The best way to sell your book from your website is by starting before the book is even completed. Creating a buzz around the upcoming release of your book, will give your customers a real sense of anticipation and excitement. That way, when you make the book available for download, your customers will already know a little about what to expect. Selling books online is all about promotion – so don’t think that the hard work is over, once you have published your first masterpiece. However, if you have already completed your book, here are some tips on selling it directly from your website.

Making your Book Available for Download

Unless you have the expertise required to host your book on a server, you will need an eCommerce site to partner with. An eCommerce site will host your book; however, your customers will not see the backend processes. This will allow you to maintain a personal, online presence with your customers, while outsourcing your business processes to another vendor. What that means for you, as an author, is more time to promote your book and engage with your readers. eCommerce sites, such as PayLoadz.com, easily integrate with your website so that you can sell your book without additional, unnecessary stress.

Facilitating Payment on your Website

Again, there are a number of options for facilitating payments. As you are selling a book in digital format, it makes sense to combine your payment and download processes. It will make life much easier, for both you and your customers. Think about the customer experience, from end to end. The landing page on your site is the customer’s first point of sale, followed by the payment and then the download. Imagine walking into a store, only to discover that you have to go to another location to pay and, then, again in order to pick up your purchase. It just doesn’t make good business sense. PayLoadz is a fully integrated eCommerce site, designed with both the vendor and customer’s needs in mind.

Promoting your Book for Sale

As already mentioned, promotion – where possible – should begin before publication. However, if you have already published your book, there are still plenty of options for promoting your book. On your website, you can write promotional blog posts to bring attention to your book. For a more evergreen approach, you can also add widgets to your website that directly link to your book for download. You should fully utilize all your social media accounts; such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc., to increase your customer reach. Creating a presence on relevant forums will place your book in front of your target audience. When visiting forums or leaving comments on websites, make sure that you engage with other users – otherwise your post will be considered spam and could hurt your promotional efforts.

Competition Time

The most important aspect of promoting your book is ensuring that you reach the right audience, and giving your reader an incentive to buy. In this respect, running competitions is a great for free promotion. You can give away copies of your book for free, while encouraging readers to provide feedback.