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> How to Succeed
Now > Reaching Customers: Selecting Sales
Channels
Build a Web Site. The key to marketing and promotion today
is displaying your books and products on your own tailor-made Web
site. Your Site does not have to be particularly elaborate. Design
your Site to spur e-commerce rather than simply win an art award.
Your Site gives you the opportunity to present and promote your
material. Design your pages to attract the search engines. Give
away some material to your fans and visitors for free. You’ll
notice a fair amount of free content on our Sites.
You can test your material before you
make a significant capital investment in production. You can introduce
a forthcoming book, product or service on your Site. You can give
away a free chapter or other excerpt from one of your books on your
Site. You can sell downloadable, digital products.
Retail vs. Wholesale. Retail means
selling your products either directly to consumers or through retail
stores such as bookstores and specialty shops. Wholesale means selling
your products in bulk to groups and organizations. The profit margin
tends to be lower on the wholesale avenue, but the channel typically
buys in quantity and doesn’t return books to the publisher
(Don’t confuse this special wholesale channel with wholesalers
who buy books from publishers and distributors and sell them to
retailers and return unsold books to the publishers). Selling at
wholesale often requires considerable effort to get started, but
can be very profitable. You can pursue both retail and wholesale
avenues and make a decision on which area to emphasize based on
your genre and your skills. We pursue both avenues.
Catalog Sales Win. Work towards
selling your books to catalogs whose offerings match the theme of
your information products. Catalogs offer a focused set of products
and often books to their customers. Catalog buyers continually seek
new offerings so they welcome your submissions. They continue to
purchase products that sell well. Catalogs represent valuable selling
space, so the key is for the buyer to source those products that
are likely to generate high sales. Obtain catalogs in your field
and send your information products and press releases to those that
cater to your customer base. Follow their submission guidelines.
Selling your books and other information products to catalogs can
result in quantity sales for years.
To learn how to sell your books and products to
catalogs, obtain my book, Catalog Gold—Make Money Selling
Your Books and Products to Catalogs.
 
Make it Easy for Your Customers to
Make a Purchase. Today more than ever, customers are impatient.
When they want to buy something, they want to buy it right now.
To serve your customers, you’ll want to accept credit cards
and maintain or have access to a toll-free telephone number (800,
888, 877, 866, etc.). When you are just starting your business,
you may want to team up with another company that already has these
valuable selling tools. You can benefit from their network and experience
as well as manage your expenses.
Contact small, specialty retailers and
independent bookshops in your area. Most of them have “merchant
status” which means they accept credit cards. They can process
credit card orders for you. Be sure that you disclose the store’s
name to your customers so they will honor the charge when it appears
on their credit card statements. A number of these retailers have
toll-free telephone numbers. When you use another company’s
telephone number, be sure to inform the people who answer the telephones
about your products and offering.
You can make mutually advantageous arrangements
with these companies. For example, you can pay them a percentage
of each sale, a flat fee, or a combination of both. They can serve
as your fulfillment (order processing) center.
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