3 Groups of People You Should NOT Sell To

As an author running a business (or just trying to make sales more consistently), it’s crucial that you learn NOT to target your sales towards these 3 groups of people.

1. Family and Friends

One of the biggest mistakes new authors make is pinning the success of their book on the support of friends and family. Why is this a fatal flaw?

Your family and friends are not your target audience.

Family members don’t care to read that romance you wrote. Church members aren’t comfortable with your portal of fantasy and sci-fi. Your friends are a hard sell with that self-help book, when they’ve spent decades watching you self-destruct.

When you confuse your family and friends with your Target Audience, you base your success on whether or not they support your book. Your book wasn’t written for them! It was written for the 8 billion other humans on the planet that are aligned with the Psychographics of your book.

When laughing a new book, position the family and friends who believe in your vision in other roles. What are they good at? Allow them to assist in growing and scaling your author business. This will begin with you knowing and clearly articulating the vision of your book to them. Once there is genuine or organic commitment to the vision, identify gaps in your business that they can fill.

An Author Consultation with a professional is a great way to help you define your vision, communicate it with others, identify where you need help, and target the correct audience.

2. Children

But wait, I’m a children’s book author. Why can’t I sell to children?

The answer is simple. They don’t have any money to purchase your book!

Your marketing strategy should be aimed towards the adults who have the money to buy the books you are writing. This includes parents, schools, daycares, child outreach programs, educational centers, and summer programs.

Your job is to unpack the value of your book to those who have the access to acquire the book. Advertisements that are directed to children have a larger budget, commercial placement, and display contracts with distributors. This is why it is common to see the toys featured on popular TV ads strategically placed near checkout counters in stores.

If you want to make (more) sales (consistently), pivot to marketing directly to the adults in your Target Audience by unpacking the value of your book. This will shift the rate of your sales drastically to making upwards of $5,000 a month in book sales.

3. Other Authors

This one sounds crazy, but it happens way more often than you think. Honestly, you have likely done this yourself.

Authors who are new to their business are often desperate for a sell. With the advent of social media, independent authors flock to groups and communities where other authors are and immediately begin to pitch their book.

This is poor product positioning.

You may get a few authors to bite, but their purchase isn’t going to elevate your book in the market. It likely won’t even nudge your book’s ranking on Amazon. Let tell you what else won’t happen.

You won’t get a review of your book.

You won’t get free promo of your book.You won’t get a new fan of you, your book, or your writing to secure future sales.

You won’t gain a new email subscriber positioned to purchase future releases.

Why? They’re an author too! They are wanting the same thing as you. Even in a sale swap, all you have done is given them $1 and received $1. Will that change either of your standings?

No. Not even a little.

You may be a tad bit better off joining consumer facing spaces. It’s good to be in front of people prone to purchasing. Even in this there are some things you should consider.

Many of those spaces are overrun by other authors selling books. The author to consumer ratio in any of those spaces will be 5:1. You would be competing with the masses to secure every sale (if you get any).

Do you know your Target Audience? You would need to market your book in consumer spaces where your Target Audience hangs out. For example, if I post about  my Christian romance in an atheist Facebook group, my efforts will crash and burn epically.

What if I decided to market my children’s picture book in a consumer community of single men without families. Yeah, no your efforts will be avoided like the plague.

Think over the ads you’ve seen online today 85%, though you may not have clicked on them, related to you in some shape or fashion. This is what good marketing looks like. Every product, including your book, has a Target Audience. To make sales on your book, you need to find that audience, and hit them with a high-impact marketing strategy.

How do you find your Target Audience?

We recommend sitting down with a marketing specialist, to lay out the Psychographics for your book. The specialist may do this for you, but we have found it to be more effective for you to explore and build those Psychographics under the support and watchful eye of a specialist.

If you are ready to identify your Target Audience are start making (more) sales (consistently), book an Author Consultation, where we can give you expert guidance on identifying your Target Audience, developing an organic marketing strategy, and step-by-step guidance on achieving your first $5,000 month as an author.