WRITING TO SELL: How to Write Your Book’s Sales Page

As we discussed yesterday, a sales page is an important part of maximizing your ebook sales. Well, the process of putting words together in a way that will convince someone to buy is called copywriting, and there are three key copywriting lessons that are particularly important for authors.

1.     Benefits vs. Features: Any copywriting worth his or her salt will tell you it’s important to talking about the benefits of a product instead of the features that product happens to have. Chances are you didn’t buy the last book you read based on the number of pages, chapters or words it had in it.

How it applies to a book: The benefit of a book is best conveyed through an excerpt (much like Amazon’s “Peek Inside” feature) and through the book summary you include—these things allow potential readers to see for themselves that your book will satisfy their needs.

2.     Endorsements & Testimonials: Buying an unknown product (or a book from a new author) can be scary. You don’t know what you’ll get. And, sadly, many of the books out there that are self-published aren’t up to par—making readers wary. Endorsements and testimonials help convince shoppers that a product won’t be a waste of their time or money.

How it applies to a book: In the book world, endorsements and testimonials are better known as reviews. An endorsement would be a review by another author, someone with authority or someone a reader might already know; a testimonial is simply a review by another reader. Knowing others have read your book and were willing to say something good about it can help reassure readers they your book will be worth it.

3.     Branding: Once a shopper has limited their selection to a few similar products, in order to decide which product to buy he or she will often look at who is selling the product to them. Does the shopper want to buy from a particular company?

How it applies to a book: In the book world, the author is the brand. Why should something read a book written by you? Your author bio is an essential part of your sales page and should make a convincing argument for why you are qualified to write this book—whether it’s because you’re a fantasy lover, who began consuming the genre while still in grade school or because you’ve made Amazon’s top 10 list with each of your last three books, you should be able to find some reason that you were qualified to write that which you have written—you did write it, after all.

This is a guest post by Melissa Breau, for detailed how-to info on creating a strong book description, getting reviews (of both varieties) and writing an author bio, check out her FREE online tutorial: Maximizing your eBook Sales. Or, if you want help making it happen, sign up for her new eBook Sales Package (packages start at $150).

The One Mistake That Could Stop You From Selling More Books

*This is a guest post by Melissa Breau, an AMAZING editor I've had the pleasure to work with a number of times.*

You probably didn’t get into writing for the money. But once you’ve put all that hard work into writing a book, paid to have it edited and had a cover designed, you’d kind of like it to sell more than a few copies, right?

Well, there’s something most authors overlook when it comes to selling their books—and it’s something that can make a huge difference in the number of copies you sell.

 WRITING A GOOD BOOK WON’T GUARANTEE SALES

While writing you surround yourself with the world your characters live in, so it can come as a surprise when you’ve finished your masterpiece to learn the work is only half over.

A good book may gain you a reader’s loyalty, but before they know whether your book is any good they have to put out their money and buy it. You still have to market and sell it.

And all that is just to lead a potential reader to your sales page—it doesn’t guarantee a reader will click “buy.”

It’s the content that have on that sales page that will make up their mind on whether they should click away or click to add money to your bank account.

 The Secret to A Great Sales Page

The key to creating a great sales page is to think of this part of the process as a business—your readers aren’t just fans, they’re also customers.

Like any “customer,” readers are looking for the right “product” to satisfy a need. With a business book, perhaps they’re looking for tips on using Twitter; with a fantasy novel, they’re probably looking for an escape. If they’ve made it to your page, it’s likely they are looking for a book like yours.

But if you want them to part with their cash they need to be convinced you have what they need. So if you want to sell more books, you need to think about the your customer—what info does he or she need to decide if your book is for them?

Then make sure your sales page provides them with everything they need to know.

Not sure how to do that? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post—a primer on what every self-publishing author should know about writing to sell.

This is a guest post written by Melissa Breau. She is a freelance writer, editor and a cheesy romantic who likes long walks on the beach and arguing about comma placement. Her FREE online tutorial on Maximizing your eBook Sales details how-to create a strong book description, get reviews and write an author bio. Or, if you want help making it happen, sign up for her new eBook Sales Package (packages start at $150).

Why Even a Self-published Author Still Needs An Editor

Have you ever been in the middle of a book you’re really enjoying when you catch a typo? Or maybe it’s a word that just doesn’t quite fit, or a character who you’re pretty sure had brown eyes earlier, but whose lover is suddenly talking about their beautiful baby blues?

When a writer signs a deal with Random House, Penguin or another major publisher they sign away some of the profits. In exchange, one of the most significant things a publisher has to offer is its team of professional editors. Those editors are responsible for finding holes in the book’s plot line, ensuring consistency, proofreading and copyediting.

When an author chooses to self publish, instead of going through a publishing house, they can rarely afford a full team of editors to review their book. Instead, they are often forced to wear a variety of different hats–and for many of them, editing their own book seems like a good way to save money.

But editing your own work is actually harder than it appears. As the writer, it’s difficult to achieve the distance required to notice where the plot can be strengthened. Since you know exactly what you intended to say, it’s tough to catch sections that might be confusing to a less knowledgeable reader. And, since you’ve poured sweat, blood and tears into the words, your eye is more likely to skip over typos and see what you intended to type rather than what is actually there.

A book editor does a lot more than just look for misspelled words or ensure you’re using the correct version of there, their or they’re. A good copy editor understands pacing and how sentence structure plays into foreshadowing and mood. They can point out where a chapter might benefit from an additional scene and can help choose sections that slow the reader down.

Book editors also create a style guide for each book they work on. The guide includes notes on design (for example, notating how chapter headings look, so each is set up the same way), detailed information on characters (so Stephen doesn’t become Steven and his physical attributes remain consistent) and places (how was the name of that Dwarven city spelled in chapter two?).

Of course, using an editor doesn’t guarantee your book will be error-free; but it can help cut down on the number of slip ups in your final copy, which means reducing the number of times a reader slips out of your plot line to think instead about the words rather than their meaning. And isn’t every writer’s goal to help their reader lose herself in their novel?

This is a guest post written by Melissa Breau. She is a freelance writer, editor and a cheesy romantic who likes long walks on the beach and arguing about comma placement. Her resume includes time spent at Pet Business Magazine, Columbia University Press and in the Manhattanville College Marketing Department. She has her Masters of Science in Publishing and is always willing to talk shop on twitter– @melissabreau. She is also blogging about her freelance journey over at Jargon Writer (http://www.jargonwriter.com/) –or learn more about the services she offers on her website, http://www.melissabreau.com/.