If you’re an author or online entreprenuer who’s written a business book, you want to sell books, 

On the Hangout Penny and I discussed:

• How to consistently boost sales of your book.
• What triggers more sales at Amazon? We’ll dig deep to uncover easy things you can do that will make a significant difference.
• Why Free is your best sales tool
• Triple and quadruple the amount of reader reviews you get for your book.
• PLUS: the latest changes at Amazon

Check out the Event page for comments, questions and photos.

Connect with Penny:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Bookgal
Website: http://www.amarketingexpert.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bookmarketingame
HuffPo: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/penny-c-sansevieri

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. 

Penny is the author of fourteen books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon and Red Hot Internet Publicity, which has been called the “leading guide to everything Internet.” 
 
AME was the first book marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour™, which strategically harnesses social networking sites, Twitter, blogs, book videos, and relevant sites in order to push an author’s message into the online community. AME has had eleven recent books top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.

For your convenience, the mp3 and transcript are posted below, from the live Hangout with Penny. 

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Do you know someone who has an outstanding online presence? Someone who has created massive visibility? Let me know in the comments and I’ll reach out and invite them to be a guest on Adventures in Visibility!

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The post How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon – Adventures in Visibility with Penny Sansevieri appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Many Hachette authors are jumping into the fray, denouncing Amazon for its bullying tactics, the most notable being Stephen Colbert’s rant on his show.

Spurred by a comment from my business coach, I posted a question about the dispute on my Google+ profile…

If you click on the comment icon, you can see which way most people are leaning on the debate.

But that’s not where I want to go with this right now. The conversation with Penny Sansevieri in the comments, got me to thinking about how often businesses don’t take advantage of relevant current events to get more visibility.

You can see by our comments that we were wondering why so few book retailers were jumping on board to let their customers know where they could buy the latest released from Stephen Colbert and J.K. Rowling. 

This is the perfect time and opportunity to newsjack the current event.  As far as I know, David Meerman Scott coined the term “Newsjacking” when he published a book of the same name in 2011.  Scott says,

Enter newsjacking: the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business. It creates a level playing field—literally anyone can newsjack—but, that new level favors players who are observant, quick to react, and skilled at communicating. It’s a powerful tool that can be used to throw an opponent or simply draft off the news momentum to further your own ends.

If you owned an independent bookstore, how could you use the Amazon/Hachette dispute to your advantage?  

Penny Sansevieri has newsjacked the issue with her recommendations for small booksellers, Barnes & Noble, Hachette authors, and consumers, in her article on Huffington Post, How to Turn the Amazon/Hachette Battle Into a Can’t-miss Opportunity.

This is a huge visibility opportunity, especially for authors. Here’s how I’d advise one of these authors if they were my client:

• Write a blog post about the dispute. Don’t get nasty, but let your fans know where they can get your book instead of Amazon
• Send an email to your fans, letting them know where to get your book
• Use the social networks! Invest in some Facebook ads to boost the visibility of your blog post. Include a call to action to read the post for details on where to get your books
• Create a video for YouTube
• Do a Hangout on Air to answer questions from your readers about the situation and let them know where you stand and where to get your books

Get the drift?

• Use Pinterest and Instagram to share images of your books with info about where to find them.
• Use Twitter to keep fans up to date on developments about the negotiations.
• Discover what hashtag is being used in social media to tag info about the disputes and use it in your posts and status updates too.
• Set up news alerts on Google or Feedly to stay on top of developments. Curate the best information to share with your fans. 

 Remember, if you are not an author involved in this bruhaha, substitute whatever you do and your industry, then model what I’m outlining here.

So, what will this do for you? 

I can’t make a 100% guarantee, but I will say that if you jump on a news trend that is relevant to your business and in which you have a stake, and you implement some of my suggestions, you will get more visibility.

An author may sell more books (see Penny’s example about Books A Million).

You may get contacted for interviews to share your opinion. 

Anything you do for your fans, will undoubtedly make them love your more!

You will establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and the go-to person when controversy breaks out.

Visibility = Opportunity and you never know where it will come from. If you’re prepared to jump on the opportunities and do it tastefully and with respect and desire to engage and inform, it can only be good for your business.

What do you think? Agree or disagree with my strategy around newsjacking an event to build your visibility? I’d love to know! 

The post How to Newsjack Events to Build Your Visibility appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

For Amazon Prime/Kindle owners

You get a Kindle book to borrow for free each month from the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. 

With Prime, Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers – as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. 

For Kindle Publishers

Amazon has introduced KDP Select. You agree to distribute your Kindle ebook for free to Prime members and exclusively on Amazon for 90 days and you get a share of a pool of money Amazon has set aside to compensate authors for the free loans to Prime members. 

I've enrolled my new ebook, How to Make Your Blog the Centerpiece of Your Business, in the program. So, if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow it for free. Otherwise, it's a whopping $.99 (99 cents!).

Amazon has also introduced a promotion tool for ebooks enrolled in KDP Select. You can promote your ebook 5 days out of the 90 days it's exclusive on Amazon. Not sure exactly how this works at the moment. However, as an author, it seems to me it would benefit you to offer at least one ebook in the KDP program and take the opportunity to promote it on Amazon. It can only be good for your visibility and introduce you to new readers.

The program launched today, so I cannot report much other than I enrolled one book and it's available now for free to Amazon Prime members. I'll let you know the results I got when my 90 days is up.

If you've enrolled your ebook(s) in the KDP Select program, feel free to post the links here in the comments.

The post Kindle Ebooks Free to Borrow for Amazon Prime Members appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

One of my clients is creating an audio program to use as a lead generator to build her list. She's having the audio transcribed and creating a special report from the text. I suggested that the special report would make an excellent ebook for Kindle.

While the audio and report will be free, the Kindle ebook can be priced as low as $.99 (no freebies on Kindle). The convenience of getting the content delivered instantly on one's Kindle device is worth 99 cents!

Here's another example. I have a free audio program I give away on  – 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success.

You can also get a physical version which includes a book and CD (more content) for $27.

Or you can get the Kindle version for $2.99.

You can get the content however you want. Each version is a little different in that you may get audio only, text only or both.

I do the same with my product How to Drive Quality Traffic to Your Blog. There is no free version of this one. You can get it digital (mp3, ebook + bonuses) or just the text on Kindle ($2.99). The physical version is produced but not available yet. I use Vervante to produce and fulfill orders of my physical products.

I have a third product on Viral Blogging that I'm in the process of taking through this product development process.

The fastest formats to get done are the mp3, ebook and Kindle book (see free webinar replay from program I hosted with Daniel Hall for the exact steps on how to do this). Get these done first and then you can focus on getting the physical products produced.

How many ways can your ideal market consume your content? Look at the content you already have…the easiest to produce is an audio and transcript of a teleseminar or interview you've done. Slice and dice it into multiple formats as I've indicated above (mp3, CD, ebook, physical book, Kindle book).

And, I'll state the obvious…each format and how and where you publish and promote it, gives you more visiblity on the web.

ACTION

My friend and colleague Dave Lakhani says "Implementation is everything and money follows action."

1) Review the content you have right now – don't worry about creating something new – find an audio or transcript or series of blog posts.

2). Have an audio? Get it transcribed.

3) Edit your transcript or article and upload the word doc to the Kindle publishing site.

4) Post a comment and let me know how many ways people can consume your content with a link to where I can check out what you're doing! 🙂

FREE ECourse – Get 7 Tips to Boost Your Visibility on the Web

The post How Many Ways Can Your Customer Consume Your Content? appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.