What Are You Doing To Help Sales?

Everyone in the publishing world knows it is tough today to get those sales going. With the decline in book stores in the North America, the completely flooded market with online sales (a lot of which are "free books"), and publishers merging left and right, getting those sales up is tough. It is too easy for authors to simply pass the blame over to the publishers and say things such as "My publisher isn't doing anything," and, while that might be part of the equation, the second question that needs to be asked is, "What is the author doing?"

I am not going to say I have all of the answers here. In fact, I don't think there is a single solution here that would work for every author. But, with that said, the authors do have to also continue to strive to find ways to get those books into the hands of the readers.

We cannot say that everyone is losing money. There are a lot of traditional publishers out there finding ways to get those sales going. These might be attending a lot of conferences and getting the news out that way. These might be very aggressive online social media campaigns. The thing is, these authors are doing something.

Please note, I am not saying that authors are not doing anything. What I am saying is that maybe the approaches being taken are not the strongest of approaches right now and it might be time for a change of direction.

I do think we need to remember that sales and marketing plans cannot be entirely Internet focused. Sure, this is one approach, but we also have to remember that there are still MANY readers out there who not only like that real book in their hands, but also don't live on the Internet. They aren't buying things digitally. And they are finding those books, but, unfortunately, they are getting the books without sales coming to you. They share their books (there went some sales). They live in used book stores (there went more sales). They support their local libraries (after that first sale to the library, you aren't seeing anything)

So how do we tap into those readers? How do we get those books back out there?

It is clearly going to take an aggressive approach by everyone to get those sales going. If you want to see those books back into the major chains, then start pushing! If you don't want Amazon to take all of the profits from online sales, then send your readers to another source to get your books.

Let us know what you are doing?