7 Ways to Guarantee your Book Sells

1. Find a Market
A good way to make sure people are going to buy your book is to write your book for a specific audience. If you are able to find a market that is not yet catered for in the children's book department you heighten sales potential. For example if you were to write a children's book about yoga and spirituality you have a network of people interested in yoga to market your book to. You can be advertising at yoga clubs and networks all over the world.

2. Create a Professional Finished Product
To make someone buy your book you have to win their trust and respect. If you have a amateur looking book with bad writing, design and illustrations people are not going to value your work as more than a hobby. In order to sell them your book for a fair price you have to convince them through the professionalism of your writing, design and images.

3. Create a Following
The more people who know you and follow your work the more sales you can generate. Get as many people involved in the process of creating your book as you can. Create a blog or website and create a network of people who are interested in what you’re writing about. Join clubs and groups who you can talk about your book to.

4. Build a Reputation
The best way to build a reputation is to be recognised and related to by your audience. Think of things that make you knowledgeable in the area you are writing about. If you grew up on a farm and are now writing children's books about farm animals make sure you tell people this. The more of your life or professional story you share with you potential customers the more they will remember you and want to be a part of what you create.

5. Make it Available Everywhere and on Everything
Make your book available to anyone anywhere. With the internet and other reading devices you can have your book available as a print book, eBook, IPod app, Ipad book, audio book and more. The more avenues you have your book published on the more people are going to be able to access it. Before you do all the hard work adverting and marketing make sure your customers can easily find and purchase your book.

6. Get it Out There
Make it your mission to make as many people know and be interested in your book as possible. Marketing and advertising are the main sales drivers and must not be neglected. The more time and effort you put into this part of the process the more sales you will generate. Make yourself a goal to do 5 things every day to promote you book. Whether it is as small as writing 5 emails, blog posts/comments everything you do and everyone you tell adds more awareness of your product.

7. Do Something Different
There is a lot of potential to sell children's books in non conventional ways. Be original find places and avenues that have not been used to sell or promote books before. Think about where your market spend their time and where you can best grab their attention.

Creating a Book for a Niche Market

Having a market in mind before starting to write your children's book could have a huge effect on your sales once you publish. By identifying a niche market early on you are able to target your book specifically to that market. This could allow you to create your own market where you’re not competing with thousands of other books. It could also create a more personalised end product as it is written specifically for them.

Here is some niche markets I came up with just to get you started:

Children who wear glasses
Children who follow a specific religion
Children who have eating allergies
Children who travel on a plane lots
Children who are home schooled
Children who spend a lot of time in hospital

The list could go on forever. I think the key is to be specific rather than general. By narrowing down you target market you are also narrowing down the competition. This also opens up a whole new set of avenues to sell your books. For example if you are writing about a child going to the dentist you could approach all the dental clinics in your city or even country and see if they would sell your book at the counter. Or if you are writing about home schooling you could approach your home schooling national networks and see if they will help you market the book. A book about catching a plan could be sold in airports throughout the world.

The opportunities are endless and you might find you sell more books in these alternative avenues than a bookstore where you are competing with thousands of other titles. My advice would be to come up with a few ideas and search them on Google to see if you can identify any marketing avenues before you write the book. If you can’t find any networks or sites you might be to specific and if you find loads of children's books already written on that subject you might be too broad.

Goodluck and feel free to comment on anything I have missed on this subject.