Category: Sales

I changed the prices
of two of my books
at Kobo.

Within an hour,
Amazon had
price matched it.

The world is connected now
and there is no one
a business entity
follows closer
than competitors.

That means
there is no longer
any
quietly testing of a price
or a package configuration
or some other feature.

Your other customers
will know about it.

Assume when you offer
a special deal or pricing
to one customer,
ALL of your other customers
will find out
and want the same deal.

What you offer to one customer,
you offer to everyone.

A writing buddy and I
started publishing
around the same time.

She envied
J.K. Rowling’s success.
My buddy wanted the big break out,
the over night success.

She would jump
from niche to niche,
chasing the latest hot thing.

Almost a decade later,
she still hasn’t ‘gotten lucky.’
She has no readership
because she never stays
in a niche
long enough
to build one.

I, in contrast, envied
Nora Roberts.
I wanted to
gradually and quietly
build my readership
over numerous book releases.

I DID pitch the big ideas
but those big ideas
made my core readers
happy also.
None of those big ideas
broke me out.

Almost a decade later,
I have a core group of readers
who, when organized,
could land me
on the USA Today Bestseller Lists.

Seth Godin
shares

“Fell swoops seem like
they’re worth chasing,
but a hit isn’t a strategy,
it’s an event.
Nice work if you can get it,
but hard to plan on or build on.

It takes patience
to avoid planning on swoops.
It’s more productive
to live in a house
that’s built out of bricks,
one at a time, day by day.”

You CAN work toward
a fell swoop or a breakout
while also building your base.

Try to do both
but definitely do the latter.
One is a dream.
The other is more easily attainable.

Yesterday,
I encouraged everyone
to donate the business books
they aren’t using
to libraries.

A client k reader
contacted me privately
and
asked me
how I would feel
if someone encouraged people
to donate MY books
to libraries.

I would feel awesome
about this.
In fact, I’m very vocal
about encouraging this.

Why?

Because…

1) I’ve already benefited
from the original sale.
If the book is in the library
(a little free library or a public library),
it means someone bought it.

(As an aside,
public libraries are a huge market
for writers.
Being anti-library
is more likely to decrease
a writer’s sales
than encouraging folks
to donate their books
will damage sales.)

2) If someone is looking
in the library
for my book,
they likely don’t want it
badly enough
to buy it.

3) Often the people
who find my books
in libraries
weren’t looking for them
in the first place.
It is a discovery place
for books, series and writers.

and

4) If I prefer my book
be thrown in the trash
rather than
allow a poor person to read it,
I’m a sh*tty person.

Public Libraries and Little Free Libraries
aren’t a threat
to writers.

I hosted an online event.

I posted a joke.
Attendees tore it apart,
pointing out a misuse of a comma,
why it wasn’t funny,
posting slightly off topic sad stories.

I then posted
a picture of kittens,
what I call
the emergency kitten post,
the post I make
when things are bad online.
Attendees complained
about kittens getting all the love,
told stories about kittens dying,
and made other sad or gruesome comments.

I realized then
that talking about my books
(my products)
was NOT a good idea.
Attendees were in a bad mood.
Talking about my books
would only associate them
with this bad mood.

No sales were happening
at that event.

So I talked about other things,
lighthearted things,
and endured the grumpy comments.

Before pitching your product/service,
gauge the tone of the ‘room.’
If occupants are not at all receptive
to…well…anything,
save your pitch for another interaction.

Yesterday,
I talked about
how selling to family
usually causes
more problems
than it solves.

A client k reader
pushed back
on this.
“Family should buy our products
without needing the sales pitch,”
he wrote.

That’s like saying
a customer should buy
from us
because we’re nice people.

Being nice
can be a factor
when everything else
needed to make a sale
is present.

We’re offering the prospect
a product they need
at a price
they are comfortable paying
when and where
they’re interested in buying.

THEN, when deciding
between two or more sellers,
they might choose
the seller who is a nice person.

But-but price shouldn’t be
a factor.
The money ‘stays in the family.’

Are you sharing those profits
with family members
immediately?

