Why Buy Books?

Why do readers buy books? How do we choose what we want to read?

This is perhaps the most important question of all for a writer to answer. If you want someone, apart from family and friends, to buy the book you're writing, you must know what motivates your ideal reader.

Why would he or she be interested in buying your book? 

1. For information. How-to books never fall out of fashion. A concise and easy-to-follow book relaying your area of expertise be it Making Toys for Poodles or Teaching Your Cat Swahili will always find an audience. The trick is to be sure you choose a subject which appeals to a reasonable number of people and which is not over-populated already.
2. For pleasure or stress-busting. All readers have favourite genres from literary fiction to paranormal romance.
3.  For interest. Put another way, readers buy from curiosity. I buy books through reviews I read in newspapers, magazines or the Internet. More and more I buy from trusted recommendations on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook, and from authors I cybermeet and find interesting on these or similar sites.

 How do you write a best seller?

Ideally you will choose a niche which is popular but not flooded with best selling authors already. In practice, writers are apt to know what they want to write. And this is often what they like to read.

But, as a  slow writer,you cannot rely on jumping on this year's band wagon. The wagons inevitably roll  by and leave you polished, edited and stranded as yesterday's news. 


Both you and your book demand that you become equally proficient at communicating with your potential readers and this is a task you can never start too early.


Brand yourself as a writer.

There has never been a better time to learn how to do this. Many writers are paying back all the help they had at the start by encouraging and helping newbie authors.


Two websites I  recommend are Writers on the Move and  Writers and Authors.


Writers on the Move, the brainsite of marketing and promotion expert Karen Cioffi is peopled by a collection of savvy award-winning authors and marketing experts like Carolyn Howard Johnson. The article on her initial  Amazon launch is subtitled learning from mistakes.The new edition of The Frugal Book Promoter is now released on Amazon, expanded and updated and full of excellent budget ideas for making the best possible platform for your book sales.


Writers and Authors is edited by Jo Linsdell, a British writer now living with her husband in Italy. Jo is indefatigable when it comes to promotion and I am hoping to welcome her here later in the week on her blog tour celebrating her latest publication  Italian for Tourists.


Cast an eye over either or both of these sites and share what you learn that will make a difference to your own brand promotion whether your book is published or still a cherished WIP.


Not to be missed

Writers on The Move November Workshop 

Create and sell an Informational Product. A free how-to session on November 18. What could be better than that?


Low-cost workshop packages will be available for this and past workshop packages are listed on the site.