Are you putting yourself out there? Don’t be shy.

If you were a self-employed plumber, electrician or builder, would you cower away from advertising your services?  If you bake cakes, clean houses or provide child care would you tell people or just pray and expect God to intervene?  Of course not.  If you want to work and put a roof over your head, you let people know by any means possible, you blow your own trumpet and it is considered acceptable.  So, why are authors so different?

                            

When you consider the hours that you put into producing a wonderful work of art, isn’t it worth letting people know?  We believe it was good enough to publish and hope that people will buy it, but they have to be aware of it to be able to decide. 

I realise that we are all on different levels, with different abilities when it comes to marketing.  I spent 10 years as a self-employed builder, 24 years heading up a charity and now I’m back to being self-employed.  In total, I have had 41 years of ‘selling myself’ but I still recognise that marketing is hard.

Someone recently asked in the ACW Facebook group if anyone actually sells any books on KDP Amazon.  There were a variety of answers and I was surprised to see that many people reported extremely low sales.  Some were even justifying the reasons for it, such as, ‘my genre isn’t very popular.’  Poetry was mentioned as always being a bad seller, yet over the last 2 years, interest in poetry has soared and my biggest selling book is a poetry book.

How is that possible?  The answer is to have a good marketing strategy, especially in the digital realm.  Understand that people need to see something at least 3 times before they commit to buying.  The brain processes information like this - awareness, consideration, and decision.  Other marketing theories believe it takes over 20 steps before a buyer decides, so push yourself and your books out there.  Let's stop justifying why sales are low and start strategising how to improve them.

My marketing strategy is a list that is longer than a giraffe’s neck (I am a marketing Geek).  I’ll share a couple of points here:

Use social media – It’s not good enough to just have an account and hope that people find you.  Be active, grow and sow.  My Instagram has grown in 6 months from 176 followers to over 3K and guess what, so have my sales grown. 

Use all 10 KDP Categories – When you self-publish via KDP, you choose an initial 2 categories.    You can add another 8 once the book is published and I still hear from ACW members that don’t know this.  Here’s a walkthrough to help you – Go to KDP Support. Select “Amazon product page and Expanded Distribution” on the left-hand sidebar, then “Update Amazon Categories” to find the request form.

My next step to blow my trumpet - As an ex-Rapper and a rhyming poet, the performer in me wants to get out and perform my poetry.  I find this rather scary, but I am now in the process of developing what I call, Half Man - Half Poet.  I am stepping out of my comfort zone, reaching out to churches, organisations and venues across the UK.  Even with my marketing experience, I do not find this easy as it doesn't feel natural, though I accept that it is necessary.  I hope that you find the courage to self-promote. 

  

Brendan Conboy is the author of 10 published books including his fascinating autobiography, The Golden Thread.  In 1986, Brendan invited Jesus into his life and God blessed him with the gift of rhyming words.  He used that gift as a Christian Rap artist for 25 years and has written 4 poetry books including the entire Book of Psalms in Rhyme.  He has 3 published novels - Issues, Invasion of the Mimics and Legacy of the Mimics.  He is the creator of Book Blest Christian book festival.  Visit Brendan's website HERE. 

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 [Brendan C1]