No One's in the Office, But Still Selling Books

While preparing to go on vacation I was concerned about how to handle my publishing and book selling business. Sure, I'm online and so are my book sales, but I will still have to advertise and fulfill sales while gone.

I can't afford to hang a sign on my website saying, "Gone fishing, be back in two weeks". I don't think potential customers would understand. I don't think you can afford to do so either. So, what is a niche publisher to do?

Use the tools available. Here are some tools that every niche publisher and author should have. They are affordable and will help returning customers build confidence in your products and services.

First and foremost, make your primary point of sale at digital bookstores such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. That way when customers buy, you are not in the middle of the sale. I use LightningSource.com and Createspace.com to upload digital and hardcopy books to myriad online stores. Once I set up titles, I don't have to do anything else. However, this is just the minimum. There are other options:

1. Use your business website to direct customers to the digital website. You can feed your blogs and keep content fresh so that search engines will find your books. Customers can learn about your business, you as an author and the books you write and sell. This is where they make their buying decision. Link to Amazon.com so customers can bring your books up with one click. However, maybe your customers prefer to buy directly from your website. If that's the case, look into the following options:

a. Add buying options on your website. Use a service like PayPal. Paypal has free shopping cart buttons that you can download and put on your site. You set the buttons' requirements with price, delivery and other details. Customer buys and the order is fulfilled.

b. Augment paypal buttons with services like ejunkie.com. This service allows me to upload digital books on a secure server. It also provides a service I haven't found with PayPal; customer options to buy multiple products. Ejunkie.com takes care of orders, provides protected downloads of digital books, and sends reports.

2. Use a newsletter service such as icontact.com to keep your customers up to date. Before I leave on extended vacations, I program all my newsletters to send while I am gone. This ensures that customers remain up to date on product offerings and informative articles even when I'm not around. My newsletter also feeds to my twitter account, linked in and facebook. That way not only do subscribers get the newsletter, but so do my extended networks.

These are only a few suggestions. To see how it works, visit my website blogs and social media sites.

http://www.redbikepublishing.com/

http://www.redbikepublishing.blogspot.com/

For more detailed information, read the author's book, Get Rich in a Niche-Insider's Guide to Self Publishing in a Specialized Industry