Authors these days need to develop their own following. Publishers expect it, and building relationships with your readers has lots of benefits. When your fans share their enthusiasm, more people discover your writing. Embrace the possibilities with a strategic plan to boost sales.
Attract new readers with freebies, or lead magnets, in exchange for registrations to get future announcements and/or a newsletter from you. Your email list is your own valuable asset. It’s not owned by unpredictable social media platforms or publishers. It’s something you control. It’s a way to develop relationships that encourage fans to buy from you again and again.
Use your newsletter to promote other authors and products as well as your own offerings. Promoting others as an affiliate, sharing a portion of the sale of someone else’s product, can become a significant income stream. Additionally, these lead magnets can eventually turn into micro-products or bundles for you to offer for sale.
You can make announcements about upcoming events, such as book signings and book fairs, interviews, and new projects. Encourage sharing, reviews, referrals, and testimonials. Create a community, reveal behind the scenes photos and new book covers. Take surveys and make special announcements.
Monetize this community with a membership site, pre-orders for book sales, and consider a paid level of a social media group or newsletter. Enlist a team of followers and collaborators to help promote your efforts. Provide them with swipe files of your branded messages to use in their emailings and on their social and other sites. Create a pre-launch strategy and share with your team. Then give them book tour information, gated content, and prize giveaways.
Consider these eight ways that you can use to ask prospects to sign up for messaging from you. With each of these lead generation strategies, add a call-to-action page or segment and offer each for free with signup.
1. Create a book trailer – Make a video about your book, including where viewers can buy it as well as where they can sign up for your newsletter.
2. Offer a free book or novella – Consider a prequel or spinoff.
3. List books that you recommend – Your choices may or may not be in the same category as your own book.
4. Pull together an anthology of short stories with other authors who have the same audience.
5. Offer the first chapter of your book for free.
6. Write a short story set in the same world as your novel and offer for free.
7. List questions with answers about your topic.
8. Give readers a chance to sign up to your special private Facebook group for free.
Share these lead magnets in your email signature, in your site’s footer, social media, groups, your profiles, and bios. Find others to give away your lead magnets to their audiences. Give them a unique link to a sign up page and share results with your partners.
For nonfiction writers, here is a list of lead magnet ideas for you. Think of ways to give out tips without providing everything in your book.
1. Checklist
2. Templates
3. Mind map
4. Planners
5. Workbook or video on getting started
6. Mini course
7. List of related resources
8. Printable quotes
9. Reports or whitepapers
Here are more ideas:
• Playlist of favorite tunes or videos
• Early bird discount
• Inspiration files
• Manifesto
• Your list of favorite authors
• Your list of book reviews
• Your list of favorite books
• Your list of favorite podcasts
• Surveys and polls
• Audio book
• Collection of blog posts in an ebook
• Bundle your book with the audio book of it
• Give out event tickets
• Nonfiction companion piece – historical, research, themes
• Cheat guide related to book’s topic
Get my full list of 70+ lead generation ideas when you head here.
For ideas on ways to develop collaborations, head to “30 Ways to Leverage Other People’s Platforms to Increase Awareness, Credibility, and Revenues.” Or check out Relatable Media’s Lucia Matuonto and I conversation about it further in this Relatable Voice podcast episode.
Find out more about Jan Carroza at https://www.instagram.com/jancarroza/.
Jan is a featured speaker at The RV Book Fair 2024 (The RV Book Fair | Relatable Media).
Article published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - November 2024. Downolad the full magazine at https://www.relatable-media.com/the-relatable-voice-magazine
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