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How to Increase Your Book Sales By 20% This Year

July 21, 2017 By Shelley Hitz Leave a Comment Click here for a FREE book marketing training

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increase book sales

Is increasing your book sales one of your goals this year?

In this training, I show you what it will take to increase your book sales by 20% this year; and it’s easier than you think!

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How Can I Sell More Books?

It’s really just a mindset shift, and I honestly think most authors don’t look at numbers. I believe that for most authors, we just don’t think numbers. That is why a lot of authors aren’t really strong with marketing because we’re so strong with the creative stuff.

In fact, I know many authors who just don’t want to think about marketing. You just want to write, and I totally get that.

But there is a really simple thing you can do to think about how to increase your book sales.

One of the biggest questions I get is, “Shelley, how can I sell more books? I’ve invested all this time, energy and money into this book, and now I want it to sell.” I do too. Of course, I want my books to sell too.

I was at a conference this last weekend called the National Association of Christian Women Entrepreneurs, or we just call it NACWE for short. You can check it out at NACWE.org. One of my Author Audience Academy members just stepped into the role as president. It’s an amazing group and I highly recommend it.

So I was there last weekend and one of the speakers was talking about this concept. I thought it would be a really great practical exercise for us to do on one of my training, so here it is now.

Figure out Last Year’s Book Sales

The first step you need to do is figure out how many books you sold last year. You can go into KDP.Amazon.com, Createspace.com, or wherever you’ve published your book. If you have a publisher, then you can ask them for these statistics.

You can go in there and check your book statistics. I also use a tool called Book Tracker and it helps me to easily see how many books I’ve sold. Either way, you just need to know that number.

Unfortunately, a lot of authors don’t sell more than just a few hundred books. But since I’m doing this on the fly, we need to ease the math. So, let’s just say you sold 100 books last year. If you want to sell 20% more books, that would be selling 120 books this year, right?

Now, let’s take that 20 books. How many books would that mean you would have to sell per month? It would be less than 2 books per month, or let’s just say around 2 books per month. How many books would you have to sell per week? 1/2 of a book. You’d only have to sell one book every other week, in addition to the sales you had last year.

And that is already a 20 percent increase in your sales. That sounds doable, right?

Sometimes, we think that to increase, to grow, and to do these things seems so out of reach.

When we did this exercise, I based it on Author Audience Academy, my membership, and what would it take for me to increase by 10 or 20 percent. It really only takes getting one to two new members every month. That’s it!

It would be an incredible amount of growth. They said, on average, businesses are really happy to grow 3%-7%. I haven’t looked up the research myself. But if that is so, it means that if you’re growing 10%-20%, whether it is book sales, services, coaching, or whatever you’re offering, you are just rocking it.

You’re doing good!

So, would you be willing to do this? Would you be willing to sit down and write out how many book sales you had last year? You might even want to break it down between e-books, print books, and audio books, or how ever you want to do it. Just do it.

Sit down and say how many books you sold last year, and then what would it take for you to increase that by 20%. How many books would that mean you would have to sell per year? Then, how many per month, or per week?

This is just a very simple exercise to get you thinking.

Set a New 90-Day Goalincrease book sales

We’re just kicking off a brand new 90-day accountability group inside Author Audience Academy. I have a new team member, Kim Steadman and she is our education coordinator. She’s going to be hosting these calls although, I hosted the kickoff call today.

What I’m challenging all my members to do is set a new 90-day goal. I like to think in 90-day goal in chunks. You could even do this for the next 90 days.

If your main goal right now is to sell more books, think about the next 90 days. What would it take for you to increase your sales 20 percent from the last 90 days?

There is a lot of different ways you can apply this same concept to your business, into your books, and be able to break it down into something that seems much more doable.

The honest truth is, it really doesn’t take as much as we think. Many time, we have this big goal and it seems overwhelming. But if we break it down, if we have that big 90-day goal and break it down into 12 to 13 weeks or however many weeks, it’s not that much.

I have a personal goal, a 90-day goal, that’s based on income. We need to buy a new car, that’s why. And based on some other numbers, that big goal seems kind of out of reach for me, right now. It does feel a bit overwhelming.

But what I did is, I broke it down. What would it take every single week, for 13 weeks, for me to reach that goal? If I broke down that goal and divided it by 13, what would it take if I divided that into each day? Divide that by 7. What would it require every day? Suddenly, it seemed much more doable.

FOCUS on that ONE thing

Instead of looking at the whole picture, will you look at the puzzle pieces?

Instead of seeing everything that you have to do to finish writing and publishing, or marketing your book, could you just do what you need to do today? Could you break it down a little smaller?

Could you say, “what is just the one next thing that I can do?”

“What is just the one next thing that I can do to reach that goal?”

Just think about that ONE thing, right now. Put everything else aside for a minute and focus on that one thing. That’s how I’ve really been able to write and publish over 40 books.

It was how I’ve been able to grow an Academy with hundreds of Christian authors that I serve every day, over the last two years, inside Author Audience Academy.

It’s how I create art on a daily basis, and now I’m teaching new art classes every month on Skillshare.

It’s basically how I’ve been able to accomplish what I’ve been able to accomplish.

Just having FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Successful. Put the blinders on, and then break it down into doable, bite sized chunks.

Are you willing to do this with me? If so just tell me, “I’m in!” in the comments. I would love to hear from you.

If you want some accountability, we would love to have you join us in Author Audience Academy. You can find out more at AuthorAudienceAcademy.com.

Thank you so much for joining me for this training. I hope it just helps you switch your mindset just a little bit. Sit down and do this with whatever you’re working on right now.

If it’s your 90-day goal, break it down into smaller chunks.

If you’re wanting to sell more books, do the 20 percent exercise, see what it would really require. I bet it would surprise you.

Until next time!

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Filed Under: Book Marketing

About Shelley Hitz

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Together, CJ and Shelley Hitz are passionate about equipping and empowering Christian writers of all genres to share their unique gifts with the world. This website is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters! Our online community, Christian Book Academy, is where we help you write, self-publish and market your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers! 

  
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As mentors to writers inside our online membership, Christian Book Academy, we help writers of all genres write words that outlive you, self-publish books that fulfill your calling, and reach more readers with your message. Join our community of Christian writers here.

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