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Book Promotion for Beginners. Step 4: Action

Updated: Aug 1

Your potential reader clicks “Buy Now.” They wait to be taken to your digital cart, but instead, the new tab is an unpromising white and says “404 Page Not Found.” In this final installment of our four part series, we explore how to streamline the action process so you can avoid losing sales at the critical moment.


Allison Ortiz, La Mirada (California) Community Library Manager and winner of the 2017 County of Los Angeles Public Librarian award shares more library tools to help keep that funnel clean enough for readers to easily purchase or borrow your book. These resources mentioned (or ones like them) are FREE from your local library.


La Mirada, California, Community Library Manager: Allison Ortiz holding a book
La Mirada, California, Community Library Manager: Allison Ortiz

Include Working Links


Remember that painful 404 moment in the opening? Thanks to the free library resources mentioned in Step 2, Interest, you have a beautiful new website. Don’t let broken or missing links stop a customer from taking action to purchase your book.


Your website should be the central hub for all your book purchasing links. Whether your book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or library platforms like Biblioboard, make sure your links are easily accessible and working. Also be sure to include your book in all its different formats. Click each link on your live website (just as if you were the customer) to make sure there are no errors. 


Book promotion funnel containing Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action.

Make an Audiobook


Readers these days digest books in many different ways. As an author, having the trifecta of book formats, ensures that your reader can access your book in whatever their preferred format is. What’s the trifecta? It’s print, audiobook, and e-Book. 


In Step 3, you formatted your print and e-Book. If you have yet to create your audiobook, you’re missing out on a significant and growing segment of the market. Audiobooks have surged in popularity over the past few years, with many readers preferring to listen to books during their commute, workout, or even while doing household chores.


Once your audiobook is ready, it’s time to share it with a library audiobook platform. Allison mentions the Libby app, by Overdrive. It offers patrons access to a “collection of digital books and digital magazines, and it also has audiobooks.” Libby isn’t the only library audiobook platform either. Also available through many library systems is a platform called Hoopla, which offers patrons access to movies, as well as the same digital offerings as Libby. 


If you’d like to make your audiobook available through the library, you can do so through Hoopla. First, make your audiobook available through a distribution service called Findaway Voices by Spotify. Findaway Voices is free to upload your audiobook to. Do take note that Findaway Voices takes a 20% cut of sales when offered for sale outside of Spotify's app. By making your book available via audiobook, you’re making it that much easier for a buyer to take action.



Make Your Book Rentable 


A growing number of libraries across the United States and Canada, including the Los Angeles County Library, offer something called The Indie Author Project (IAP). The IAP gives local indie authors the chance for their ebooks to be featured in the library. 


Allison says,

You actually submit your book after you work with Pressbooks or another kind of formatting software. Indie Author Project has the submission guidelines at the bottom: sharing your content [and] how they like it uploaded.

Once your work is accepted there, your book will now be available to patrons through Biblioboard. BiblioBoard is a digital platform libraries offer their patrons which provides access to a variety of content, including ebooks, documents, images, and other multimedia. Once featured there, it’s just an easy click for potential readers to take action and read your book.


Although not a library resource, Kindle Unlimited is another excellent option for indie authors to reach a wider audience. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service offered by Amazon that allows readers to access a vast library of eBooks, audiobooks, and magazines for a monthly fee. When you enroll your eBook in Kindle Unlimited, it becomes available to millions of potential readers who are subscribed to the service. Additionally, authors can earn royalties based on the number of pages read by Kindle Unlimited subscribers.


Utilizing platforms like Biblioboard and Kindle Unlimited can significantly enhance the visibility and accessibility of your work, allowing you to reach a broader audience and make taking action that much easier.



Conclusion


Well done on reaching the end of our marketing funnel journey! By applying the strategies we’ve discussed throughout the series, you've turned a trickle of interest into a steady stream of actions—purchases and borrows. Congratulations!



 

To benefit fully from these tips, be sure to review the previous sections if you haven't already. And don’t forget to subscribe for more insights that can help your author career flourish. 


Let's keep those books flying off the shelves (or getting downloaded).



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