Continuing with Our August Theme of Focusing on Book Sales to Finish the Year Strong
Dear Author Friends,
You are not too small or inexperienced to pursue volume sales and partnerships. That is today's message.
You may be too nervous or feel as if you don't know enough or as if a potential customer or business partner won't take you seriously.
But we're all grown-ups here and we know how life works. You always feel like a beginner at the beginning. The only way to the other side of that is to do it. Take action. Just give it a whirl.
One crucial thing to remember is that being a beginner when it comes to the majority of business tasks, practices, and activities IS NOT like being a beginner at Mandarin or learning to play the piano.
You make one or two volume sales. You propose one or two partnerships that other companies accept and you are now someone who knows how to do it. You're no longer a beginner. You're an author who makes money selling many books at a time and partnering with other organizations in ways that generate exposure and income for your author enterprise. It's all polish from there. You will continue to make money as you continue to learn new and better ways of doing things.
So, let's commit to sales so that we can finish the year strong. I say "let's" because even after 40 years in business (I started as a teenager), I still need to re-commit and re-focus and find new strategies all the time. It's part of the game. And I know how easy it can be to let the end of the year slide and think it's *brilliant* to *just* wait until January to renew that commitment and start fresh in a new year.
That's not how a sustainable busines or author enterprise works. It's managing your energy and devotion to the project at hand and your goals and your larger vision so that you do what you can day in and day out, week in and week out. Every season of the year.
As I've said in this month's other newsletters, August is your quick-acceleration on-ramp to the rest of the book-world year. It's important to find your mettle, set your sights on goals realistic and ambitious, make your plans, and get to work. This week we'll add volume sales and partnerships to the mix.
The basics still apply:
- Double down on working sales methods.
- Brainstorm and keep a running list of more ideas than you can possibly pursue so that you always have go-to options.
- Reach out daily to create new book marketing and bookselling opportunities. (Do 5 Things Day.)
- Be brave about trying new things.
Volume Sales and Partnerships
Here's your to-do list:
- Read each article for free on Medium.
- Sink in despair as you read each piece because you can't do this and it would never work for your books and you and your situation.
- Nevertheless...Brainstorm 15-20 ways for each--volume sales and partnerships--get help from friends, family, fellow authors, or from me if needed to lengthen the list.
- Choose a few of the best, easiest, most lucrative, and/or most interesting from each list and add pursuing those to your to-do list and calendar.
- Do the pitching, proposing, selling as planned and scheduled.
- After the fact: Review the experience and congratulate yourself for having done it. Soak in that in the end it was not that hard and not that uncomfortable and yay, you for doing it! You are no longer a beginner...you're a sophisticated author who knows how to propose and wrangle volume sales and partnerships.
Here are the articles:
Coming in September
We follow up our August sales focus with a September media focus.
Ready to try new things and make getting exposure for your books and their subject matter, your author life, your experience, and your areas of expertise routine?
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Thanks for reading and thanks for taking the next steps towards a more fulfilling and sustainable author life. Conspire Creative exists to support that.
Sharon
