A lack of book sales is a serious problem for many authors. In fact, most authors never sell more than 250 copies of their book in its entire lifetime. The Path To Publishing team has been involved in the publishing industry for over two dozen years now and, as a result, we’ve seen – and made – a lot of the mistakes authors make that can either stop their book sales from growing or ensure they never sell in the first place.
The Root Cause of Most Problems: A Lack of Clarity
Top of the list for reasons that books don’t sell: the author lacks clarity about the target audience for the book, what that audience needs from them, and how to deliver it in a way that will help them stand out from other books out there.
Without a clear reason for people to choose their book over any other book out there, readers are left trying to estimate which book to choose based on superficial markers like price, cover, or title. In the end, they’re likely to reach for authors they already know and like rather than take risks on authors they’ve never read.
Getting clear about who the book is intended to serve, why those particular readers need that message and the results it can deliver, and what transformational experience the author will deliver if they read that book is where growth begins.
The Secondary Causes
Gaining clarity about the vision for the book is the beginning. Once that’s in place, it’s time to put the other pieces in place.
1. A Lack of Visibility
If nobody knows the book exists, it’s hardly surprising the book isn’t selling. There’s no one out there promoting it or making the public aware of what it offers. That’s the second step to growth.
2. Confusion about What the Book offers
This can be taken care of with a book marketing clarity session, but it’s important that all marketing materials make it crystal clear what the book does for the audience that reads it.
The audience should know: what problem the main character faces and what that character is trying to achieve as that is going to attract the right audience to the book because they’re grappling with something similar; hints as to the surprising transformation the main character experiences once they get the results the story delivers because that’s what’s going to sell that book over another book.
3. No established audience or credibility
For new authors with no established audience, reviews are a must for the book. Get as many of them from as many credible sources as possible before releasing the work to the public. Get them from literary magazines and college professors and everyone who has any standing at all in the literary industry. Those reviews will make or break the book.
While gaining those reviews, work to attract the kind of people the main character is to that book. Build up an email list. Get prospective readers hyped up about the opportunity to join this character on their journey. Every review received, make sure to post it to social media.
4. A damaged reputation
Bad books can damage an author’s reputation. So can a bad moment in the public eye. If something happened to damage the author’s reputation, that doesn’t mean it’s time to quite writing.
Quite the opposite. It means it’s time to take back control over the narrative and get in front of the problem. Acknowledge what happened, put together a comprehensive strategy for improvement (or to present the untold story if there were false accusations leveled that damaged it), and invite public accountability as that strategy is implemented.
5. Failing to Mark the Book in the Right Genre
It happened to a girlfriend of mine. She listed a book in the wrong genre. The readers tanked it with negative reviews because it didn’t meet their expectations. She re-listed it in the right genre and book sales soared, as did the number of 4- and 5-star reviews.
Sometimes when the book isn’t getting sales, it’s not a sign that the book itself is bad. It’s a sign that there’s a disconnect between what the book provides and what the audience being targeted needs. In that case, re-evaluate the ideal audience for the book and work forward from there. It may require a cover and title change, even a new ISBN or three, but that’s a relatively small price to pay for lasting success.
6. The Book’s Title Triggers Bias
It’s amazing the difference a title can make. I experienced this with my own work, The End of Purgatory. Despite the cover having absolutely no religious connotations, a prospective reader admitted she passed up the book because the title caused her to assume it was religious.
7. The Pricing Is Problematic
Readers expect to pay hundreds of dollars for textbooks. They’ve been trained by colleges to expect that. Readers reluctantly pay between $50 and $100 for a non-fiction book depending on the topic. They’ve been trained to expect that by non-fiction publishers. But when it comes to fiction, they’ve been trained by traditional publishers who can afford to purchase in bulk and therefore make higher profit margins than small and independent presses do to expect to pay no more than $10 to $15 for a paperback and no more than $20-$30 for a hardbound edition.
Retraining them can be difficult, even with inflation driving up costs. Getting around that expectation may mean thinking about what additional digital offers can be included with the hardbound book purchase so that the higher prices can be justified without increasing the costs of producing the book.
8. There’s No Consistency to the Author’s Books
A solution to this employed by my friend, Joylynn M. Ross, who happens to be a national bestselling author, is to create a pen name for each genre she addresses. Children’s books go under one pen name. Romance under another. Non-fiction under a third. That way, people know what to expect when they search for that author. It creates consistency without limiting her creative freedom.
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