Looking to Sell Your Book for a Good Price?

by Marshall Masters

Published on this site: July 26th, 2005 - See more articles from this month

Many self-publishing authors plan on eventually selling their book to a large publisher at a good price. The fast track way to achieve this goal is to push up the market value of a book with a push v. pull strategy. This article shows you how to do exactly that, using a simple Internet strategy that any self-publisher can afford.

PUSH v. PULL EXPLAINED

Books with push like Harry Potter push customers through the doors, and the registers go kachink, kachink. With self-published titles, booksellers must pull customers through the door and that costs money. Put yourself in their shoes. Giving preference to books with built-in push makes sense.

Remember this formula: push stacks chips on your side of the bargaining table and pull sweeps them away. With a transferable Internet presence strategy, you can stack chips to the ceiling just like the big boys do.

WHAT THE BIG BOYS ARE DOING

The push is on with major publishers to build market value for their intellectual properties with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system.

A DOI is a permanent Internet address for your book. No matter how many times ownership of a book changes hands, the DOI Internet address is permanently bound to the book, just as tightly as the binding. This is why hundreds of big publishers have registered over 16 million intellectual properties with the DOI system with millions more on the way.

Who fueled the creation of the DOI system? Computer experts? No. From a market asset valuation standpoint, that makes as much as sense as going to a Sushi Chef for a vasectomy. (Better idea - get the Sushi afterwards!)

Rather, it was senior publishing executives and their financial gurus who pushed for the creation of the DOI system. When you sit down at the bargaining table with a DOI, you'll be talking their language.

PLAYING WITH THE BIG BOYS

The Internet is like an elephant, it remembers everything and it can remember a lot! You can always include your email address or your web site address but these things point to a business identity - not the work, itself.

Use the same DOI on every web page, ezine article, review, blog post, etc. and it becomes a 24/7 market value builder that follows the work. If something changes, like your email or web site address, one simple update is all it takes. No more annoying "page not found" or "no such e-mail recipient" errors.

Use your DOI the right way, and every little stitch of web presence marketing you've done becomes one more chip on bargaining table. Remember, the big guys speak DOI.

DOI BENEFITS ARE IMMEDIATE

Getting good book reviews is so miserably hard these days, especially for self-published authors. What if your book finally gets that fabulous review you've hoped for long after publication? Will it be orphaned from the book marketing information you've already published on the Internet? No.

One quick update of your DOI and everything that it references on the Internet will immediately begin broadcasting your fabulous review to the online world.

START ADDING MARKET VALUE TODAY

Each day, try to add more market value to your book. A blog post here, an ezine article there. These things cost nothing, and yet they can push huge amounts of sales-generating traffic at your book.

As a self-published author, you've got to keep your eyes on what the big guys are doing, and when you can emulate them on the cheap, you do it!

WHEN TO GET YOUR DOI

The best time to register your DOI is after your books are available for purchase on Amazon.com and other online bookseller sites. This way, you can create menu options in your DOI that link to online bookseller pages for immediate sales results.

Be sure to ask your publisher or vanity press if they offer a DOI service. One that does is Your Own World Books (Yowbooks.com). Their Author Advantage program includes a transferable DOI.

If your publisher does not offer a DOI service, that's OK. As the copyright holder, you can register your DOI with an independent DOI hosting service like DOIeasylink.NET. The annual cost of a DOI is comparable to one-month web site hosting fee. Plus, you get a 1-page Internet response page and descriptive menus with multiple Internet links.

USE A DOI TO HIT CRITICAL MASS

If you remember only one thing from this article, let it be this. Think like the big boys. Use this strategy to add more market value by continually broadcasting information on the Internet with your DOI. Eventually, you'll hit critical mass. People will buy your book, and large publishers will see this and be impressed!



Marshall Masters is a publisher, self-published author, radio personality and Internet technologist. His published titles include Godschild Covenant: Return of Nibiru, Gold Fever, Indigo-E.T. Connection, and Orange Blossom. He founded DOIeasylink.NET to make the DOI system available to self-publishers and small
presses. Drawing upon his decades of consulting experience with notable firms such as AT&T, Oracle, HP, Lockheed and Sun Microsystems, he created a simple, affordable DOI solution self-publishers and small presses.