The Roaming Entrepreneur: Guest post by best selling author Laurence O'Bryan

I am delighted to showcase a guest blog from the best selling author Laurence O'Bryan for:

Operation Author -

365 Actions to Succeed as an Author

Some of my actions this week have been to follow up my shout out for guest blogs and to share the work of fellow writers.

I write in the same genre as Laurence and am a big fan of his work, so I feel really privileged that he agreed to do this post for me on marketing for writers - Hand Selling Books with Social Media.

Enjoy...

Hand Selling Books with Social Media

by Laurence O'Bryan #1 Best Selling Author on Amazon, translated into 10 languages.

Have you noticed how fast the publishing industry is changing? The signs, lower advances, the rise of independent publishing (please don't call it self publishing) and the pressure on all authors to promote themselves are just some of the signs of seismic change the industry is experiencing.

This is also a new age of hand selling books online.

I have heard it said that one of the main benefits of a good bookstore is that you can have good books recommended to you. You can also meet authors when they come to the shop to sign their books.

But social media allows me to meet and greet individual buyers and answer their questions too, at a lower cost than running a bookstore. I get about 1000 hits a day between my social media for writers site and my book site http://www.lpobryan.com. That is mainly because I have 200,000 followers on my social media accounts.

It's taken me three years to build up that total, but I am determined to use the resource to sell books, and not just my own either.

The main benefits of hand selling online are, in my opinion:

That you can meet people from all over the world and communicate with them individually. Google Translate means you can even talk to people in languages you don't understand.

You can engage long term with readers, answering different questions over time and building up relationships.

You can keep a track of people’s names or identities so you can tell them when your new book comes out or a book from someone you recommend.

You don’t have to waste time and money travelling around and you won’t get wet if it’s raining.

The downsides are:

You mightn’t make make strong connections with people, as you don’t get to meet people personally. However I believe it takes more than one physical meeting to make friends with people. How well do book shop owners know most of their customers anyway? Multiple meetings and shared interests are just the start. Long term social media friendships can be as meaningful as relationships with people you meet in a retail environment.

You don’t get to see people smile. But sometimes people will be more honest with you online, which sort of makes up for this.

And that’s it. There are downsides, for sure, but the upsides, the ability to sell 24/7 x 365 days of the year, with limited cost, are too great to ignore this way of selling books.

So, here’s your challenge.

Can you tell me your experience of hand selling books with social media? Is it better or worse to get a recommendation online? What do you think about the way book selling is going?

Laurence O'Bryan is the author of three mystery noevels published by Harper Collins and is available in 11 languages. His latest title, The Manhattan Puzzle will be in US book stores August 26 2014.

He sells his own books and recommends other writer's novels at his site BooksGoSocial.com. Come along and look at what's available.