‘Cause if you published a book but didn’t do any marketing, do readers know it exists?
This is a transcription of a video post by Dale L. Roberts, independent author and book professional whose content I trust and who permitted me to repost the info. Here’s the video version:
You tired of watching your book sit in silence while other authors seem to explode out of nowhere? You did the work. You finished the book, but now it’s collecting dust.
Today, I’m breaking down the 10 real reasons your book isn’t selling and exactly what you can do to fix it. Some of these might sting a little, but they’re the hard truths I wish someone told me years ago. I’m not here to punch down. I’m not here to hype you up. Empty advice. This is practical. It’s direct. It’s what worked for me and the authors I’ve worked with.
And if you stick around to the end, I’ll share the one reason that ties it all together, something every single author I know has struggled with no matter how experienced they are. So let’s go ahead and jump right on in.
You have to bear with me, because, you know, I’m not used to doing PowerPoint presentations, you know, but some people like the visuals, so I figured, let’s go ahead and give that a shot. So today, let’s get into those 10 reasons your book isn’t selling, starting out with the least egregious to the most egregious when it comes to why your book isn’t selling.
#10 You’re relying on your friends and family just a little too much
So I totally get it. You’ll want that support. You want to have friends that go and buy your book when it’s out. You’ll want your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, everybody else to go ahead and do that, and do that, and that’s fantastic.
There’s some folks out there that learn the hard way that after a while, friends and family kind of burn out. They’re like, “Hey, Dale, you published 12 books in the last year. Calm down.” And that’s just a reality.
If you’re leaning on people who you that, who love you, not people looking for your book. There’s a problem; this support just doesn’t scale. I mean, unless you, you know, start encouraging, you know, your immediate friends and family to start having children at that point, maybe you could scale it, but it really just kind of builds this false sense of success for you.
Initial boost from loved ones can just mask this deeper problems with reach and relevance.
So my thought is this, and I think everybody kind of kind of know this, to fix this, focus on readers, not relatives. Build your real audience, because they’re going to come to you time and again, even if, say, for instance, you didn’t go to the Thanksgiving dinner to hang out with the rest of the family, or you didn’t go chill with the bros and play some Nintendo 64 and GoldenEye. Yeah, that’s probably a little dated.
#9 You’re not showing up like a pro
Oh my gosh. Let me tell you, there’s a number of authors out there that, like, I don’t understand. I’ve written the book, I’ve published it, and I’m just not selling any books.
And then I just go and I just have a peek at them, and they either don’t have an author photo, or the photo they have is blurry, or it’s pixelated, or it’s super unprofessional, or worse yet, sometimes I’ve seen some authors where they’re in a picture of numerous people. No.
Author photo is not your family, alright? Author photos should be just you and you alone. So focus on really getting professional. show up. You know, no author photo or sloppy or missing bio, no links. This is a lot of things that will make you feel like a beginner to readers that are kind of scouting you out.
So you have to always lead with your best, best efforts every single time, every time you cross social media on your website, no matter when you show up, remember, you are always on stage. This was a lesson I learned years ago, when I was a personal trainer.
We used to have this deck that overlooked the whole gym, and on that deck they’d have cardio equipment, and if a trainer was seen just sitting at a desk doing absolutely nothing, guess what? That trainer got nothing. They got no sales. No one wanted to go to them.
It was the trainer that usually was moving around, because we’re always on stage, and you as an author are always on stage. If you go get a podcast interview, you better show up with your best professional face.
Lead with your best professional efforts, because it does make a huge difference So here’s a fix. I think this one’s a given: clean up your author profile everywhere. Trust is built in seconds. Now, when I say clean up your author profile everywhere, I’m talking like you need to be doing pretty much everything across the board exactly the same.
What’s your author profile photo? Alright, we’re going to share that on Amazon, we’re going to share that on social media. We’re going to share that on your website, so that way you’re undeniable that when people see this, think, Oh, I’ve seen that picture of that bald-headed clown with the orange shirt. Sure I recognize them. So build that professional image.
