using your own Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts. Make sure you get the word out by holding a contest and getting people to send sales your way…give away a free copy of the book each week to one friend that puts in on their social media sites. Maybe even buy an iPod and give that away instead. Create a widget and have all your friends post it.
We can help you, through our partnership with Yovia, to speed up the process of ”spreading the word” about your new book. Contact us today to see what we can do.
If you have questions, please feel free to comment.
