Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes by Rayne Hall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is full of useful tips, and more importantly a broad framework for approaching improving your work as what works is continually evolving. Once enough people find a new technique for improving their book’s visibility and sales it becomes less useful. However there are definitely a set of things that will always remain useful.

I’m not going to tell you the list, Rayne deserves to profit from her hard work and she’s not charging the earth for the book. I got it on pre-order for £0.77, about 99 cents US. That could of course just have been a ploy on her part to catapult it up the sales rankings. However even if it costs you a little more it may still be worth it for the advice.

Each of the things in the list is backed up with some evidence of Rayne’s own experience, and some of them from other people. The explanations given seem sound to me, and there are a number of very sensible caveats about the fact that the market for books is ever changing and as more and more people try things then they become less effective.

If I was to sum up the advice it would be

  • keep trying new things to make your work stand out from the crowd.
  • You can also use the top few best sellers as a sort of example, although beware that others may be doing the same thing and it may not help you.
  • Do what works for you for as long as it works,
  • keep on innovating and move on when things become less effective.

 

Seems sound advice for life, never mind selling books.

There is a load more in there, and just reading it may help you think of more stuff. Don’t forget to look at things from your reader’s point of view. Who do you think your target market is and how do they find new books to read?

One caveat from me though. I’ve not yet had time to update any of my own work, so I cannot say whether or not any of the advice in Rayne’s book actually works for me. However I still think it was valuable to me as a writer for the reflection time it gave me when I read it.

Go get a copy of ‘Why does my book not sell? 20 simple fixes’ yourself!

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