Authors: The Reality of Why You’re Not Selling Books

Recently, I read a post on Facebook from an author who complained that they are not selling any books. Yet, when I looked at their activity on Facebook, it's apparent they spend a lot of time playing around and doing things that likely takes a lot of time away from marketing their book(s).

This is not a judgement on how they choose to spend their time, but facts are facts. We all have the same amount of time in a day. How we use our time determines the results we achieve. Plain and simple.

To succeed at anything, you MUST have laser focus on the result you’re trying to achieve. Without it, you spin your wheels and waste precious time on activities that don’t move you closer to what you say you want.

Authors MUST Market

No matter how you slice it, as an author, it’s your responsibility to do what you can to market your books. And marketing takes time, effort and focus.

Marketing doesn’t have to take hours out of your day. With as little as 30 minutes a day, you can produce amazing results.

Checklist

One of the best tools for highly productive marketing is a checklist. A list designed to keep you on track with what needs to be done.

Here’s a simple checklist, specific to blogging, when used each day, will produce results.

• Create shareable content with your market (community) in mind
• Develop a catchy title
• Add images relevant to the content
• Include keywords in the post to optimize searchability
• Add a call to action (CTA)
• Utilize social share buttons
• Share on social media

If your preference is YouTube, you can use a similar list.

• Create a short video that is of interest to your market (community)
• Consider keywords and phrases people will search on
• Create a searchable title based on what your market is interested in
• Add a call to action in the video and description
• Share the direct link to the video with your subscriber list and on social media
• Post videos on a regular basis

Consistency Pays Off… Big Time

What are you doing today, and every day, to build your online presence? What are you doing to reach your market? What are you doing to get your message out?

Your outcomes won't happen by chance. They happen by design.

What are you doing to design your success?

List one action you take that helps you achieve success. Consistent action is not only on a professional level. What you do personally contributes to your professional well-being.

My Formula for Success

On a personal level, I take time each day to meditate. This comes before anything else I do. The reason being is to get my head and heart right with what the day will hold.

I also focus on my physical well-being. Whether it be gym time or running a few miles, I do something to get my energy up.

For my business success… I focus on how to serve my market AND how to get seen.

One thing I've been fine tuning is my activity on YouTube.

I've cleaned up my channel to have a solid message for authors on how to market themselves.

It's easy for all of us to get sidetracked playing around on social media watching the cute videos, reading the latest tweets about whatever we get distracted by and basically diddling the day away.

To get the result of what you want in your business, regardless of what type of business you have, focus is essential.

What do you do to stay the course and gain visibility for your products, services and you?