Writing Coach jennifer lancaster
Why iSBNs are killer
Self-Publishing, Selling eBooks and Media

Why ISBNs Are Killer for Your Book Sales

The Overlooked Superpower in Book Marketing Self-publishing is full of decisions: cover design, editing, distribution. Whether or not you use a hybrid publisher usually comes down to fear. What if I don’t know how to fill out an ISBN?  What if I get stuck as there is no guidance for uploading to Ingram and KDP? (See our Self-Publishing course and Q&As if so!) That’s why you might think it too difficult to take control of your own ISBNs. This article explores how ISBNs can boost your credibility, visibility, and long-term sales. I cover Why ISBNs are good for indie authors. What’s an ISBN and Why Should You Care? An ISBN—short for International Standard Book Number—is a 13-digit code that uniquely identifies your book in the global publishing ecosystem. Think of it as your book’s fingerprint. Every format of your book…
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how newsletters sell books and services
Publicity, Selling eBooks and Media

How Newsletters Sell both Books and Services

Why are Author Newsletters a Low Hanging Fruit? (An extract from my Micro Publisher book) When building any information-based business, influencing new readers is all part of the process… and we don’t do that overnight. Monthly newsletters make this super simple. Rather than solely worrying over promos – what new campaign to offer your email list – you set up a systematic schedule of writing and emailing a newsletter. The beauty is, anything you put into a blog can be transferred to a newsletter, either with RSS setup or simply copying the details and headings. I would suggest putting as much real and actionable content into your newsletter as possible and don’t rely on ‘read more’ links. Over time, my list shows that 2-3% click the read more link, so I switched to one long article and one promotion of…
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how to create a digital product to help book sales
Selling eBooks and Media

How to Create a Digital Product to Help Book Profits

As nonfiction topic specialists, we all know that royalties aren’t quite enough, and your expertise and advice is worth a lot more than $5 per customer! So, it may be time to learn about a tool which has a way to add a simple coaching service or digital product to your book. You used to need to use a shopping cart like WooCommerce plus Woo Payments (setup time!) and connect a processor if you wanted to sell anything virtually (through WordPress). No longer! A product in this post is one that Jennifer uses herself and endorses to others – if you click on the link and go through the trial to purchase, Jennifer gets a commission. Now, you can use a main EMS platform to host each product and its payment options. Or still use a sales page in your…
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benefits of organic traffic for authors
Selling eBooks and Media

The Benefits of Organic Traffic for Authors

You may have heard of doing work to ensure better ‘organic’ traffic on Google, i.e. natural, unpaid traffic. There are certainly many benefits for book authors to capitalise on SEO for their book or author website. (Though this article is not about search engine optimisation).People will generally find your website through a combination of their remembering your author name and/or book title. An especially rare keyword might also work.Google isn’t the only source of free visitors; there is also Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. However, these folk mostly won’t click through to your website to find out more. Happy as a clam on FB or Instagram, they often don’t move from that spot.Whereas, with a Google search, many will click on the top three ‘organic’ spots… unless there is the answer right on the search results page. (An informational search).As…
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fixing pricing at Australian book retailers
Self-Publishing, Selling eBooks and Media

Fixing Errant Prices at Australian Book Retailers

You might be facing similar self-publishing book pricing problems. In 2018 I had issues with proper listing and pricing at Australian book retailers, such as Booktopia.  Since then I have learnt more about the secrets of Print on Demand (with IngramSpark). Things I will be writing about in an upcoming Pitfalls of Publishing book! Feeds are not distribution. IngramSpark promising Australian micro/indie publishers that they can get their book listing out to 39,000 retailers/libraries  is misleading. As a proud author-publisher, I do NOT expect that online book retail partners like Booktopia and The Nile to not list POD books, or list them at over-inflated prices!  Actually, The Nile still stocks NONE of my books as partners of Ingram. Retail Prices As an experienced user of Print on Demand, I list my titles prices with consistency. To encourage sales, I set a…
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planning a course
Course Content, Selling eBooks and Media

Why You Shouldn’t Create a Course Before Considering This

For those who have written a business or life advice book, you may be starting to get excited about the idea of creating a course. You could capitalise on your new concepts. You could make 10x the profit of the book itself. But slow down there, the Lone Ranger is galloping off way too fast. The thing is, when offering a higher level product like a course, we need to think about getting multiple sales leads, systematically, and promoting the course. Before you do a mini freak-out, let’s delve into what that might involve if you’re committed to NOT making Meta and Google any richer. Okay?Most businesses selling goods online advertise on Facebook or Google, then use retargeting ads relevant to the content the person was looking at. (These are ads that follow the web visitor around the Internet). But what…
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