Your reach as an author is pretty much the only limiting factor when it comes to selling books. The more people you can reach and get interested in you and your writing, the more books you can sell. That reach your author platform.

Here are seven things you can do to improve your reach.

Publish another book

Starting with the obvious, the best way to get more readers is to publish more books. Each book has an equal chance of accidentally being found and purchased. When readers love a book they go looking for other books by the same writer. More books equal better reach.

You do not even need a full sized book. If your next book is still in the early stages, put together a shorter ebook. Perhaps a factual guide that addresses one theme from your book.

If your book is set in the 1920s, you could obtain public domain or creative commons images from the period. With all those images you can craft a very visual guide to the time period. The chances are that to write your book, you had to do research. Why not put that background work into a book of its own.

There are many ways to publish your ebook – as a kindle book on Amazon, as a free PDF download, or whatever way appeals to you. Just remember to end the ebook with a page or two selling your actual book.

Blog according to theme

When we authors have a blog, it can be hard figuring out what to write about.

I’ve said this before but I think it stands to be repeated – blog according to theme. Whatever themes and topics your book touches upon – blog about that. Identify your books themes and the wider themes that people who will be drawn to them also enjoy. For example, if you write grand space operas then you might want to talk about the new Star Wars movies.

Cover the themes that your future readers will care about. Over time, if you are writing well, they will find you. Which means slowly but surely, you will be building your platform. That, in turn means, you will start to sell more books.

Follow according to theme

Most authors on social media start by following other authors. That is all well and good if you want to see lots of people pleading with you to please buy their book.

There is nothing wrong with following authors if you enjoy what they share or love what they write.

Better than other authors, are people that share things that fit your theme. These are the people engaged in the conversation about the topics and themes you address. This is where your future readers are. This is where the people who will enjoy your theme focused blog are.

Follow people that are excited about your themes and topics.

Blog more – short and sweet

Most of the time it is desirable to post longer in-depth posts that readers can engage in. These posts take time to write. As an author, you already do a lot of writing. So what is the answer? Short and punchy posts.

A post that says everything it needs to in just a few paragraphs can be just as satisfying as a longer post. If you have a whole platter of short snacky nuggets of interesting writing, readers will usually look at several such posts. Stick strictly to the themes your book raises and you will start to prime your blog readers to become book-buying readers.

In the time you might have otherwise written one long post, you can write several shorter ones. In a single session, you could line up a week’s worth of blog posts.

Assuming you’ve set you blog to share to your social media, there is nothing else you need to do all week. Now get to working on that next chapter.

If you do not have a blog yet, then get a free one today. Create an account here on Author Buzz or login if you already have one; then go to the groups page and create a group. When you get to the part that says, “do you want a blog”, you say yes. Now you have a brand new WordPress blog and a group to promote it with.

Blog in depth

Read about blogging for long enough and you will encounter the phrase “cornerstone content”. That’s a fancy way of saying important posts that will always be worth reading.

Cornerstone content will generally be the foundation for other posts. Something you can refer back to whenever you talk about certain topics. Scroll back to the first paragraph of this post. You will see I linked to one of this site’s cornerstone posts.

Write an in-depth post that takes a deep dive into one theme from your book. End with a call to action such as: If you found this post interesting, you may also wish to buy Name-Of-My-Book which also touches on themes of Name-Of-Theme. Give them a link or two to wherever they can obtain the book.

Each longer theme specific post you write is one you can link back to with your short and sweet posts. Now, rather than promoting your book directly, you can promote an interesting post which will sell your book for you.

Be social

Sometimes we authors tend to forget that social media is not just a place to wave our books around in the hope of making a sale. The primary purpose of social media is to be sociable. It is not a market place to shout, “buy my book, please buy my book”.

Our Facebook page has very few followers because we never invested any time in building that up. Instead we bypassed all that fuss and our admins went directly to where authors hang out. There we chat and try to be helpful. When someone asks a question we have already answered with a blog post, we share it. Most of this site’s traffic comes from grateful authors reading our solutions to common problems.

To do what we do, simply be social in spaces that address the themes you address. We write about authors and platform building so we are social with authors and platform builders.

If you write about say, a Spitfire pilot during the war, find groups that are interested in Spitfires, wartime Britain, and novels set in that period. You should not need to promote your book; instead, wait until it is appropriate to share your blog posts. The posts, if written well, should sell your books.

Comment on blog posts

This is a combination of “follow according to theme” and “be social”. Find blogs that write about topics related to your book and its themes. If you find them interesting or relevant then subscribe or bookmark them.

Make a point of reading the blog posts as they are published. If you have something interesting to add, leave a comment. Most comments allow you to leave a link. Your blog or website is the best link to leave but your amazon author profile, or Facebook page, can work too (just not quite as well).

Both the readers of the blog and the author will investigate interesting comments. Your link allows them to follow you home and discover your blog too.

I have long standing social media friendships with people that started with mutual commenting on blogs. Give it a go, write to theme, follow to theme, be social, and leave interesting comments. Let me know how you get on.

Before you go, I have one small favour to ask. If this post was useful to you would you please share it with others. Knowing that this blog is helping people would be a huge encouragement to me as a writer.