#8 You’re not asking for reviews.
Oh my gosh. Can I tell you how many times I’ve had people say to me over the last, gosh, nine years of me being on YouTube, “I don’t know how to get reviews.” Ask. Literally ask. No reviews equals no trust. And you’re probably saying, “Okay, well, who do I ask?” Your readers. You need to have some readers.
How do you get those readers? You get more sales. How do you retain those readers from other platforms like Amazon, drive the digital IngramSpark, all that type of stuff? An email list, alright? And by the way, little bit of foreshadowing there. Ask your readers. Algorithms and browsers both skip you if you don’t have those reviews. It’s third party credibility.
So ask early, ask often, ask everywhere, especially after a great reading experience. So what I would recommend is, if you’re lacking reviews right now, on the back of your book right after the end or after your conclusions wrapped up, and before your about the author, put it there.
Say, “Hey, now that you finished reading this book, it’d mean the world to me if you left an honest review over at xyz.com.” Provide them a link to where they can drop that review, so that way, it makes life so much simpler.
Now I realize that on platforms like Amazon, when you get to the end of Kindle, all the way to the end, they’ll typically prompt you up to leave a review, but sometimes, if you’re kind of like me, and you have a deep resources section, that person’s not going to get to that part. So it is a good idea to just load it up, ask right there.
And the other thing is, when you find a good review, or some type of a good clip from a review, share it on social media. And then here’s your call to action, just as simple as something as simple as this: “If you’ve read a copy of XYZ book, please, it mean the world to me if you left an honest review over at xyz.com.” Now, don’t send people to xyz.com, folks, that’s just an example.
Send them to the proper location so that way they’re not lost. They’re like, what is xyz.com?
#7 You don’t know your audience
I can’t tell you how many times that people have fallen into the same trap that I fell into when I first got into this business, is not knowing my audience. Writing what you love isn’t enough here, folks, if it confuses your readers. And general messages don’t create loyal fans. You have to be super direct.
When I first broke into this business, and I’ve mentioned this in a couple of my publications, a good friend of mine, Mark Stafford, had got with me. He’s a marketer, and we sat down for a meal, I think probably a Ruby Tuesday or something like that, and I handed him a copy of my first book. I was beaming, pride. Loved it.
I was like, “Dude, you’re gonna really dig this.” And he looks at and he starts thumbing through it, and he’s like, “Who’s your book for?” “Everyone. That’s a goofy question.” He’s like, “Okay, you’re telling me you wrote a fitness book that’s good for teenagers and seniors.“
And I was like—he stumped me. It’s true that advice would not be applicable to both those audiences, and he had me dead to rights. So understanding who your audience is makes a huge difference in what you’re writing as well as what you are marketing.
So because placing yourself in the right place at the right time is fantastic, but if your message is wrong, it’s just going to fall on deaf ears. So to fix this, define your genre, and I don’t want to hear this genre-bending stuff. Alright, it’s great, awesome. You’re creative. That’s fantastic. You get a gold star and a banana sticker. That’s great, fantastic.
But you have to get something that people can identify easily with. You want to get sales. You can’t be this just outlier, this person that’s just like, “Oh yeah, I’m—this is a WearBear shape shifter, basket weaving tutorial for men over 55 wanting to work out at home.” No stop that. Quit it. Pick a good genre, stick to it.
Study your niche, because you’re going to see little breadcrumbs to the successful publications that are within your niche. Follow those breadcrumbs. Adapt accordingly. Speak directly to your readers when you know that audience.
#6 You are ignoring the metadata
Oh my gosh, yeah, there’s a lot of people actually do pay attention to but unfortunately they pay attention to the wrong way. There are either weak or missing keywords. Sometimes people choose the wrong categories, and other times. I’m not kidding you. I’ve coached some people where they left the keyword slots empty, empty. Empty.
Now, I’m not saying this out of hate, because I know that that person’s probably end up watching this here, but that’s just lazy. Don’t, don’t publish it. If you’re not going to fill in some keywords, guess. Throw something in there, but leaving it blank, I know it says optional in KDP, it’s not optional. Just put it in there.