No?
Then it isn’t staying
in THEIR family.

If you want family
to buy from you,
offer a product they need
at a price, location and time
they require.

Most of my family members
don’t know
the pen names I write under.
I don’t sell or promote
my books
to them
…at all.

Why?

Because it makes
our relationships awkward.
They tend to avoid
family members
who sell to them.

But mostly
because they aren’t
my target market.
Few of them are readers.
None of them
read in the niches
I write in.

And the two or three sales
I make
aren’t worth the issues
making those sales cause.

Seth Godin
shares

“First, it doesn’t scale.
You don’t have enough relatives
to cash in on.

But far more important,
these relationships are precious.
These are the people
who will help you level up,
who see you,
who care about your future.
They are the ones
who will tell you the truth
and will challenge you
to become a better version
of yourself.
Don’t burn this down
on the lazy road
to your next paycheck.”

Your target market
isn’t likely to be
your family.
Consider selling elsewhere.

Cheaper is better,
right?

Nope.
Not always
and not for everyone.

A writing buddy
recently raised
the prices of her books
from 99 cents
to $2.99.
That was a 300% price increase.

Her sales increased.

She asked one
of her new readers
why she bought the book
at $2.99
and not at 99 cents.

The reader said
99 cent books are all garbage.

Seth Godin
shares

“Choose your customers,
choose your future.

(Some customers want
to pay more
than others,
and some customers want
to get more
—of something—
than others)”

Cheaper isn’t necessarily better,
not for everyone.

There’s a story
people tell
about one of my loved ones.
He walked into a mall.
Everything was on sale.
The bargains were
huge and numerous.
He couldn’t decide
what to buy
so he walked out with nothing.

This happens to many people.

Seth Godin
shares

“Confronted with
the unlimited selection
offered by any music streaming service,
people choke.
They pick an old favorite,
a current hit
or something banal.
The same is true
with the nooks and crannies
of Amazon
or most pieces of software
–when people can have
anything they want,
suddenly what they want
isn’t much at all.

People are good at
“a, b or c?”.
Not as good at
“pick a card, any card.”
And terrible at,
“think of a number
between one and a trillion.””

Provide prospects
with limited choices
(preferably no more than 3).

That will increase
the odds of them
choosing something.

Great customer service
is a key to success
in the Romance Novel Industry.

That surprised me
when I first found that out.
I had never contacted a writer.
And, if I had,
I would have never expected a reply.

Yet writer after writer
told me
replying to each and every message
is key to building
a readership (customer base).

The first priority should be
writing the next book
(producing the next product).
The second priority should be
responding to readers’ messages.

Seth Godin
shares

““Your call is very important to us.”

If you hear that,
it means someone is not just lying,
but also isn’t good at arithmetic.

Your company spends $6
on digital ads to get a click,
and one in a hundred clicks
leads to an inquiry.
Which means that every inquiry
sitting in the queue
cost you $600.
Inquiries are a bit like cronuts,
in that they go stale quickly.
Waiting an extra day
to get back to
just one person
probably costs you
more than the entire day’s salary
of a customer service salesperson.”

Customer service is important.
Ensure you’re responding
in a timely matter
to your customers and prospects.

Many writers (business builders)
dream about having
huge sudden success,
going from zero readers (customers)
to a million readers
overnight.

They think it would be stress free.
EBooks would be delivered
by bookstores
without their participation.
They’d merely sit back
and count their money.

It wouldn’t be stress free.

Because a percentage
of those million readers
would contact the writer.

I don’t have a system set up
to respond to
thousands of readers
in a timely manner.
No many writers do.

The media would also
want to contact the writer.

The booksellers
would want special treatment
because they’re selling
so many of the writer’s books.

Things would go wrong,
as they always do,
and because of the scale,
it would be viewed as a disaster.

Competitors would respond.
Again, due to the scale,
MANY of them would respond,
all with different strategies.

And the writer (business builder)
would be completely
unprepared for all of this.

This is why very few
overnight successes
last.

Slow customer builds
aren’t all bad
and quick customer builds
aren’t all good.

Make the most
of the build
you’re currently experiencing.