Sign Up for the
SPAWNews Newsletter and
Get a FREE Report Too!

CLICK HERE

SPAWNews is packed with writing, editing, illustrating, and publishing information. Each month you receive market opportunities, events, and articles you can use now!
Not sure? Check out back issues of SPAWNews on our blog, or in the older SPAWNews archives)

• Member Log In
• Membership
  Information
• Join/Renew
• Book Store
• Catalog of
  Member Books
• Member
  Publications
• Publishing
  Resources
• Articles
• Reviewed Books
• SPAWN Blog
• Events
• Member Directory
• SPAWNews
• SPAWNews Archives (1/97- 6/09)
• Contact Us

Other Internet articles

HOW ARE SMALL PUBLISHERS SELLING BOOKS ONLINE?

Yes, we all know that Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com are selling books online. But some small publishers are also selling an impressive number of books online.

How do they do it? They follow five important steps:

1. Build a clean, clear Web site offering information on a topic of interest to the target market. The Web site offers more than one way to order.

2. Build a foundation of low-cost marketing.

1. Optimize the Web site pages for indexing by search engines.
2. Register the Web site with search engines and directories.
3. Research and request strategic incoming links from sites appealing to the target market,
4. Register with new site lists.
5. Write and e-mail a catchy publicity release to 1,200 media editors who are interested in hearing the news.

3. Evaluate the traffic to the Web site.

1. Watch the Web log report to track the number of visitors and confirm that the traffic is increasing.
2. Watch the Web log report's listing of sites referring visitors to the site. The top referring sites are potential places to advertise. The missing sites, those important sites which don't appear on the list, are the sites where the Web site should be registered again.

4. Start advertising.

1. Try an inexpensive online ad campaign with banner ads placed on the most popular referring site.
2. Try an inexpensive offline ad campaign with classified ads displaying a teaser line and the Web address (URL) of the site.

5. Consider setting up an Affiliate program. Take on some sales affiliates the way Amazon.com does. That is, find a site currently attracting your target customer, and offer the site owner a percentage of every sale originating from visitors he sends your way. Your site receives more visitors and makes more sales, because the affiliate highlights the link as an important one.

Follow these five steps, and you can make your Web site an important facet of your publicity program while selling your books directly to the public.

~ Virginia Lawrence is an Information Architect who publishes both in print and online. She can be reached at virginia@cognitext.com or at her Web site, http://www.cognitext.com.

Popular Articles
on Writing, Editing
Illustrating
Publishing &
Marketing

• Use A Book to Boost Your Business
• Ask the Book Doctor
• Need More Money? Transform Your Book Into Other Products
• Five Quick and Easy Ways to Promote Your Creative Business
• How to Evaluate Writing Contests: Six Starter Questions
• Create a Great Web Site for Your Freelance Writing Business
• Two Big Reasons Creative People Struggle with Marketing
• To Get Published You Need to Do Your Homework
• Seven Mistakes Self-Publishers Make – and How to Avoid Them
• Networking Tips for Authors
• How to Write for the Regionals
• Writing the Feature Article
• Publishing Your Own Book - A Timeline
• How to Work a Book Festival So that it Works for You
• How to Write a Promotional Article
• The Anatomy of an Article
• A Writer's Garden
• Ethics and Legal Concerns - Both Matter
• Extension of Copyright Protection
• Where Oh where Are All the Good Article Ideas?
• How to Find Work that Satisfies your Passion

Copyright 1996-2013. Small Publishers Artists and Writers Network
Web Site Design by Logical Expressions, Inc.