Authors must embrace selling as part of their journey. Why? And how? Let's find out...

Have you read my article about finding your why?

We talked about using this core message, this heart of your raison d’être to create your brand identity for your book or books.

The next step is to talk about selling.

Ewww – bet you are already feeling icky. Or sighing, or not wanting to read any further.

Well I have another video for you – and this one, this one will stay with you for a while. Be prepared – and make sure you watch with the sound on!

Are you singing along? You’ll be singing this for weeks now. Hahahahaha – it was all a sneaky plot to earworm you all……

Embrace Selling is Service

And service is selling (couldn’t resist sorry).

We buy things that we need, things that we want or things that we like. Sometimes we regret our choices afterwards, sometimes we end up paying for things we don’t want to, like when your kids ask for that $7 ice-cream for 4 hours straight and you reluctantly cave.

But we make our own choices. We are choosing to purchase to satisfy a need or a want and your readers are doing the same. The ice-cream seller is servicing our need to get our kids to keep quiet and their want for ice-cream.

How to embrace selling? By reframing selling to WIIFM

Another way to think about this is the good old theory “what’s in it for me? (WIIFM)”  Once you have your why sorted and your lovely brand message, you can start to think about what this will give your readers. What benefit does your book give them?

This part, this is the service. This is the part where the selling gets easier because when you are making someone’s world better with your book it doesn’t feel like you are selling steak knives.

Translating WIIFM to your books

Let’s do an example again – do you remember our core brand message for our kids books?

Our books fire up the imaginations of kids who don’t sit still.

Right so to translate that into benefits for the readers:

• Your kids will be drawn into the hilarious over the top stories and wacky adventures in our books
• They will be fascinated by all the small details in each page
• They will laugh along with Willy Nilly as he gets into trouble with his crazy ideas

And then for the buyers, the readers and grandparents

• These books will engage your kids and keep them reading and actually sitting still
• You will enjoy reading these aloud as you enjoy the story driven fun with a focus on adventure and imagination
• You will love hearing them debate Willy’s reasons and possible next steps in each story as their imaginations go wild
• Your kids will see themselves on the page in a world where they are often told they don’t fit in

Your turn to embrace selling and craft your service sell

Think about how you can translate the why from your books into a benefit for your readers.

As always this does not need to be perfect first go around, write down any thoughts, any ideas. Then you will tweak and adjust them. This then will form a key part of your sales message.

How does Old Mate Media do this for our authors?

This is a key part of our sales blurb service for our authors. We talk to them about their book, the heart of their message. We combine that with our knowledge of their book, our knowledge of best sales practices and then we use that to write a great piece of sales copy for Amazon and other online retailers.

If you are interested in getting an updated blurb for your book, get in contact or book in a chat.