These days, no matter how your book is published—legacy, hybrid or self-published—authors have to know how to sell books. Unless you are famous already such that your book is guaranteed to sell well, you can’t even rely on a mainstream publisher to market your book for you, and if you want your book to sell well, you can't leave learning how to sell books to when your book is finished. If you’ve been following this series on how to write a novel, you might wonder why I’m talking about this now, before I’ve even got to the technical details of writing and publishing. The answer is that if you want your book to sell well, you need to think about it right at the start. Who are you writing for? The first thing you need to be clear on for your writing is who you are writing for. Are you writing your book primarily for yourself or for others? Even if it’s a combination of the two, you need to be clear on what is most important to you: is it weighted towards what you would like to read … [Read more...]