In this training, Ellen Violette shares one critical shift that authors need to make in their thinking and the 5 steps they need to take to ensure that their books get the widest visibility possible and sell more books that most authors and even many publishers ignore.

Special Announcement:
The 5 Day Bestseller Breakthrough FREE Challenge, Taking Your Book from Idea to Outline for Bigger Impact & More Money is available through Friday, January 22, 2021.
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Resources mentioned

Bestseller Title Formula Checklist
www.booktitlesecrets.com

Kindle Bestseller Planner. How to position your ebook on Kindle to become a number one best seller and sell more books
www.booksopendoors.com/kindleplanner

Crushing Kindle Marketing & Visibility Study help.
www.booksopen doors.com/questionnaire

3 Key Points

Marketing and visibility research is critical for book sales & business marketing success.

It should be done before you write your book, however if you already have a book out there it’s never too late to go back and do it now.

Know how your book is different from the other books in your niche to connect with your ideal buyers and make your book the obvious choice for them to purchase.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Ellen Violette. And this is Training 11. How to Reach a Bigger Audience and Sell More Books with this Shift in your Book Writing. If you want to  reach a bigger audience, and sell more books, you’ve got to do the marketing research. My version of that is called The Crushing Kindle Marketing  & Visibility Study. And it has helped 100% of my clients become #1 bestselling authors. And I’m always surprised when I see other people in my space who don’t even tell people about this, let alone recommended, or do it with them, or for them. But this process is so important. It’s the foundation for a successful book.

And the process should be done before you write your book, because it will give you critical information that you need to avoid hope marketing. That’s what I call it when you write a book and then, you hope it’s going to sell. And too many authors don’t even think about marketing until after they’ve written their book.

[01:05] And it’s just so much better if you do it before for so many reasons. It gives you critical information that you need so that you can sell more books. It helps you do a lot of things that I’m going to talk about in this training. But don’t worry, if you’ve already written a book, and you didn’t do the marketing research first, it’s never too late to go back and make the changes to your book. And/or if you need to, to your listing and make sure that it’s optimized.

The study is comprised of five elements. So, the first one is positioning your book. If your book doesn’t stand out from all the other books on your topic, it’s going to be overlooked, and no one’s going to buy it. So, you have to see what other books are out there on your topic and how they’re approached.

[01:56] And then, once you know that, you have to figure out how your book is different. So, it can be something as simple as explaining it differently, or it could be as unique as a proprietary system that you can’t find anywhere else. And the way you have to look at this is when you’re looking to position your book, what you’re going to do is find books on the same topic, and you’re going to do it using the best keywords. And that’s the second element. So, finding the best keywords; you want to know those so that you can use them in your title and your subtitle because they are good. That’s how people look you up. So, that’s how you’re going to get the most visibility. So, using the best keywords means finding the words that the majority of people are looking up when they’re looking for your topic. And you can do this using a program like Word Tracker at wordtracker.com or Uber Suggest, which is https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ to get started.

[02:58] So, once you’ve got those keywords and you’re using them to figure out, I should say, to look at what other books are there, then you have to study them. You have to look at their table of contents. You have to see what’s in them because you have to know, again, how they’re different from yours or how yours is different- how yours is special. And a lot of times, and now this goes to the next one, which is writing a hooky title.

And well, I’m going to say them, and then I’ll come back, and then creating a benefit-driven subtitle. So, when you do that, you do them based on the keywords and based on the positioning of your book. So, so many times, I see people write a title, and then they don’t say what the subtitle really should say, which is telling them what they can expect in the book, what the benefits going to be, why people should read it.

[03:58]: And sometimes, it’s as simple as it’s a three-step process, or it’s a five-step system or something like that. But however you choose to describe it, it has to be the thing that makes it different from other titles that are out there. So, when I talk about writing a hooky title, that part has to be memorable and it has to hook your potential buyers into taking the next step with you.

If they can’t remember the title, it will be difficult for them to look it up. So, they’re not going to buy it. I mean, they can’t even find it. And this is one of the reasons that most titles are short, because you want to make it memorable. You want people to remember that when they go to Amazon, or when they go to your site, or when they go wherever they’re going to go to buy it, that they can remember the title.

[4:54] But it’s not just enough that it’s short, it must grab the person’s attention. And that’s not to say that all titles are short. They aren’t, sometimes they’re long, but the majority are short for that reason. When they’re long. it’s got to be clever; there’s got to be a reason for it. And there are different ways to do this, to grab the person’s attention. So, you can use curiosity. You can use cleverness. You can be thought-provoking. You can use whimsy or alliteration. Those are just some of the more obvious ways. But no matter which title you choose, you want to make sure that it’s unique because the fastest way to lose sales is by having a title that’s shared by other books.