Fill it in, alright? But getting those keywords and categories dialed in make all the difference in the world. Keywords are the bridge that builds. That is what builds the bridge between your reader and your publication. Study the market and understand how your ideal reader is discovering publications like yours, also where other publications are similar to yours, and you’re placing them in those categories.
I am tired of seeing some folks out there that are looking at categories on places like Amazon and go, Oh, that’s profitable, and then they just slap it over on their publications, and it has very little to do with it. And I think KDP has been doing a fantastic job of policing this area, but it still has some work, has a ways to go.
They have been strict on some things, but either way, you have to select the proper categories. It needs to make sense. If it was in a library and this specific digital shelf was actually real, does your book belong there? Does it belong in the place of all those other books? Because if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t be listening there.
So you’re invisible to both search engines and store browsers when you aren’t focusing on your metadata. So fill out every field you can. Think like your buyer. Use data, not guesses. Now, I think a lot of you know out there, I’m a huge fan of so many keyword research tool between Dibbly Creates’ Kip Scout, as well as I’m a huge fan of Publisher Rocket. I’m not going to put any affiliate links. You guys can find it.
Hit me up if you happen to need that, though, either way, alright?
#5 Your cover isn’t doing the job.
Alright. So there is so so many times, I would say 99% of the time, when someone reaches out to me and they say, I’m not getting any book sales, and they give me a link to their book. I go look at it, and their cover is not good, or their cover is good, but it’s not genre specific. That makes a huge difference.
You need to have a cover that’s going to stop the scroll, but you need to have it to where it stops the scroll, and also immediately signifies exactly what your publication is about, what your book covers. Someone needs to look at that and go, boom. I know this is sci-fi. Boom. I know this is romance. Boom. I know this is fantasy. Boom. I know this is self-help. They should be able to clearly understand that.
Creativity is fantastic, but when you start to put a little too much creativity on your cover, it starts to become a little bit ugly. Becomes bowling shoe ugly, and if you happen to be doing your own book covers, that’s totally I understand it. That’s how I broke into the business. But, you know, there are some affordable options. I’ll get to that in here in just a second.
Make sure it matches your genre, too. It’s not enough that you have a stellar-looking cover. I’ve made many a stellar covers that drew not a single hairy dime, literally lost money on it because it wasn’t genre specific. Fixes—hire a professional like MIBLART. Now this is perfect. This is why I’m coming here today, because it is their ninth birthday, and I thought I would come here and celebrate here with you guys.
A strong cover earns the click every single time, and one of those companies that does that is MIBLART. Now I’ve been using them for, gosh, a few years now, they are fantastic. They’ve done dozens of covers, even done some for folks here on this channel.
And just so you know right now, it is their ninth birthday, and they’re offering a limited time deal, you can automatically get $9 off any service. Then you can stack an extra 15% discount by entering the promo code MIBLART15. MIBLART one five, that’s MIBLART 15 at checkout, that’s M, I, B, L, A, R, T, one five.
That means double savings on professional book cover design, author branding and more. They do more than cover design folks. Believe it or not, you want to get some swag? They got you covered. You want a logo? They got you covered. You want someone that’s going to be able to just blow you away. On all graphic design, MIBLART is where you got to go.
MIBLART has worked with 1000s of indie authors and their Trustpilot reviews really speak for themselves. They know what authors need and deliver quality work every time. Here’s a pro tip: if MIBLART’s prices still feel a bit high for your budget, I understand. I understand it does come at a higher premium than some. That’s okay.
You can also check out GetCovers. It’s MIBLART’s sister cover company with more affordable options. In fact, sometimes they’re public. If you want just an ebook cover, $10. What, are you kidding me? And it’s beautiful. Yeah, the highest it goes is $35, and guess what? It’s their birthday.
And this means that GetCovers is doing that as well. So the good news is they’re selling birthday too, so you’ll definitely find a great deal there too. I’ve got all the links inside description down below. They are affiliate links, so that way, if you do purchase from that, I do get a little bit of a kickback. It does not adversely affect your price, and it greatly helps support the cause.
