Best Seller Authors

Book Marketing, Publishing, Author Resources

Guest Article: Sell More Books with a Successful Viral Video

Viral videos are a great way to sell books.  According to Wikipedia “A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of a Internet sharing, typically through email or a Instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature”.

There are three key points to consider when creating a viral video campaign:

  1. Provide great, but ambiguous, content – Everyone loves to hear a great story. But in a viral video, the story has to be short (less than three minutes). Don’t think of creating a video that will sell your book, think of a video that will keep people entertained.
  2. Generate a “residual” fan base – Once your video is built you can integrate other social media tools to build a user base and communicate with them.  To do this, follow the lessons learned in Social Networking for Authors-Untapped Possibilities for Wealth. It could be as simple as a subscribe link that notifies users of your updates.
  3. SEO it– Your video has to be easily discovered through YouTube search and other popular online video sharing sites. Videos
    should have clear titles, an accurate description and appropriate
    keyword tags so that they can appears correctly in a YouTube search and
    targeted specifically.

A good viral video will spread over the Internet like wildfire. See the
top 20 viral videos circulating around the Internet now at:

http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/

Check out this viral video I created for an author during the last
presidential election. It got great coverage. The video is ambiguous
but gets people curious as to what is coming next. A typical viral
video will cost about $2,000 but will be a great return on your
investment if it works properly:

http://revver.com/u/jspinx

Michael Volkin is the author of the new hit book: Social Networking for Authors-Untapped Possibilities for Wealth. His book can be found at SellaTonofBooks.com

You Are An Author. Get Some Stuff Published

An new author called the other day. He is writing a book to share what his expertiese and establish himself in the marketplace.

I asked what else he had besides the book. He replied that he was very busy doing what he’s an expert at, and that he’d create that content after the book was published and established.

NO WAY TODAY

This approach may have been viable just a few years ago… and while there’s a rare story of success this way, the chances of success are so small that I’d rather just say they are gone and share a better way.

—> Create a Lot of Content Fast

The tools available today let you write an article, share a photo or video and connect with your readers fast. I explain these in our FREE course at http://BookMarketingStrategy.com

I’m sharing one of these here. This post was written and posted a few minutes after seeing the following video. I’m sharing a video I liked.. it’s amusing, inexpensive and fast.

Take a quick break and watch… while you do, ask yourself how you might get something up TODAY.

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Doing these things can help you become a better writer

Mary Jaksch created a list of 73 Ways to Become a Better Writer

#1 was BLOG. A suggestion we make to authors as the first thing you should do to promote your book and promote yourself as an author.. before you even start to write your book.

It also helps you become a better writer:

The good news is that writing makes you a better writer. Just like practicing the piano makes you a better pianist, or riding a trail bike makes you a better biker.

A few weeks ago I asked a question on Write to Done: What Helps YOU Become a Better Writer? The suggestions the readers offered were so rich and varied that I decided to gather them all together for Copyblogger readers.

Read the rest of the Writing Tips at CopyBlogger

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Fiction Authors Should be Active Bloggers

Guest post by Phyllis Zimbler Miller

Publishing a non-fiction book will usually make it easy for you to write a blog dedicated to your book. The non-fiction subject of your book and related topics can provide ample blogging material.

For example, if you wrote a book on cooking low-fat diets, you could post one low-fat recipe a day along with insider tips to ensure the recipe turns out well. Or if you wrote a book on new social media platforms, you could write each post about one new social media platform and probably never run out of new posts.

The problem of writing ongoing book blog posts really presents itself to fiction writers. If you’ve written a romance novel or a mystery novel, what are you going to write about in your blog posts?

With a little imagination (and you are a fiction writer, aren’t you?) you can come up with interesting posts for your book’s blog. Let’s look at some examples:

You write a novel that takes place in 1970 during the Vietnam War. Because the Vietnam War plays an important role in the novel, you could write posts about historical events that took place during that era or historical events that led to that era. And you could write about the military today fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan and about military families back home. There’s no need to mention your book in every post; the overall context of the blog is about your book.

Now let’s stretch our imagination farther. You write a mystery novel about a series of medical-related murders. You could write posts about deaths that were not murders but were actual medical mysteries. You could also write posts about new hospital procedures that are being implemented to reduce medical-related deaths. And you could write posts telling the family of hospital patients what to look for in suspected medical malpractice.

What if you’ve written a children’s picture book about family members learning to get along? Children are not going to read your blog and their parents aren’t going to read your blog aloud to their children. You could write posts about parent-child issues; if you’re not an expert, you can quote other experts. You could review other children’s picture books on similar topics. You could write posts about children’s literacy issues.

The truth is that you can cast your imagination net far and wide for subjects on which to blog. Just remember that every few posts you should mention your book in connection with that post. For example, if you were writing a post about children’s literacy issues, you could mention that a specific second-grader in your book could read long words but not short words and that her teacher suspected dyslexia.

Or you could quote an entire (short) scene from your novel to illustrate a point you’re making. And, yes, it’s okay that people reading your blog may not know who the characters and situation are. If you choose an appropriate scene, most readers will be able to understand the context of the excerpt.

Fiction authors should be as active as non-fiction authors in the use of blogs to market books. Give your blog readers interesting and well-written posts, and they will read your blog and hopefully buy your book.

For the free report 7 DYNAMIC REASONS FOR TAKING A VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR and other book marketing information, visit http://www.queensofbookmarketing.com. Follow Phyllis Zimbler Miller on Twitter at @ZimblerMiller and connect with her on Facebook and LinkedIn as Phyllis Zimbler Miller.