To Attract a Larger Audience and Sell More Books, Consider Becoming an Online Book Reviewer
Fame! In the best of cases, a misunderstanding.
--Albert Camus
Like most first-time authors, I spent a lot of time promoting my first book. I did everything that anyone recommended . . . and what I had seen others do.
In the process, some of the ideas seemed far-fetched, but some of those paid off quite well, compared to the ideas the "experts" had shared with me. Exploring the online world turned out to be one of those areas that didn't appear to make much sense, but did.
Because the young people on my staff had insisted we put up a Web site for our book, the site was up and working early in the promotional process. Feeling generous, I suggested we post free access for all but two key chapters. Jason Breyan got busy telling people about the site, and hits on our site began to climb. Soon we were attracting thousands of visitors a month. Some of them were clicking on our link to buy the book on various online book sellers.
Everyone told me I could expect to get slammed by "know-nothings" who would write "ignorant" reviews about our book online. Young people encouraged me to ask clients and friends to write and post reviews there to balance out that expected arbitrary negativity.
Pretty soon, the sales started to climb as people read those positive reviews. Some of our more enthusiastic supporters also began to write reviews of other peoples' books and mention our book. Sales climbed even faster.
Soon we hit the top 200 list and kept climbing until we were a best seller on the online sites. We were excited.
I kept waiting for the deluge of negative reviews, but hardly any appeared.
A key lesson was that online book sellers provide a better place to communicate with prospective customers than the bulk of what we had been encouraged to do. We continued to think about what else could be done.
The next step was for me to become a book reviewer as well. In that capacity, millions of people became aware of my writing . . . and substantial numbers were encouraged by what they read to buy our book. That felt good!
In the process, I learned an unintended lesson: far more people read what you write online than you will ever attract through writing a book alone. I had had the cart trying to pull the horse.
About the Author:
Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist, The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Read about creating breakthroughs through and receive tips by e-mail through registering for free at
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