The most frequent question I get at book events is how to sell more books. This is disconcerting because I want to talk about how to write better books. Here's the short answer to the question: you sell more books by artfully writing a good story and then selling one book at a time. Many striving authors give up when they participate in an event and sell only a few books. Throw away all of the social media and traditional marketing advice you've ever heard, the most powerful selling tool for books is word-of-mouth. Get your book into a reader's hands and if they like it, they'll become your salesperson. Get a dozen salespeople and they'll multiply into a hundred. But there is a prerequisite—you must first write a good book. No one recommends a book that bored or annoyed them. So tell a good story ... and tell it well.
See you at the Tucson Festival of Books.
