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Promote Your Book Online with a Short Article
Judy Cullins © 2001
Dissatisfied with your book sales? With book signings, press releases, book store sales?
So many authors spend a lot of time and money on promotion that doesn't work. It's time to do what authors do best-write a short article. Online published articles are seven times more powerful than advertising, building your credibility as the expert, and leading the flock to your book-selling site.
Follow these ten steps to write an article top Web sites and ezines will clamor for with a link back to where your book is sold.
Apply these Ten Steps
1. Choose a topic that relates to your book. Make sure this how- to article has useful, needed information. One site, which markets to professional speakers, published my article "What Makes One Book Outsell Another."
2. Know your article's thesis. The thesis is what your article will prove. It is the major answer for your audience's major question. In the introduction above, the thesis is stated in the last line, "Use these ways to write an article top Web sites and ezines will clamor for with a link back to where your book is sold."
3. Know your preferred audience. Just as your book has a target audience, so should your article. "Sell More Books with a Powerful Back Cover," and "Increase Web Sales Through Writing Special Reports" articles are aimed at professional speakers, coaches, trainers, authors and business people who want to write and sell books fast.
4. Write a sparkling title and opening. Like a headline in a press release, on your Web site, or on your book's back cover, your title and your first sentence should grab your readers by the collar, so they will keep reading. Include a benefit in your title or subtitle. The opening could use a shocking fact, a question, a benefit, or a compelling story right out of your book. Make the opening a short paragraph, even a single line. Readers want concise, digestible information, especially on the Internet.
5. Illustrate a need. Whatever your book's topic, show your readers why they need your information. If you have written a book on listening for couples, then in your short article, discuss how much is at stake for not listening, such as divorce.
6. Give a brief background of the problem or situation you will solve. One book-coaching client has written a book, The Cure for Multiple Sclerosis. In it she shares that over 2 million people worldwide with Multiple Sclerosis are diagnosed incurable, that doctors are pressured to use pharmaceuticals, and that the health industry is not about getting people well, but about making money.
7. Share the problems that result. In The Cure for Multiple Sclerosis, the problem is that most people rely on western medicine, which does not have the answers. Big money is not spent on alternative or complementary ways to prevent and cure chronic diseases, so people with problems get drugs that deplete the immune system.
8. Give the solutions. Your book offers solutions to problems, just as your article must. Show your readers how to get excellent health, how they can write a book, make more money, or have better relationships. You may write a tips article with numbered short tips.
9. Show them where to get the solution and how. The article, "How to Listen at Work to Raise Career Success," needs to suggest where to go or what to do next to learn the skills. You may name a quality book to read (maybe your book!), mention a seminar or training, or recommend a coach. You may even mention a Web site address or 800- number.
10. Place your article on as many high traffic Internet sites and ezines as you can. People are looking for free information on web sites. That's the major reason they visit Web sites!
So, now that you know how to write a short article, put it to work for you to promote your book.
