There are several ways to jump start sales for a new work of fiction, but one of the most effective selling points is your sales letter. With the proper format and layout, your marketing letter can do a majority of the selling for you, just leaving you with the task of getting eyes on your letter. Most traditional publishers rely on submitting your book title and description to all the major bookstores, but if you self-publish your fiction, this will give you a leading edge to start racking in some great sales.

Writing a sales letter is a simple eight-step process that involves a little bit of marketing and writing skills. With the proper format, this can not only attract your readers, but can also interest them so much that they simply have to buy whatever it is you are ultimately selling.

In order to market your fiction in the best possible fashion, you must first determine the angle of your marketing piece. By angle, I mean the unique approach you will use to gather your reader’s undivided attention. An angle is a component that captures your reader’s attention with an astonishing twist that keeps them reading your sales letter once they start. It can be a true story related to your book such as how you came up with the story idea, or something else to that nature. It can most certainly be an actual exciting excerpt from your book that makes readers beg for more by the time they finish reading the first paragraph.

The next crucial component, and probably the most important, is your headline! You’ve been to the store and seen those outlandish tabloids lining the bookracks, haven’t you? Each of them contains fantastic headlines so outrageous that you just have to pick them up and read the farfetched stories they are trying to sell. Amazingly, they work and tabloids rake in millions of dollars each month selling those fiction stories.

It’s amazing how a single headline can be so intriguing that you have to open up the paper just to see what it’s all about. The same goes with your fiction sales letter headline. Your headline needs to reach out and grab your reader’s attention. This will usually be the first thing your reader sees that starts them reading the rest of your marketing letter.

Your intriguing headline can be a short excerpt from your story such as follows: “John felt a soft scrape across the top of his left shoulder. The air in the room escaped as he slowly turned to see…” This particular headline makes the reader curious as to what John saw once he turned around. Make your headline so strong that your reader wants to continue reading to find out more!

The next component of your sales letter is an opening that adds drama and completes your angle all in two to three paragraphs following your headline. Your opening is important because it makes your visitor feel as though you are talking directly to them. Use the word “you” a lot throughout your opening. Also, start your opening with a salutation such as “Dear fiction reader” or “Dear mystery enthusiast” to call attention to your audience. Remember, you are talking to the person reading your letter. Don’t think of it as a bunch of people reading it; think of it as one person reading it. Your sales letter opening should introduce your story and give a brief description of what your story is about; however, don’t give away too much information. Keep your readers in suspense.

Your next step is to explain to your readers how they will benefit from reading your story. You should tell the reader the entertainment value of your book. Think about how you would benefit by reading your book, then think about how they can benefit. Everyone wants something of value if they are expected to pay money for something. Add value to your book during this stage of your sales letter.

Since you are the author of the fiction work, you are consequentially assumed partial of your own work. A simple solution to set your readers at ease is to add a testimonial or two that raves about your book. A simple way to get testimonials is to give a copy of your work to a few people for free on the condition that they let you know what they thought about it. Quote them word for word about how they felt about your masterpiece and add this to your sales letter as your next step in the process.

If you notice, most best selling novels have a page or two dedicated to brief testimonials from various media sources saying how good their book is. Prospective buyers want to hear from others about what they thought. Don’t use negative remarks, as this will kill any attempt you may have at selling your book. Use these negative remarks as constructive feedback to potentially make your work better.

A properly written sales letter should be similar to a query letter you submit to a literary agent. With all letters, you lead to a conclusion. The next step, therefore, is to conclude your marketing letter with a closing statement. You should try to tie the closing statement in with your opening to make your letter flow. This is also where you add an action element into your marketing piece. A typical desired action can be to subscribe to your newsletter, visit your book’s website, or download a sample of your book; the list of potential actions
is limitless. Remember, the key focus of your entire sales letter is to make your readers want to read your book, so send them where they can view a sample of your book, or ultimately buy your book. You can also send them to a mailing list signup where they will consequently receive a link to your book’s purchase page. Complete your closing statement with your name and book title directly underneath it as your signature.

You’re not done yet. Next you should re-establish your sales pitch before completely ending your sales letter. Add a P.S. to the bottom of your marketing letter to capture your reader’s attention one last time. Touch back upon your angle and benefits your readers will get from your story. The way people read your letter is starting with your headline, reading your opening, skipping to the bottom to see who wrote the letter, and naturally the P.S. at the bottom. This is an expected tendency of someone reading your advertisement, so ensure you emphasize what actions you want them to take somewhere within these areas.

Finally, put your sales letter to work by placing it on your home page of your web site word for word where your work is ultimately sold. This is what is going to captivate your potential buyers when they visit your web site and make them want to purchase your book. In addition, you can use this letter as an email advertisement or newsletter broadcast. Don’t mention “buy my book” or “you must purchase your copy of my book today” anywhere in this marketing letter. This is selling and may turn people off. It is already implied that you want to sell your book. Just tell people why they should buy it, not that they should buy it, and they will buy it.

