What Works When it Comes to Book Sales?

What about those blog tours for book promotion? I wonder about those tours and whether or not they lead to any kind of success. The authors I know who have done them have not seen a demonstrative increase in book sales. If you have done one and it helped your sales I would love to hear your story.

The most success I’ve seen when it comes to book sales has been in nationwide exposure. So, let me share what I’ve seen work.

Nationwide exposure in one key media can make a best seller. The word here is key media. I’ve seen books enjoy national exposure in some major media, but if that media outlet doesn’t reflect the right demographic for your book, it will generate only a small handful of sales. A book promoted to the right media that reached the “sweet spot” of your demographic can produce in a single promotion a best seller. So a national spot in and of itself won’t necessarily produce results. It has to be the right media placement to the right audience.

Collective exposure to key media can produce results. The media outlets may not have a huge following, but when combined together and the right, the results can produce a best seller. One key media might produce a nice chunk of sales and then another media exposure right after that one can do the same. Collective exposure tends to produce sustained sales. So your book might start off slowly but with each new exposure then sales will grow on top of each other. This approach in my opinion is the most desirable. You want ongoing, long-term sales rather than a quick spike in sales that goes away. Authors often believe that one key exposure and the remarkable results will last. Then they are confused when it doesn’t last more than a month at best. So, the best approach is to cast a broad net and hope to catch many medium-sized fish.