Why is this? Don’t other people know how much they need to read you book? In a word, no, they don’t. And because this world is so consumer driven, approaching others with the statement, “You should buy my book because…” is likely to be met with nothing but a disinterested gaze.
So why DO people buy books? The number one reason might surprise you. It is because other people are buying it. This is the number one reason that books are bought. Crazy right? But then again, why did you buy your last book? Was it not because someone else recommended it to you? This is the critical mass of sales.
Just like nuclear reactions, when only a few isolated people purchase a copy, their recommendations to others tends to say pretty limited, and sales remain limited too. However, when sales ‘go nuclear,’ it is because enough people are recommending the book that others start purchasing it (and then even recommending it to others before they have read it). That’s when the book becomes a ‘best seller’ and will end up on shelves around the world.
Major book publishers (and major authors) have been known to spend lots of promotional and advertising dollars to get a ‘promoter’ of their book. This is a celebrity, or TV personality perhaps, who will talk publicly about your book. When someone famous talks positively about your book on TV, and 300,000 people hear it, it will drive that nuclear reaction on sales.
Another technique that is often used, somewhat underhandedly, is for a publisher to purchase 10,000 copes of the book they just published! This amount of purchases on a single day will drive the book to the New York Times Bestseller List (for example). People will actually purchase the book just because it is on that list, reasoning that it must be good if it is there!
McKinney Publishing, and our authors, just don’t have the budget to purchase a celebrity promoter, and we certainly don’t recommend inflating sales numbers. So, how do we reach ‘critical mass’ with our books?
Basically it is going to come down to the author. When talking with folks, don’t talk about why they should buy your book, but instead focus on what made you write in the first place – your love of the topic. Excitement is contagious, so don’t contain yours. Then, be on the lookout for some ‘promoters’ of your own. Folks who share you passion for the topic that you wrote about and enjoyed your book. Let them know it would mean a lot to you if they would put a review of the book up on Amazon, and recommend it to some of their friends. You would be surprised how quickly those recommendations will travel.
McKinney Publishing will make sure the book is available to all the locations where books are sold, but ultimately, it is up to the Author to help connect their finished work with the world waiting to read it.