IN TODAY’S ISSUE:
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Something exciting is coming!
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To sell more books, understand your buyer persona
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The challenges of writing about trauma
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Hi again, writer friends,
It’s been an excellent week with a lot of things going on behind the scenes that I can’t wait to share with you.
One of the big projects I’ve been working on has been a redesign of the Wordling Plus membership site and community. I finished and launched it to our members a few days ago and so far the feedback has been excellent.
The second big project, our top secret project, has been in the works for a couple of months now and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to share it with you over the next few days. I’m trying not to blab about it, but here’s a clue: A lot of you have been asking me for this for years. The resource will help you get published in top publications and be paid excellently. And it won’t cost you a thing.
That’s all I can say for now, but keep your eyes on your Inbox next week. I’ll be sending out an exclusive email about it. I know you’ll love it.
No big writing news to share this week. Once I finish this big project, I have a three-day date with my pillow. In the meantime, my son and I have been binge-watching Stranger Things. It’s our second time around, and even though we know what’s going to happen, we’re completely addicted. I love learning how to develop characters over a timeframe of several years.
Are you as annoyed as me that it’s taking so long for Season 5 to drop? And while we’re at it, should I be looking at Netflix as a business expense? (No need to answer that one!)
Enjoy the issue!
Natasha Khullar Relph
Editor, The Wordling
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR BOOK SALES SUCK
I’ve been getting a ton of questions about marketing books lately, so here’s something I wrote in September 2019 that might help you approach lagging book sales differently. Enjoy! 👇
I heard someone complain recently that no one wants to buy her books. More specifically, this complaint revolved around how people email or DM to ask for free copies when she’s worked years on them, and how this is completely unreasonable.
It is.
But so is the complaint.
If you want to sell books—and large numbers of them—you’re going to need to shift your mindset from being an author to being a businessperson, place yourself in your reader’s shoes, and understand how to talk about your books in a way that appeals to them.
If this writer asked me for advice, I’d have said:
1. No one cares
Sure, it took you years to write the book. That is not the reader’s problem. I hate to be so brutally honest with you, but no one gives a damn. In fact, as a reader, even you don’t give a damn. I picked up a New York Times bestselling novel recently, hated it, and didn’t even finish reading the whole thing. It’s not my problem how long it took the author to write it; it’s my problem where I want to spend my hard-earned money and extremely limited free time.
Am I convinced your book will give me enough value, entertainment, or information? If yes, I’ll buy it. If not, I won’t.
This is a business transaction. Stop making it so personal.
(Also: Learn to write faster.)
2. Communicate the value
If someone is reluctant to pay the $2.99 or $9.99 or whatever it costs to buy your book, you have not communicated the value of it properly. Your readers should be thanking you for the low price of your books, not complaining about them. And you can see an example of this in my own reviews—readers frequently tell me what a steal my books are and beg me to release print versions (working on it).
With books, it’s rarely about the money. It’s often about the time. Will I enjoy or benefit from the hours I’ll need to invest in reading this book?
3. Speak to the buying market
Are you speaking to the wrong kind of market? I’m going to assume you’re marketing your books consistently, otherwise this whole conversation is moot anyway. So, how are you talking about them? What kind of people are you speaking to? If you, like me, sell books on freelancing, giving talks to broke college students is a mistake (even though this is widely-peddled advice). Like it or not, the college student would sooner drop $500 on a handbag than $5 on your book. Instead, you should be talking to a ready and willing crowd of writers. Do it online. Offer them actual value and watch your sales grow.
This goes for all kinds of books, by the way, including fiction. (It’s only how we define “value” that changes, not the strategy itself.)
Anyway, there’s a whole lot more that I could say about this, but these are the key areas that writers get wrong and thus lead to lost sales.
RESOURCES FOR YOUR WRITING CAREER:
📝 [ARTICLE]: Expert advice from a six-figure freelancer on how to write a Letter of Introduction that lands content marketing clients.
🎥 [MASTERCLASS]: Figuring out how to use my multipassionate superpower changed my career. And I want to help you change yours. I’ve made a free masterclass to show you why you may not be getting the momentum you need with your writing. I’ll show you what you have to do to fix it. And I’ll help you feel clear about your next steps.
🎙️ [INTERVIEW]: We speak to multi-passionate writer and TEDx speaker Angela Giles Klocke on the unique challenges creatives face when writing about trauma and how to break the pattern of self-sabotage.