Learning to sell as an author

The business side of the writing is not just to write the book, sit on your butt, and hope that people buy it. You need to be front-selling everyday. That means getting out there, telling everyone you know that you wrote something. If you want to play the low-key game, look at your sales. They won't be huge. And if they aren't huge, don't expect to sell a book or have someone interested in selling them for you.

I've read a lot of things about authors feeling uncomfortable in the ways of selling. They don't like sitting at a table, trying to get someone to purchase their books. Well, maybe that's because you are sitting behind a table. Instead, why not try a different approach. Why not front-sell what you have?

An idea: Greet people at the front door. Take along a friend, and get in their face with a great presentation. You can sell people on anything if they know you. And by shaking their hand, saying thank you for coming to the bookstore because there are about 10 left in the world, it matters. Maybe they won't buy your book, but you still got to give a presentation. Do it everywhere, talk to as many people as possible. The more "no" responses you get, the closer you are to a "yes."

This leads me to the idea that authors aren't sellers. BS. That is exactly what an author is. Especially fiction. Because it is your ability to sell, to convince someone of your fictional world that sells the book, the story. By suggesting that you don't like to talk about your work with strangers is a mistake. Sometimes, you learn a lot about yourself and how you write simply by talking to strangers.

The entire presentation is not about those short-term book sales. It's about convincing them that you are serious about your craft. By taking you seriously, by making sure that they understand that you want them to know you by knowing the world that you have created, it helps promote your work. It's not that one customer that matters, its the several customers that they will tell about you who do matter. That's how you build a word of mouth campaign.

The other thought is on book readings. Most of them are completely boring. I've sat through a few in which the person just whipped through what was said, read what was on the page, and never gave any impression that they had a creative bone in their body. One of the best presentations I've ever attended by an author was by James Elroy in L.A. He acts out his stories, gives you insight into what he was thinking about the time, some moments of inspiration as to why he thought this was good to include in a book, and makes you a part of the story.

That's selling, baby. If you are a writer, get to work. The funny thing about writing is there used to be a gatekeeper system which limited the amount of books out there. Thus it kept them limited enough to where if an author was published, they had a golden key. Now, that means crap. Anyone can publish, and more power to them. So you have to separate yourself in your selling. It's the only way to ensure that you get another book printed through an imprint or sold.