I’ve been doing a bit of thinking these last few days. I know, that’s dangerous right? I mean thinking, it’s bad for the health, it forces us to try and do things a little differently at the end, and that’s not good as it means we have to change right?
Well maybe, but the stuff I’ve been thinking of, well yeah, maybe it’s a little dangerous.
See, the last few days I’ve been running a ‘free’ promotion of my book ‘Sting of the Scorpion’ as every few months KDP allow the books priced in its range five days ‘free of charge’. It means no royalties for me, but hopefully, people like the book so much that they come back and buy others you’ve written.
What’s the result? Well it got about a dozen downloads, not exactly spectacular, least it doesn’t sound so spectacular at first, and that got me thinking “was it worth it?”
The other day, I got an email from a group that I work with that showed me how many people actually saw my posts, and that made me sit up and take notice.
Total of about fifty saw the post, but this doesn’t include the FB groups I posted in
Maybe around 150 saw the message.
I used to work as a door to door sales person, and one thing I remember from those says was that for every twenty presentations you do, you’ll get maybe three leads that’ll turn into sales, but I’m not talking sales here, I wasn’t selling anything, was I?
Think about this, only maybe a hundred or so actually saw the ads I put out, and out of that hundred, some went and had a look, but about a dozen downloaded the book, it made me think of a saying that Dad used to have ‘Quality always sells itself’ (I’ve linked the post here, so go ahead, read what I wrote)
Trust
There’s basically only one thing going on here, those people saw the opportunity and decided to trust me with their time, trusting that the book will keep them entertained enough to want to read it, and I’m sure they’re going to enjoy it, but it does something else, it builds trust.
Have you ever seen an advert for Rolls Royce? Or what about Ferrari or Aston Martin?
They all sell cars, just like Ford and General Motors, but you never see the adverts! Why is that? Yeah, they appeal to a small market, and they intend to, but come on! You still need to tell people what you sell right?
Unless they already trust you that is!
The people who buy those cars want a car that’ll do what it says, and those companies have taken years to build trust, what they say their cars will do, they do, and probably more besides!
The one thing I realized this week is that everything is built on trust, ‘My word is my bond’ as the old business saying goes, and for us writers, the same has to be true.
I’ve also come across the idea recently that when a writer ‘signs’ with a regular publishing company it’s the publisher that takes the risk, but the truth is, they don’t really, see the reason I say that is they’ve taken years to build up their list of outlets and people who buy their books, they know that they can sell ‘X’ amount of books in specific genres, and that’s how they target the books, they take very little risk because they’ve built up trust over the time they’ve been in business.
Incidentally, 85% of new businesses fail because they don’t build enough trust to make things ‘viable’, they fail within the first three years before they’ve had the time to build that trust.
What are you getting at? I can hear the question whirring round in your head! Well, what I’m getting at is we succeed when we take the time to build up trust, and that’s done by getting involved in groups, making our presence known, showing that we’re reliable and produce good quality writing on a regular basis.
Okay, so how are we doing in that area? It’s early days, but things are going good so far I would say, how about you?
By the way, take a look at the book, even though the deal’s now finished, it’s still a steal at 99c ‘Sting of the Scorpion’
Meanwhile, I’ll keep building on the trust I’ve already gained.
Lawrence's letters 