#4 You’re not marketing and promoting
Oh my gosh, this is a given. Not too many people realize this: if you are not actively marketing and promoting, you are just letting everything go to chance. You’re expecting the platform to sell the books for you. That is a recipe for disaster. It is not 2010 anymore, folks. You can’t just smear feces on a piece of paper and publish and expect to make money hand over fist. Easy for me to say.
You have to market and promote your book. It needs to be an almost daily occurrence, especially if you want to see any real traction. The long term doesn’t need to be huge. You don’t need to be putting a ton of effort into the marketing program—just something. I think it was once said that 80% of success is showing up. Guess what? You could probably do half that; 40% of success is showing up.
Just show up and put some effort into the marketing and promotion. If you’re relying on luck and not a plan, you’re not going to sell books. You are not going to see very good success either, if all you are doing is hedging all of your bets on your book launch, and that’s it. If you disappear after your book launch, no one’s gonna care. I hate to say it; no one’s going to care if you just—up, that’s it. I’m done, you know.
Oh yeah, let me just go to this one podcast here. Oh, podcasts don’t work. Oh, let me go, and I’m just gonna do social media for the next two days, and I’m just gonna just beat people up to buy my book, even though it’s after launch, people probably don’t care anymore. No. You have to show up and be consistent about it. So here’s my fix. This is simple. Everyone can do this right now.
Choose one marketing channel. One. Be consistent there, not perfect. So let’s just say, for instance, if you were in my shoes, probably the thing that you would do is go, oh, choose one marketing channel. I’m going YouTube. This is my avenue. This is the place that I kick butt and take names on. It’s Facebook for you, or Reddit or X or Instagram, go with it. Run with it. Go all in on it.
Email marketing, another great one. Choose that one marketing channel and go buck wild on it. And don’t let off the gas ever if you want to see your book selling on a regular basis.
#3 Your book description just doesn’t convert
It’s garbage, sorry. Reads like a summary and not a sales page, guess what? It’s not going to convert. This is where I think a lot of us authors get real romantic about our books. We’re like, oh, you know, I really love my book.
And then you start to craft this beautiful prose for your book description that summarizes everything beautifully. This character’s from here and oh, he’s, he’s a rapscallion, and we got this other one, she’s our heroine, and she’s going to—no stop. Quit it. Your book description should not be a summary. It needs to excite, it needs to especially hook them, and it needs to also build a sense of urgency.
Like when someone reads your book description, they need to have that sense of missing out if they don’t read that, because if you’ve crafted a beautiful cover design that’s nice and professional and gets people to go and visit your product page, and they show up and they’re getting ready to get that and oh, there’s not many reviews, alright?
Well, we got the reviews. Let’s pretend like we got the reviews handled. Here we go. We got the reviews handled, but then they start to read the description, and it’s just like, this sounds boring. Pass. So what I say is, fix this. Use a tested format. Sell the story, not the structure.
#2 You’re not collecting email addresses
Come on now. It’s your Uncle Dale talking here. Uncle Dale, sit down. Grab a seat. Gather around. Been in this business for well over a decade now. And the common denominator amongst most successful indie authors is an email list. It’s something that had me blow up many years ago as a fitness author. It’s something that I’ve seen many other authors be able to do.
Email marketing is not dead, folks. The problem is, if you’re selling a vast majority of your books through platforms like Amazon or Apple or Barnes and Noble, they’re not your customers. You’re just sharecropping at this point, as soon as someone buys your book, boom, that conversation’s done. It’s over. You can’t continue to chat with that person, so I recommend, first of all, direct’s also a good way to go, but having the email list.
Get it to where you make it dead simple for people to subscribe to your email list, to stay in touch with you, to get deals, discounts and maybe advanced access to future publications. Put that inside your book. Put it in the front matter, put in the back matter, put it all throughout, if you want to. Don’t go too crazy, especially if you’re a fiction author.
