When BOO can be BAD...
Unless you're Dean Koontz or Stephen King - scaring readers isn't what most authors hope for. Yet, that's what so many of us do! We scare readers away from our books. You might be doing it RIGHT NOW, and not even realize it.
In the spirit of Halloween, I've created a fun video sharing the top things that you - or your books - may be doing to scare readers away. Brace yourself, seeing the truth can be a KILLER.
Click play and enjoy!
Want more marketing advice? Check out my step-by-step online course - How to Market Your Novel! It contains over 30 videos and covers pre-release, release, and post-release marketing - and all of the elements that can contribute to the successful launch of a novel! Click here!
Full Transcript:
Want to know what will scare readers away from your book; I'm going to tell you right now. Let's talk about the major things that will scare readers away from your book. Whether you're a debut author or currently published author, there are a lot of different things that readers are afraid of, and I'm going to talk about them right now. Number one, let's talk about your product. Let's talk about your book and its cover. I know many of you already know this, but books cover can make the number one sales tool that will make or break your novel. Let's talk about the things that will scare a reader away from a cover. Number one, designing the cover yourself. I am as guilty of this as anyone. I designed my first book cover and published it, but you don't want to design your cover unless you were a graphic design professional.
And even if you are a graphic design professional; I really suggest hiring a book cover designer. It doesn't have to be too expensive. You can buy a pre-made book cover for as little as 50 or $75, but you really want to invest in that product. Hire a professional. You don't have to pay crazy amounts of money for some custom photo shoot image, but hire a professional. You want a nice looking product.
The second thing that's important about your cover is that it matches your genre. If you look at these two covers, we have Trophy Wife, which is kind of a suspenseful, sexy romance. And then we have Love Chloe, which is much more contemporary romance. It's almost chicklet, and you can see the difference in the covers. This looks happy, fun, light. This looks darker, more suspenseful. So you want your cover to match your, and you want to attract the type of readers that are going to enjoy that book.
So, one thing that can scare readers away is having a cover that doesn't match the book's description or the category or the genre. So make sure that the cover matches the content inside but also whoever you're marketing it to. Other things that will scare readers away is the actual description. So sales are kind of sluggish; try changing the description. A lot of times you don't even realize you're so close to this book, you are so ingrained in it you don't realize what might be sticking out in that description that could be turning readers away. I have a great video on how to write a great blurb, so check that out if you need a little more guidance.
That's the outside of your book; things that could scare readers away inside your book, not having the right font, typos will scare readers way. Typos will cause negative reviews and negative reviews will definitely readers away, so be sure to have your book edited and proof-read. Editing will really help the reviews. Proofreading will really help the reviews. Both of them equally important. I don't want to say equally important. They might not be equally important, both of them are very important. Those are the things about your book.
Pricing is another thing about your book before I forget. Pricing will scare readers away. I see debut authors all the time, especially ones who haven't done the research put a 7.99 or 9.99 price point on their ebook. It is very, very, very hard to find a reader who will pay that amount of money for a new author who isn't traditionally published, so price your ebook in a reasonable fashion. I have videos on different strategies in my course, but for right now, say if you're a brand new author, I would suggest putting your price at 2.99, or even below that, depending on your pricing strategy. 2.99 or 3.99 for debut author is a great price point that won't scare readers away.
Another thing to consider about your book is the ending. It has a cliffhanger ending; that can be really alarming to a reader, especially if you've never published anything before. And the reason for that is because a lot of times we'll see brand new authors publish a book, it has a cliffhanger ending, and then we never hear from them again. Maybe their sales didn't go as they wanted or life, you know, got in the way and they got distracted and decided not to write that second book. So we have a reader who's read a book, have a cliffhanger ending and we'll never find out the end of that story. So if you're an author who has a cliffhanger ending, just be aware that readers may wait to purchase that book until the second novel or the third novel, however many books are in that series or all out. A book with a cliffhanger ending can definitely scare readers away.
Those are the things about your book. Now let's talk about your author brand because there are things in your author brand that could have also scare readers away, and that is definitely not what we want to do. The first thing is inconsistent product. If you're jumping from horror to erotica romance, to contemporary romance, if you're jumping all over the place with your novels, that can scare readers away because they don't know what to expect from you next. You want to be clear and consistent in your marketing and let the readers know what is coming. It's okay to move from genre to genre, but be sure you're giving each audience enough books to keep them happy in that genre and be very clear with them in communication when you release your new books and what those books are like by cover, by description, and by flat-out telling them this is a contemporary or this is a graphic horror novel. Let them know what it is so they're not just buying it and taking a gamble on what's inside.
The other thing with your author brand is just consistency of product. Always put the best books out there so you have a strong and beautiful catalog of novels. That way, they have a confidence whenever they purchase your book that they're getting a great product. The third thing with your author brand is you yourself, your actual brand. You want it to be authentic to you. You don't want to have to fake it every time you get online, but not everyone is a people person, and that's absolutely fine. If you aren't a people person, if you don't like to interact with readers online, or if you find yourself getting irritated and engaged in arguments with people online; just stay away. It's better to have a non-existent presence online than to have a negative presence online.
Go online post about your product, post updates about your books, post writing updates, but don't feel like you have to engage with readers in conversation on a daily basis, or engage with readers in groups if that's not your thing, okay. It's better, like I said, to not be present than to have a negative presence. And the other thing about when you are posting online, be positive, be happy. Don't go online if you're in a bad mood; don't go online to complain about sales or reviews or things going on in your daily life. Readers want, again, to read as an escape and you are an extension of that escape. They had their own problems; they don't want to hear about our problems. So if I'm in a bad mood, if I have a lot of stress going on, I do not go online and vent about it, I vent to my husband. He's my outlet for that. So those are the different things about your author brand or about your books that could scare readers away. I hope you enjoyed this post from Alessandra Torre Ink. Check out the site for more great content.
