Become a Bestselling Author: 8 Steps to Follow for a Sucess

Nowadays, wherever you look, there’s always a social media presence of everything, and people prefer to sink into this virtual world. But the good news is, there are still a lot of people who love reading books. If you’re an aspiring author, then this is good news for you.

However, there are authors left and right aiming to get their books up in the bestsellers lists. So how can you compete in this field and write your name as a bestselling author?

Keep reading this article to find out the steps you need to follow to get yourself on the bestseller lists.

bestselling author

1. Know What Your Target Audience Wants

Whether planning to write a book or have already written it, you need to identify your target audience. Your target audience will have a certain expectation for the genre your book falls in. You’ll also need to understand them to know how you can grab their attention.

Your entire promotion and selling will depend on whom you target and marketing to them appropriately. Only then will you see good sales numbers, ultimately getting you on the bestsellers list.

It’s also crucial to select what you’ll write carefully. This will make the entire promotion process much more manageable.

2. Decide How You Want to Publish Your Book

You can opt for four types of publishing: large publisher, small press, self-publishing, and supported self-publishing. Each has its pros and cons, so you need to weigh them all to decide which is your best option.

Let’s say that you want to publish your book yourself. You need to consider a lot of things that’ll add up to the cost to self-publish, like designing the cover, proofreading your draft yourself or by someone you trust, formatting your book, printing, marketing, etc.

If you think you can carry out the tasks yourself properly, self-publishing can be your best choice. Otherwise, you’ll need to consider other options.

3. Choose Your Book Category and Genre Carefully

Choosing your book genre and category is crucial before you even start writing it. Decide what the genre of your book will be, whether it’s biography, sci-fi, thriller, romance, fantasy, mystery, etc.

Then, choose the category, whether your book will be a novel, poetry, drama, etc.

When deciding what you’ll write about, select a genre that you know you’re comfortable with and will sell a lot as well.

The category of your book will pretty much depend on the genre you choose. You may write a novel or series on the genre or may make a drama with it.

4. Make Your Book Title Very Catchy

Although it says “never judge a book by its cover,” people often get attracted to the cover design and, more importantly, the title of the book. This means you have to get creative with your book title.

How can you make your book title attractive? The first thing to consider is keeping it short and straightforward.

Sometimes, ambiguous titles end up attracting better attention. It sparks a lot of conversation, which ultimately guides people to buy the book, read it, and see what it’s about.

The title can also be direct, telling people what they’ll be reading about in just a few words. But to make people buy it, you need to focus on the topic people are most interested in, or topics that are always trendy, such as books for new moms or biography books.

5. Create an Attractive Prologue

Sometimes, people don’t pay attention to the book cover. Instead, they read the prologue of the book to decide whether they’ll buy it or not. Therefore, make your prologue interesting enough to grab people.

The prologue is an introductory section before any literary work. How you write it will determine if people can relate to the book’s topic.

The more relatable this introduction is, the more personal will it be to people in a good way, thus driving your sales.

6. Promote Your Persona Before Selling the Book

People don’t just buy books by looking at the title, or by knowing the contents. They want to have a more personal connection to the books they buy.

To be more specific, they purchase their favorite author’s books or books by authors who they find interesting, sometimes controversial.

That’s why it’s essential to build up your persona to people. Create a blog website, let people know who you are, share your thoughts, and tell people about an interesting event in your life or what you think of the future.

This way, people feel more connected to you, creating a halo effect. They’ll feel like they know you, making them automatically gravitate towards your books.

7. Build a Blog Instead of Social Media Presence

Because a lot of people are on social media now, many new authors think that social media will drive sales. Honestly, it doesn’t.

People are mostly there for visual entertainment. So how can you promote and sell your books?

A blog! Blogs are actually better drivers of sales compared to social media. Social media platforms may have call-to-action (CTA) buttons for pages, but they’re not as effective as the CTA in blogs due to limited options.

You can include a ‘buy now” button on your blog that’ll automatically navigate people to the ordering website. You can also publish an e-book that people can buy from one of the known platforms.

Some other methods to attract attention are publishing an audiobook, creating audio for every blog post, and an option for people to subscribe to your newsletters. You can also include a review section for your book on your blog.

Before you open a blog, it’s better that you read some books that talk about opening a blog, creating a successful website, and how to generate profits from them.

8. Hire a Professional Book Editor

It doesn’t matter how you publish your book. You should always get your book audited by a professional book editor. A book editor won’t just review your manuscript and suggest where you need to provide corrections. Their jobs entail a lot more than just editing.

They’ll see the size of your manuscript, provide you with formatting options, and give you an estimate of the price you need to sell your books to make a minimum profit.

A professional book editor can also tell you how to boost your sales so that you can make it a bestseller.

Conclusion

From writing the book to publishing it, and furthermore, to climbing up your way into the bestselling author’s list, it can all get too overwhelming.

 What’s important is that you enjoy the process of achieving your goal, at your own pace. These eight steps will definitely help you to carve your pathway to becoming a bestselling author.

Just remember to be smart about your decisions, and we believe success will follow through.

Julie Higgins
Author
Julie is a Staff Writer at momooze.com. She has been working in publishing houses before joining the editorial team at momooze. Julie's love and passion are topics around beauty, lifestyle, hair and nails.