Hello again everyone,

First of all, please accept my apologies for the down time on this blog. As many of you know, I had emergency spine surgery two weeks ago, after 2.5 years of severe, debilitating pain. Now that I’m back on my feet, you can expect more frequency in these blog posts.

And now, for a question: What do James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Sara Gruen, Elizabeth Gilbert, Khaled Hosseini, Mitch Albom, Jacqueline Mitchard, Patricia Cornwall, Terry Goodkind, John Krakauer, Jan Karon, Seth Godin, and Danielle Steel have in common?

Yes, every one of these authors are featured in the prestigious New York Times Bestseller List. But they have something else in common. Not one of them sells books from their web site. Not even Seth Godin, the world-renowned Web marketer.

Recently, I read an article in which a marketing expert said smart authors should stop sending their visitors to Amazon or other online booksellers, and instead handle book order fulfillment themselves.

And yet, all these bestselling authors I’ve listed, with their personal assistants, dedicated marketing teams, and savvy web advisors, have chosen not to sell books on their sites. Why?

Surely they’re smart authors, right? Or at least, smart enough to be featured on Oprah, develop worldwide audiences, sell many, many, many books, and make a very good living practicing their craft.

And what about the author sites run by publishing houses such as Hachette and Random House? Surely these publishing houses would want to capture buyer data through built-in site shopping carts, rather than sending these buyers to an external purchase site, right?

And yet, they don’t. Check James Patterson’s site, and John Krakauer’s site. In fact, some publishing house web sites themselves send book buyers to Amazon and other online retailers. See HarperCollins as an example.

So do all these authors and publishers know something this marketing expert does not?

I think they do. I think they understand the long-term pitfalls that come with selling books on your own site. Pitfalls we at PulsePoint Design have discovered as we’ve worked to support our authors.

Here are some of the lessons we’ve personally learned:

Lesson 1: Don’t Alienate Your Local Bookstore

Several years ago we planned to promote an online contest for one of our clients. As part of our promotion plan, we created professionally designed fliers to distribute to a number of local bookstores. We thought this was a great plan. We were promoting a local author, the books were featured in all the local bookstores we visited, and what reader doesn’t love a contest?

We were in for quite a surprise. Not one, but four out of the five bookstore managers I spoke to asked the same question:

Did our client sell books directly on their site? These managers told me that if my answer was yes, then the site was considered a competitor, and we couldn’t leave our fliers in their stores.

On the list of things you don’t want to do as an author, alienating your local bookstores ranks right up there. At the least, directly competing with your local bookstore’s sales won’t endear you to them. Our client learned that first hand…

If you’d like more information about the reasons selling books from your web site could work against you, click here to read Part 2!

And, in the meantime, remember:

Sell your work…not your soul

Posted on December 4th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: Web Wisdom