I’m here to talk to you about the four traits of successful speakers who have published their own book. I’m looking at point number three in this video which is fairly straightforward, in fact it doesn’t always happen – speakers need to sell their books at events.
There’s various ways you could do this. You could
- have a dropshipped arrangement where your book are available on Amazon or with a particular publisher
- have some at home and you post them off to customers
That’s really useful.
You can
- send them directly from Amazon to the customers using Amazon has got a tool called CreateSpace.
- a website called Lulu where you can get books done, which is helpful
- go to a publisher and get small quantities done yourself
You don’t need to have a thousand of these things kicking around under the stairs foryears getting dog-eared. You can just have a few copies that you can keep in pristine condition. You can sell them and then get some more in.
You can have them at the back of the room when you’re speaking. That makes a lot of sense because people can see and touch the product.
People don’t just judge a book by its cover. They judge it by its contents as well. I know if you’ve been in a book shop like me you look at the front cover, then you look at the back cover and it’s got the bullets on there about what makes this book good. Then you have a flick through at some of the sample pages inside. People can do that if you’ve got them at your speak events.
Always make sure you’ve got a nice safe way of transporting them so they don’t get damaged, and an attractive way to displaying them at the back of the room.
Selling books at events is also great for social proof. Once people meet an author – even if you’re not Stephen King – then people just love buying a signed copy of their book. They love having their photo taken with the author.
As a speaker you can use that and use those photos in your social media, in your marketing, in your news stories as a way of again showing that you are an expert in your field because people want to be photographed with you. It shows you’ve built a tribe.
People want to be photographed with you and your book. Again excellent marketing so make the most of that. Do sell your books at events and capitalise on those sales.