Think of your sales letter as walking onto a car lot to buy a new car: A good salesman won’t tell you that you have to buy the car you are looking at. They romance you into buying the car by telling you all the great benefits of the particular car you are interested in. Romance your potential readers the same way and you will sell more books than if you simply tell them to buy your book.

Popularity: 11% [?]

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There’s a big secret to marketing your writing. It’s a secret that many writers never learn. They don’t discover it on their own, and professional writers rarely bother to share it.

Here’s the BIG SECRET: YOU NEED TO PURSUE AND WOO YOUR MARKETS UNTIL THEY BUY FROM YOU. That is, you need to make more than one contact with a market — you need to make many, many, many contacts, until that particular market buys from you.

It makes sense. You have to make relationships in all other areas of your life, so why should marketing your writing be any different?

It will take many contacts for an editor to buy from you. If you give up too soon, you’re letting yourself down.

Why does it take many contacts? Because editors are busy, and because they’re also human. Discovering new writers in the mass of proposals and queries they receive every day comes last on an editor’s long To Do list.

Let’s say that you send an article proposal to Painters Monthly Magazine. (This is a fictitious magazine.)

The magazine’s complete editorial staff consists of just an editor and a deputy editor. Most of the editorial content is written by contributing editors and freelancers. This motley group is responsible for a 160-page magazine each month. Deadlines are on the 15th of each month, when the magazine has to be at the printer’s.

The editor works late most nights. His wife is threatening to leave him, because he’s gone from seven in the morning until ten at night. The editor spends most of his time cajoling, threatening and encouraging his contributors to keep their promises and send material when they say they will. He spends the rest of the time worrying about the budget, and scheming with the advertising manager to create deals with advertisers so that the magazine’s editorial pages won’t be cut back.

The editor receives a stack of mail every day, both postal mail and email, including anywhere from 20 to 50 article proposals a day. Every day.

The editor’s job isn’t to read mail, much less proposals. It’s to get a magazine out the door each month. He doesn’t have an assistant. How much time do you think he spends reading the proposals?

That’s right: as little time as possible.

You’ve got maybe two seconds to hook his interest if it’s an email proposal, maybe five seconds if it’s a paper proposal.

Please don’t let this news depress you! It’s not depressing news at all. It’s reality.

The reality is that you’re trying to sell a product to someone who wants your product, who desperately needs your product, who couldn’t survive without your product, BUT — that person is busy. Not only is that person busy, he/ she’s also soured on proposals. (Why? Because most are not right for his publication, but he has to wade through them all anyway, and the whole process adds to the stress in his life.)

Therefore, when you send any editor a proposal, please don’t assume that because there was no response, it means that you’re a lousy writer. It simply means that the editor is/ was/ and will be forever busy. Maybe your proposal is still on his desk, buried under a yard-high stack of paper. Maybe he deleted your message without reading.

However, no matter how busy the editor is, Proposal 1 will make him/ her vaguely aware of your name. If you never bother to send the editor another query, you’re forgotten. Whether you get a response to your first query or not, send another query within three to four weeks. I’ve heard of some writers sending a query every week, but this is excessive. Once a month is fine. Proposals 2, 3, 4? How long should you keep sending proposals? You keep sending them until the editor buys from you, or until you decide that you don’t want to be published at that publication.

Because they’re not familiar with publishing realities, new writers, and some selling writers who’ve never figured out how the process works, let themselves down. It’s a simple truth: anyone can become a selling, professional writer if they approach selling their work in a professional manner. This means pursuing and wooing editors until they buy from you.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I am the best-selling author of 12 books.

Collectively, they have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Major publishing companies issued all of these volumes, and in every case I was paid an advance against royalties.

I just want you to know I’m the real-deal, a working writer who takes a professional view of his craft.

But I’m also here to tell you that I started out very modestly, and you can do the same, and still succeed. In fact, you probably don’t have another choice, unless you’re a major public figure whose autobiography will be snapped up by a panting publisher and an eager public the instant they hear about it.

Here are some tips that spring from my own, successful experience:

(1) Don’t write your first book-?speak it to “live” audiences.

For years, I have conducted seminars across the country in my topical areas: sales, customer service, consulting, and management, before sitting down to write a word. This helped me to test my material before people, whose feedback in the form of laughter, applause, and even sighs and groans helped me to shape and to reshape my material.

Without knowing it, my books were taking form in my unconscious, making it a breeze to actually compose them when I got around to it.

(2) Next, speak your book into an audio or video program.

Does your audience consist of readers, viewers, or listeners? You may find that your profits are not in book publishing at all, but are in audios and videos.

I self-publish audio and video programs derived from my public and onsite seminars and sell them to participants and others, at a healthy price, commanding as much as $495.00 per program.

Each tape in a series typically translates into a book chapter.