So, for instance, I was just working with a client of mine, and he had a book that was on a topic that is very popular. And there were lots of books that had similar titles (and) use the same words over and over.

[05:52]: And so, I said to him, “Well, why don’t we just attack it from a completely different angle?” So, for instance, when you see a book like Blink, How to Think, Without Thinking, it’s like, “Oh yeah,” you know when you hear it, you go, “That’s really cool.” But you’re not going to find other books that explained it that way. So, that’s what I mean by sometimes it’s just explaining it in a different way.

And also, when there are multiple books with the same title, your potential buyers are going to get confused as to which one to buy and they’re not going to buy any of them. So instead, they’re just going to give up and leave. And I know,  I’ve done that where I go and I look for a book,  and I see all these different ones with similar titles, and I can’t tell which one is the one.

[06:34]: So, that’s why you want to be really specific and really careful when you’re writing your title and your benefit-driven subtitle. So, the subtitle must explain what your book’s about-the benefit that people are going to receive from reading it, and why your ideal audience should buy it. It will also help you differentiate your title. So, people have to know why they should buy your book over all the other books, as I said, and why is the best choice for them. And like I said if it’s a step-by-step system, or it might be that they get results in a certain amount of time, for instance. This is why you’ve got to do the research first to see what other books are out there and how yours is different. Otherwise, it’s just going to be difficult to come up with the right subtitle. And sometimes, what I see happen is people come up with a title and they haven’t done this.

[07:23]: And then, they get really attached to that title and they don’t want to let it go, number one. And number two, they don’t know how to let it go cause they’ve created that groove in their brain and they can’t get it out of there. And then, it becomes really difficult to come up with a more creative title because they’re attached to it. Or, they can’t think about another way to approach it because they’re so set on that title and, sometimes, subtitle. So, you’ve got to be really careful with that.

Also, it can change how you approach your topic. So, if by writing the hooky title and figuring out what the benefits are, it takes your book in a certain direction, then you want to stay true to that direction. So, it’s just really important to do that. And, and in so many cases, it’s going to make a huge difference.

[08:11] And it’s also a couple of things that I see people do, like one is they’ll write a sentence and think it’s a title. That’s why I say a hooky title, because there’s a difference between a sentence and a title. And then, the other thing is you’ve got to be careful that the words you’re using are actually what your book’s about.

So, for instance, I had a woman come to me and she thought her book was about death and her book wasn’t about death, it was about the afterlife. And so, it was just in the wrong keywords, in the wrong categories. She was lucky because we only had to change one word on her title and it still worked. But you could see that if that didn’t work, she would have had to scrap it and do it all over. And she’d already paid for a cover and done all this work on it. So, that’s why so important to do it first.

[8:58]  And then, the next thing is finding the best categories. So, eBooks on Amazon are cataloged by category. So, people can look up by keywords. They can also look up by categories. So, with millions of books on the site, it’s important that you make it as easy as possible to find your book no matter how they’re searching for it.

And categories are one of the most popular ways that people search for books. So, on the flip side, putting your book in the wrong category can really torpedo your marketing because nobody can find it. So, that’s why it’s vitally important to get your book in the right category. Also, sometimes, something could be the right category, but it’s not a good category. For instance, a lot of times people will want, let’s say they’ve written life lessons that’s also a memoir, and they want to put it in memoirs.

[09:46]: Well, the problem with memoirs is that unless you’re famous, it’s impossible to get them seen in “Memoirs” unless you are a supermarketer, which most authors are not. So that’s why, it’s not just putting it in a category that makes sense in the bigger picture, but it has to make sense in terms of how you’re going to get the visibility. You know, are people going to be able to find you there? And that goes back to the competition, like who else is in that category? Who are you competing against? And can you compete in that category? Cause sometimes, you just can’t.

So, if you want to get the most exposure and sales that you can, you’ve got to figure out how to position your book properly, how to find the best keywords, and then write that hooky title, create a benefit-driven subtitle, and then find the best categories for your book based on what it’s going to be about, and what else is out there, and can you compete? And as you’ve already got a book or books out there, then go back and go through these steps for each book immediately and stop leaving a bunch of money on the table.

That’s it for today, I’ve got some free resources for you:

The free Bestseller Title Formula Checklist at www.booktitlesecrets.com and my free Kindle Bestseller Planner. How to position your ebook on Kindle to become a number one best seller and sell more books. And the reason I say ebook as opposed to book is because when we do number-one bestsellers, we focus on the ebook, but you actually are going to be selling eBooks and books. And that one is at www. booksopendoors.com/kindleplanner.

And if you would like my help walking you through this process, go to www.booksopen doors.com/questionnaire and fill it out so I can learn more about your book and see if we’re a fit. And then, someone will get back to you shortly with the link to schedule our appointment or point you in the best direction for your book. So. that’s it for today. Until next time Bye. Bye.

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