Own a bookstore, sell a book by: Steve B. (webmaster)
Kevin, what a great story. It seems to me Hobo has found a number of homes!
But let's talk about the book. I'll bet we agree that the best place to sell a book is at a place that sells books.
Not a place that sells a book. Or an author.
That seems obvious, but it's something I often find myself preaching to writers.
They put up self-named websites almost automatically. Then they try to sell their book.
I'm reasonably sure you wouldn't have sold 700 copies of Hobo if it was the only book in your store.
I've sold a couple hundred books from this site so far this month. Less than 5% were my own books.
Whether offline or virtual, a bookstore needs to sell more than one book. Otherwise no one shows up!
I know I'm preaching to the choir in addressing Kevin, but I'm hoping lots of other authors - not yet choir members - take note.
If you're going to bother having a website, make sure it can attract traffic. If you sell ONLY your book...
I'm likely to sell more of your book than you are. And so is Kevin.
If you've written a book about cats, your website should probably be about cats.
Not just about your book.
If it's about cats, the search engines will likely find your site. People searching for information about cats will locate you. And then some of them will say,
"Look, honey! The guy with the cat website has a book!"
If your site is only about your book - which happens to feature a cat - then there is no information on your site about cats, which is to say...
Nothing for search engines to find and recommend.
Search engines don't rank sites highly because they sell a book on the subject that MIGHT have good information in it.
No, the engines are in the business of finding sites with information, not books with information.
This site gets more visitors in an hour than most author sites get in a month. Kevin's bookstore no doubt sells more books in a day than most author sites do in a year.
Think bigger.
A web traffic estimator suspects that this site gets 40,000 visitors a month.