By selling audios and videos you’ll be establishing a track record of success that will be influential in proving there is a market for your book, on the same topic. Editors will want to know this before committing to your project.

Of course, you can partner with other audio and video publishers, as I have with Nightingale-Conant, producer of my recent program: “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable.”

(3) Simultaneously, or alternatively, write and inexpensively publish outlines and workbooks in your subject areas. Sell them to your seminar attendees separately, or bundle them into the price of the event. Use Kinko’s or your local print shop and duplicate only the number you’re sure you can use at a given time.

Keep track of the number of copies you sell and distribute. Again, you’ll be establishing a record of your success.

(4) Talk your book into a readily available voice recognition software program. This will yield a rough draft that you, a co-author, or private editor can polish.

Talking a book assures that it will be more conversational, which will make it more enjoyable to read. Your audience will tell you, as they’ve told me, “I feel that I know you!”

You can’t expect to be a best-selling author overnight, but if you follow these tips, you can still get there quite quickly, profiting very nicely along the way. Good luck!

Popularity: 10% [?]

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It’s one thing to write a book, it’s an entirely different thing to write one that’s a saleable, viable, marketable product. Ensuring the success of a book is something even the biggest publishers have never been able to guarantee. Mitigating circumstances, flash trends, and world events will all affect buyer preferences. That said, there are still ways to leverage the sales-factor in your favor and here’s how you do it.

1. Know your readers. We’re not just talking about whether your readers are male or female. You’ll want to know myriad factors about your audience. How old are your readers (age range)? Are readers married, single, or divorced? Where do your readers live (generally)? What do your readers do for a living? What other books/publications do they read? Develop a profile that includes where they shop, what clubs they belong to, etc.

These elements will help you incorporate these aspects into your book *and* help you unearth salient marketing opportunities (i.e., publications and stores).

2. Know your market. What’s the market like for your book? Is there a trend out there you’re positioning yourself toward? Are you reading all the publications related to this topic/trend? Are there any “holes” out there your book could fill? What’s the future for this market/topic? For example, let’s say you’re a fiction writer looking to publish chick lit. Go to any bookstore and you can’t help but spot the cutsie, pink, cartoonish covers. Many thought this trend was dying out, but it has recently seen another surge. What do you know about trends related to your book/topic/audience?

3. Similar books. What else has been published on your topic? Have you read all ten books in your category? If you haven’t, you should. You’ll want to know everything you can about what’s out there and how it’s being perceived in the marketplace. It’s never a problem having a similar topic. When I published No More Rejections – Get Published Today, I knew there were other books out there on marketing. I read them all–then angled my book differently.

4. Getting and staying current. What’s going on in your industry today? What are some hot buttons? What are people looking for? What’s next on the horizon for this topic/audience? If you can’t seem to gather this information through traditional channels, why not survey your target audience? There are a number of places to run free surveys, Survey Monkey is one of them: http://www.surveymonkey.com

5. Follow the media. What’s the media talking about these days? Keep track of media buzz–what they’re paying attention to and what they’re writing about. Delve beyond the front page of your paper to the second or third page and see what’s filling the pages. If you can get your hands on out-of-state papers, do a comparative review. Do you see a trend in coverage? Is there something that seems to be getting more buzz even if it’s on page six?

6. Talk, teach, listen. One of the best ways I’ve found to get in touch with my audience was to teach a class and do speaking engagements. When I was putting together my book, Get Published Today, I found that the classes I taught provided valuable information for creating a great book because they put me directly in touch with my audience!

7. Timing is everything. When do you plan to release your tome? Are you releasing around a holiday or anniversary? Could you take advantage of any upcoming event and/or holiday for your book launch?

Popularity: 8% [?]

I’m not well. Can’t you tell?

Kinda low, so,

give me a dose of laughter.

Mirth will heal my every ill

and give me rest from my distress.

Now, give me a dose of laughter.

Glee can revive, keep me alive

and give me chance to happy dance.

So, give me a dose of laughter.

I’d crawl a mile for a smile;

but to get relief from my grief

I need a dose of laughter.

Isn’t it plain that I’m in pain?

You can relieve if only you’d please

give me a dose of laughter.

Laughter is pure and can surely cure.

What ails my heart would soon depart

If I had a dose of laughter.

I can’t be strong for very long.

I’m sinking fast, unless at last

you give me a dose of laughter.

I don’t need a pill for my ill.

I’m just spent in lament

and require a dose of laughter.

I must retain what still remain;

but don’t delay, I’m in a bad way.

Bring me a dose of laughter.

Though insecure, I want to endure.

But I’m drifting and need uplifting.

Please, give me a dose of laughter.

Even though, I don’t know

what it contains that kills my pain.

Just give me a dose of laughter.

It works somehow, so come on now;

Let go of doubt, I can’t do without

My healing dose of laughter.

If you wait around I’ll surely be found

lying dead in my bed.

Rush me my dose of laughter.

Popularity: 10% [?]