“The vast majority of books make less than $100 a year,” according to John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books.
Sad but true. Most authors will never realize their dream of being profitable.
When you consider all the costs involved in not only writing your book, but also publishing, $100 is nothing.
For every book you write, you go further into debt.
John’s Not Alone
Another book marketer says, “50% of the books published don’t make even that much. In my experience, at least 90% of books will fail, maybe even 95-99%. Fail means the books earn less than $100 a year.”
I find this shocking and totally unacceptable. Why? Well for one thing, why would an author spend so much time writing a book that never gets read?
Yet, there’s a reason why most books never make more than $100. Most authors do NOTHING to market their books.
To me that’s even more shocking. It’s like, “Really?!?!?!” Come on! The books are not going to miraculously make it into the hands of the reader. You, the author, must be proactive in your approach.
You CAN Make Lots of Money
I’ve been involved in the game of book marketing for a long, long time. And… every book I’ve written has made money. In some cases, lots of it.
Admittedly, I have been incredibly proactive in my approach to making sure my books get a lot of visibility.
There are lots of great ways to market your book. One of my favorites is with a blog tour.
A Virtual Book Blog Tour is much like a traditional book tour, except the stops are all virtual. Instead of going from bookstore to bookstore, the author goes from blog to blog.
- A virtual blog tour is a tour of various blogs and websites. It is recommended to post on blogs that have a similar readership as those who would be interested in your book.
- A blog tour is a great opportunity for an author to reach high numbers of potential book buyers and readers.
- A blog tour contains blog posts, interviews, reviews and/or guest posts that are posted to a series of blogs during a specific period of time.
- A blog tour can be done live where the author actually visits each blog and answers questions by the host. You can also do a tour where your information is submitted ahead of time in order that you have greater reach without be restricted by the clock.
- Virtual blog tours are a wonderful alternative to a “live” bookstore tour. There’s no travel involved and costs are minimal.
Other Benefits of Blog Tours
- List building – this is among one of the nicest benefits. When done right, you can drive traffic to an opt-in page, website or blog.
- Visibility – this is definitely a plus. The more visible you are, the more books you are likely to see.
- Position Authority – when you are able to position yourself as an authority, you have greater influence AND consumers are more likely to purchase your book.
Don’t be like up to 95% (or more) of authors who never, ever make money with their books. Be in the tiny percentage of authors who go the distance and proactively promote your books. Not only will you gain lots of satisfaction knowing there are people out there who are enjoying your work, you will also likely make real money.
Plan Your Book Blog Tour
To achieve the greatest results you need to plan out your Book Blog Tour. There are a lot of moving parts. When done right, it is quite simple. When you take a haphazard approach, you get minimal results.
Step 1: Build a Solid Foundation
Step 2: Determine Your Book Tour Goal
Step 3: Identify Your Ideal Reader
Step 4: Plan Your Pitch
Step 5: Research Blogs
Step 6: Get Your Mic Tuned Up
Step 7: Go Live on Facebook
Step 8: Create a Plan
Access my Kindle book for only 99 cents – Blog Book Tour: Sell Tons of Books With a Virtual Blog Book Tour (Blogs, blogging, book marketing, authors, publishing)
This book will give you step-by-step strategies for setting up a blog tour.