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From Karen Saunders

Your Branding, Marketing & Self-Publishing Coach



Posts About ‘Marketing Strategies’

April 25th, 2016 | By: Karen Saunders

How to Sell More Books: 3 Steps to Make Your Readers Love You

Team member and social media marketing expert Mary Walewski contributed this month’s article on how authors can sell more books: When it comes to authors selling books, I think the problem is this: People confuse marketing with having to be sale-sy all the time. I can certainly understand wanting to get sales. But when your only message to potential readers is “Buy my book!” people will tune you out very quickly. People buy from you when they know and trust you. If you are struggling to connect with potential readers on social media, take a good look at what you’re posting!…

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August 27th, 2015 | By: Karen Saunders

Add Value to Your Self-Published Book with a CD or DVD!

Self-publishers: If you’ve written a book, you may want to consider creating a CD or DVD with audio, video or e-media content to add value to your self-published book. Then you can leverage your content and double your price AND your profits on Amazon! First, you will need to open an Amazon Advantage account. This is a consignment program where Amazon requests copies of your product based on current and anticipated customer demand. It works like this: you mail copies of your product to Amazon; when a customer makes a purchase, Amazon’s fulfillment department  ships it out directly to the…

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March 29th, 2015 | By: Karen Saunders

Mobile-friendly Websites Are Preferred By Google

In February Google announced that on April 21, 2015 Mobile-friendly Websites(also known as “responsive” websites) will get preference in Google’s search engine results. This means if your website has NOT been optimized for mobile devices you may see it fall in Google’s search rankings. Google states this change in their algorithm will have a significant impact on search results. Google is adding this criteria because they have determined that more and more people are using mobile devices to search the internet and these folks will return to mobile-friendly websites over sites that have not been optimized. Mobile-friendly Websites reconfigure graphics and content on mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones so…

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January 27th, 2015 | By: Karen Saunders

It’s Not Too Late To Create A Marketing Plan for 2015

Most authors and entrepreneurs know they need some kind of a marketing plan but few actually create one! Perhaps it just sounds like a big, complicated project that they just don’t have time to do. Or, they really don’t know what a marketing plan looks like. Even though we’re a month in to 2015, it’s not too late to get your marketing plan together for this year. In the free video class “Creating Your Marketing Plan for 2015” social media guide Mary Walewski offers a simple 3 step process that you can use to create a simple marketing plan that…

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September 23rd, 2014 | By: Karen Saunders

Creative Ways to Sell Your Self-Published Books

Book marketing guru Brian Jud spoke at the September CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association) meeting about ways to sell books to other markets besides bookstores. He published the book Beyond the Bookstore back in 2009, and has a new updated edition, How to Make Real Money Selling Books. These books show you how to reach unique retail and non-retail market segments, where you can sell mass quantities of self-published books at a time. Many independent publishers have realized the unfortunate impact of returns when working with bookstores. Returns are shipped back to the publisher at the publisher’s expense and often arrived…

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July 29th, 2014 | By: Karen Saunders

7 Steps to Create a Powerful Brand and a Website that Delivers

Here are the Details of Our 7-Step Brand, Marketing and Website System Are you a new speaker, author, or consultant? Perhaps you’ve been in business for a while but want to raise your presence in the marketplace. We can guide you through the process of branding and marketing your business online. Our  experienced team of branding experts, graphic designers, copywriters, website designers, programmers, and search engine specialists will create a dynamic brand and powerful website to help you meet the marketing goals you’ve set for your business. We’ve developed a seamless 7-step system that builds on and leverages the content…

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March 26th, 2014 | By: Karen Saunders

Self-Publishers: Use GoodReads to Promote Your Book to Your Target Market

GoodReads is a like an online book club or a social media network for people who like to read books. Amazon owns GoodReads, so if you buy a Kindle and you open a GoodReads account you can synchronize your Kindle with GoodReads. It will offer recommendations of books to read based on your past reading history and how you rate books. GoodReads Author Program This free program is great way for authors to reach their target market. Readers may add your book to their recommended list on GoodReads and authors can promote their books to passionate readers. Here’s how to get…

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September 26th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

3 Creative Ways to Sell More eBooks: Matchbook, Kobo, Ganxy

Kindle Matchbook Program Amazon has just unveiled Kindle Matchbook for ebook publishers. This special program encourages their customers to buy two copies of your book; the printed version at the regular price and the ebook version at a discounted price. Publishers receive approximately 50% royalty on the ebook sold and a standard royalty on the printed book sold. What this means for the publisher is increased revenue; they’re selling two books at one time. The book buyer can immediately download the Kindle version while waiting for the printed version to arrive in the mail. Publishers will need to discount the…

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April 1st, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to Help Market Your Self-Published Book

You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to research and choose productive keywords to use in your book marketing campaigns. This free tool allows you to type in a word or phrase then see the results of your search term and additional keyword ideas. Each word or phrase is ranked by competition and by the number of global monthly searches on Google. You want to select and use keywords and phrases that have low competition and high search volume. Go to this page: https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner For this exercise, let’s suppose I’ve published a book on puppy training. I’ve typed in…

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February 26th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Build a Powerful Author Platform to Sell More Books

Publishing industry leaders say successful authors and publishers build their book sales by having a strong author platform. What is an Author Platform? It is a combination of how you share your core message, what exactly is marketing message and who is listening to you. The larger the number and the depth of your personal relationships with your followers, the stronger your platform. This is what’s called “relationship marketing.” It is optimal to have a powerful platform before you launch your book, but it is never too late to begin building your platform. An author’s goal is to develop a funnel of…

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