But you want to make sure that you’re asking and then don’t just do it in the book, put it on your website, social media, everywhere you’re going to show. Tattooed on your forehead if you want to, although I don’t know that that would be very cool in another 10 years from now.
So every sale should not be a dead end, folks. You have no way to launch or stay in touch with your following if all you’re doing is relying on the platforms to send your book out to them.
Build that email list. If it seems overwhelming, it’s okay. I’ve been in those shoes as well. It takes time. It takes practice. I want you to think of it kind of like learning a new language. It’s going to be tough. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to probably mess up every now and then. You might get lost and say, Where is this feature?
Good news is, there is Google. You could use any other search engine you want to or you can even dig out artificial intelligence and have it point you in the right direction.
Either way, build that email list here, folks. Just one simple opt in. A reader magnet equals long-term reader retention. Now, the number one reason. It’s a good reason why I saved this one for last.
And this is not something I talk about too often. I’m not too self helpy. I’m not rah, rah. I’m not gonna sit here and slap you on the back and say, go get it kid, nah. Now, Uncle Dale, don’t roll that way. So this is the one that I have to just break what I normally do. I don’t talk about mindset too often, but this one needs to be said.
#1 You’re not giving it time to work
I’ve seen this time and again. This person’s worked on their books for years. They’ve worked on this book. They finally go to launch things, and it doesn’t quite go to what they thought it would. It doesn’t quite happen there the way they saw it in their head.
They thought, Oh, I’m going to make my publication available in this retailer. Oh, no, it’s not available. Oh, it’s the launch and everything’s ruined. No, it’s not just about the launch, folks. You’re going to run into some troubles, alright? It’s true.
Any of those videos you watch of these hypebeasts that will tell you, like, Oh, you’re gonna make $5,000 in the next two minutes when you launch your book with this strategy.” Shut up. Shut up. Get out of here.
Vast majority of us are not going to see that and those hypebeasts out there, come on. Go to bed. Take a nap. If you try once, panic, and pivot, you will never have any traction in this business. Panic does not sell books. Also stop comparing yourself to other people. Stop. Stop.
Let’s say, for instance, you watched some of my videos and you were like, Oh, I heard Dale say the other day he sold 300 copies when YouTube For Authors came out right on the first day. Oh, that’s exactly what I need to do. Stop.
No, unless you’re in my niche, you shouldn’t be comparing yourself whatsoever, alright? I’m not even your competition. If you’re writing romantacy, you should probably be paying attention to other people. Every author has a very unique journey. You have to embrace that. You need to understand that you shouldn’t dictate all of this based on wanting it now.
Embrace that journey instead of looking at that end goal. Work on it, work towards it. Never give up. So here’s what my fix is for you on this one: just keep showing up. Everything I’ve mentioned already, it works, but you got to give it time. This is a long game here, folks. If you want to have quick answers and quick wins, go to the hype beasts. But if you want to have realistic, practical solutions, come on over here. Uncle Dale’s hanging out.
I don’t know why I’m calling myself Uncle Dale now. Now that’s, that’s we’re running with that. That’s it. That’s what I’m doing. So fix real problems, reboot your sales, folks. So one last little call to action I’m gonna give you here.
Each of these 10 fixes can help you gain traction if you stick with them, alright? You got to stick with them. Also, big shout-out to MIBLART from their ninth birthday. You want to get $9 off, plus 15% off using the coupon code, MIBLART15 today. DaleLinks.com/miblart, they are fantastic.
And of course, if you need a budget option, go check out their sister company, GetCovers. Love me some GetCovers. They’re fantastic. So what do you think about some of those items? Were some of these like a, given where you like, “You know what? I knew that one. Dale, I knew that one.”
How many of those 10 did you know? And I want you to be honest; let me know inside the chat. Alright, I’m gonna start talking to the live viewers right now.
[Q&A portion begins]
Need a ghostwriter, editor, or marketer to help you market your book so you can get it in the hands of readers? Read more about my services here and contact me if you’re ready to begin!
