Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most hapless of them all?

I don’t know, but I’d bet real money it’s a writer attempting to sell books.

Look, people, I’m not casting shade. When it comes to this topic, I’ve seen the clueless and it is I.

Just recently younger DIL pointed out that it’s possible I don’t see a bump up in my sales after cons, because I go out in public, I am cute, I am charming… I completely forget to say something enticing about my books that might make people want to sample them. Heck, I often forget to mention I write books at all, unless I’m directly asked.

I will confess about that one that I got seriously tired of sitting in panels with newbies who wouldn’t let anyone else talk, while they ranted on and on about novels that didn’t sound at all interesting. It’s not that I’m modest. It’s that I don’t know how to talk about the books without sounding boring.

[If younger DIL reads this? Aye aye, capitaine, I will indeed learn. Not the glare!]

Thing is, that yeah, most of us — present company very much included, possibly with bells on — have no idea how to promote.

But there are basic things.

Take your name on the book cover, for instance. EVERY writer ever born makes it too small, left to his/her own devices.

No, seriously. I was doing it too until I was walking around a local book show. The only people with tiny names on the covers are the “literary and little” presses.

If you’re not writing about the heartbreak of brucitis of the cleaning lady’s knees in iambic pentameter, your name shouldn’t be tiny on the cover. In fact, do consider looking at the covers of bestsellers for inspiration on how big your name should be.

And right now you’re looking at the screen and saying “oh, silly Sarah, people don’t measure the names.”

No, they sure don’t. But most decisions on whether to buy or download a book are made at a subliminal level. People don’t think about it.

This is even worse looking at the image in thumbnail. You might not even be able to read the author’s name very well, and will have to look at the data on the side, but you get the “impression” of what kind of book it is. Whether it’s professional or amateurish, whether this might be a book they want to look at, etc. etc. etc.

In fact, the first thing to understand is that you’re not selling to people like you.

For instance, I keep running into people that say “I don’t even look at covers.”

Yeah, that’s super cool. But 99% of the people do. They look at covers for an impression of whether you spent enough time/attention/paid someone who spent enough time and attention, or you’re an AI bot from China putting put 100 books a day.

And on that, no the Amazon “cover maker” is not good, unless you’re putting out a textbook of some sort. And even then there are better things.

The thing is that even the people who tell me that they don’t pay attention to covers, do. Some of them are close enough to be good friends/family. And they consistently pick the better cover for what they’re looking for and flip past the others.

Because the others mean “I don’t care about this book, and the contents are probably random stuff from other people’s blogs, or perhaps AI generated variations of Mary Had A Little Lamb.” It’s just the decision is made by the dinosaur brain before it gets to the conscious. NO ONE ever bought a book by going “Which cover is prettier.”

Exceptional covers might sell the book, but most covers aren’t — and don’t need to be — exceptional. Just “don’t put the reader off”.

We don’t need to go over covers here, just signal genre, make it look contemporary (unless you’re selling revived books that are out of print) and make it pleasant and if possible attractive.

AND MAKE YOUR NAME BIG ENOUGH.

While at it, another way people aren’t like you is prices.

What do I mean? Well, you have writer money. I have writer money too. It ain’t much. I feed my wicked reading habit mostly from KU subscription, because my husband finds them on sale. For more special stuff, I tend to buy kindle too. It’s cheaper. Most of what I buy on paper is for really special stuff because it’s two costs: higher price, and I have to store it which means …. more bookcases.

Anyway moving right along, other people aren’t you. Or me. There are a large number of people out there whose book budget — you won’t believe this — is far, far in excess of $20 a month.

More importantly there are people who will perceive your very cheap book as trash, because it is so cheap. If it were good why would you sell it so cheaply?

I mean, back in 2011 for a brief shiny moment, the way to sell a million dollars in books was to price the book at 99c. … and win the lottery. Because, seriously, there were hundreds of thousands of books at that price, and three? made a million dollars.

And then the sheer overwhelming not very good of all those books at 99c associated 99c with “trash.” But to an extent it is that way anyway, because … well, because books aren’t cookie bags.

Say you love a certain brand of cookies, and you find it on discount. You’re going to buy a few extra boxes, because sooner or later you’ll eat them. (Or give them to your favorite sugar addict, or whatever.)

And mind you, if you are buying your favorite author and they’re running a sale, you likely buy a … copy of books you haven’t read yet.

But you don’t run out and buy six of each book. Why would you? Even if you give a couple of copies to friends, you do not keep copies around to read later, because you only read one copy.

Sure, run a cheap sale a year (or two sales a year) to pick up some people who haven’t read you before and make a few extra bucks.

But for your bread and butter, don’t go cheap. Not only do cheap books not sell as much, but people assume you must not care very much, which means they think you don’t care about the contents either…. and so they will leave you awful reviews.

I haven’t given away books in years, because either people don’t read them, defeating the purpose, or they read them with an eye to finding problems and give me lousy reviews.

Oh, and for paper covers? Before you price your book, go look at the prices in your local store. No one picks up paper books for cheap unless they’re used. Paper books, at this point, are collectibles. Cheap collectibles… aren’t.

So, value yourself.

Take a look in a mirror. Who are you? You’re a writer. And you’re a dang good one. And you have to value yourself as such.

Don’t sell yourself cheap.