The
New York City Marathon this month featured over 50,000 runners. They ran as
hard as they could for 26.2 miles.
Amazingly, only three seconds -- out of 7800 seconds worth of
running --separated the winner and the second-place finisher. In fact, less than a minute separated the top
four finishers. Can you imagine running
for several hours and around 137,000 feet – and you lose by just seconds or a
few feet?
This
type of separation in running is no different than the level of competition in
book publishing.
Every
day, 3500 books are published in America – or one every 25 seconds or so. Many
books compete for a sales ranking on places like Amazon and other best-seller
lists. A few may really stick out, but the vast majority are bunched together
and just a few sales can make the difference between being considered a winner
or a best-seller vs. being viewed as mediocre, or worse, a failure.
When
you look at the finish times for the marathoners, many finish within four
hours, which is no slouching feat considering how many like me hardly move and
couldn’t walk 26.2 miles in a day, let alone run it so quickly. But for those in the game and competing,
there can be a sea of difference in how you place in the standings just by a
matter of minutes.
Authors
can sprint to success by getting a certain number of registered sales in a
short period of time. According to the
best-seller lists on Publishers Weekly,
one usually makes it if they sell 3,000 copies in a given week through recorded
channels like Amazon, B&N and places that use BookScan. So it could come down to 100 sales in a week
that turns one book into a best-seller and one into obscurity.
Writers
like to write and let the book marketing work itself out but today’s writer
knows he or she has to write the ending to their book sales. They have to make that final push at the end
of a grueling, competitive race to nudge ahead of the competition.
Authors
can’t take anything for granted or leave things to chance. They have to implement a best-seller strategy
and pad it with extra sales to ensure they don’t just fall short of their goal
to hit a best-seller list.
What
will land you on a best-seller list? Get
pre-orders for your book prior to launching.
Discount the book if necessary.
Call upon friends and family to buy copies from traditional outlets in a
specific week – and ask them to ask their friends and family to buy as
well. Offer bonus incentives or trade
favors with people who have big social media followings to play your book
up. Advertise on Facebook and generate
buzz with a strategic book publicity campaign.
Whatever
you do, you need to know that the field of competition is enormous, hungry, and
fierce. But not everyone has a great book,
nor do they apply resources and a good strategy to support it. You can get a leg up on the competition and
surpass perhaps hundreds of thousands of others simply by securing a hundred book sales more than them.
You
don’t want to run a marathon and place far behind the winner when only a minute
separates you. It’s time to turn the
page and go all Rocky on your fellow writers.
READ
THESE!!
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Study this exclusive author media training video from T J
Walker
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you sell 10 copies of your book every day?
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book PR lessons from kids, clergy, women, contractors & sportscasters
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authors get on TV?
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