Chapter Four
Marketing Your First eBook with No Budget Using Fingertip Marketing to Sell Your Books
Q: What is Fingertip Marketing?
A: Fingertip Marketing is defined as, any marketing that adheres to the following two requirements:
1. It is free of charge.
2. It includes no verbal sales pitch to anyone.
You communicate through your computer keyboard using your fingertips.
In this chapter and on my new website, eBook-marketing.com you will find many examples of fingertip marketing.
The address of eBook-marketing.com is:
http://www.eBook-marketing.com
Q: How did you come up with Fingertip Marketing as an effective way to sell eBooks?
A: When I was writing my first paperback book, How To Hypnotize Yourself Without Losing Your Mind, I thought that once I wrote the book and was listed in the Library of Congress, my marketing work was over.
I actually believed that I would be in a universal listing that bookstore managers and librarians would see and then order my book.
Boy, was I stupid!
The truth is that the author must do all of the marketing of his/her book.
There is no universal listing that will get libraries and bookstores to order your books. You have to become a "salesperson."
Most authors that I have met are not salespeople. In fact many authors I meet despise salespeople.
The Insurance Sales professional
Think about how the typical insurance sales professional works each and every day.
The insurance salesperson has to call on people called "suspects" of which many are not interested in his/her product. Most people will not be interested in buying insurance.
From the group of "suspects" evolves a smaller group called "prospects." Prospects are people who are interested in buying insurance.
Out of that smaller group called "prospects" evolves "customers" or the people that actually purchase the insurance policies.
The next day the salesperson gets up in the morning and begins the procedure all over again. Every day is exactly the same as the day before.
Does this sound like fun? It can be a great deal of fun. But most authors I meet would never be comfortable working in an environment like that.
Characteristics of the insurance sales job.
Many insurance sales professionals work eight to twelve hours a day, five days per week. However, they must meet with they're clients when the clients are ready. Many successful insurance professionals spend weekends selling insurance.
Insurance salespeople are usually restricted to handling specific insurance products and they are restricted to a specific geographical territory.
The Traditional Book Author
Here is the typical day of a book author once the book is published.
The author makes a list of bookstores, contacts the Bookstore Manager or the Community Relations Coordinator, if it is a chain bookstore.
The author then makes a sales presentation to interest the store in carrying the book.
The author will try to schedule a book-signing event or just get the bookstore to place a purchase order for books right away.
The bookstores are called "suspects."
Most bookstores already have enough books on their shelves so the author has to employ super sales skills in winning over the bookstore decision-maker to buy books or schedule a book signing.
If the store agrees to purchase the book, the decision-maker will tell the author that they will only deal through an established book wholesaler. They do not purchase books from individual authors.
The author must call the book wholesalers or large distributors and sell the wholesalers or distributors in carrying his/her book.
Excellent sales skills are needed for this process.
Several follow-up sales calls are made by the author and hopefully the wholesaler or distributor will agree to carry the book.
Now, the author will go back to the bookstore and offer to present a book-signing event. The bookstore CRC will jump for joy to get the author signing booked for that day. Author signing events are usually booked up eight weeks in advance to make sure there will be books available to sell.
The bookstore orders 40 books from the author's wholesaler. The books will not be paid for until after the completion of the book-signing event.
The author goes to Kinkos or some other office print shop and creates banners, bookmarks, and other marketing materials. The author pays for the materials.
The author calls radio stations, writes news releases and calls personal friends to attend the book-signing event.
The book signing is held. Fifty or sixty people show up to listen to the author. Five people purchase books.
Immediately, after the book signing the bookstore sends the remaining 35 books back to the publisher.
Thirty days after the book signing the author goes to the bookstore and asks for payment for the five books sold a month before.
The bookstore requests the author to invoice the store at this time. The publisher will receive payment and the author receive a royalty check for those five books purchased from the wholesaler within 90 days of the book-signing event.
Any unsold books that were returned in damaged condition will be credited against royalty payments.
Returns can run between 7% and 35%!
Does this sound like fun to you? How much money does it cost you and how much time will you spend selling five books at a signing?
This is a very realistic example of booksignings. In fact, if the author sells five books at the event the store considers it a success! You have introduced many people that will purchase other books while they are in the store or at a later date.
If you were to present this book-signing example to successful insurance sales professionals that are earning over $100000 per year, they will simply not believe you!
The author spends too much time selling for too little money.
The eBook Author
The eBook author writes a book.
The eBook author posts books on Mightywords.com.
An hour later the book is selling over the Internet. Mightywords is handling payment and fulfillment of each order.
There are no book returns.
Then the author posts the book to other eBook selling websites, negotiating all contracts by e-mail. The author never has to speak to another individual and waste valuable time over the telephone.
The author takes a sample chapter or an article and submits this information to top websites that may be interested in the author's subject area.
Offering content for web visitors greatly enhances the value of the already popular websites. Almost all of the website content managers will jump for the opportunity to give their web visitors more reasons to come back to their websites.
The sample chapters and articles are given in exchange for links back to the author's book listing at Mightywords.com, the Booklocker, 1stbooks Library, or perhaps the author's own website.
If you can propose just four or five