Cool Free Tools to Help You Sell Books.

Whoever coined the phrase, "You get what you pay for", was not an author. There are countless free tools available on the Internet that can help you sell more books than you ever thought possible. Below are a few of my favorite free tools for authors.

Google Talk

Google talk is an instant messenger service with some nice features. As an author you should have a website. Wouldn't it be nice to communicate with potential customers in real time via the Internet whenever they had a question about your book? Well now you can, for free! Google Talk has a nice feature called Google Chatback. Google Chatback allows visitors to your website to see if you are online and available to chat.

Whenever I open the program Google Talk on my computer, my status automatically changes to "available". Whenever I close Google Talk on my computer, my status automatically changes to "unavailable". Now, any visitor to my website can click on that box when I am available and connect with me instantly. I will get a message on my screen through Google Talk informing me that someone wants to talk with me through Google Chatback.

Almost instantly, I am connected to that web visitor who proceeds with a question about my book. Many times, the question will not be about the book, but it will be about the subject matter of the book. These questions are essentially gateways to a future book purchase. At this point, I answer their question and then offer the web visitor a small coupon code -see the coupon codes section of this chapter. By this time, they are so impressed that their question was answered by the author and they have a coupon code, that they will order the book. Google Chatback is a wonderful way to instantly be available to any web visitor.

Issuu.com

Issuu is a free, user-friendly website with a few, handy applications for authors. First, if you have any kind of marketing material from a brochure to a catalog to a presentation, they can be uploaded to Issuu and viewed in full color in flip-book format. This is a great way to save on printing and mailing costs. Instead of printing and mailing expensive marketing materials, upload your marketing material to Issuu. Now readers can view your documents in full color and turn the pages as if they were holding and flipping through the pages in their hand. Readers can even zoom in or out on a particular section of the marketing material.

Once you have uploaded your marketing material to Issuu you can create a thumbnail view to put on your website. Visitors to your website can click the small thumbnail picture of your marketing material and be taken to the full sized version. I would recommend adding audio to your marketing material pieces. You can read the text contained in the marketing material or give a short audio introduction about the marketing material they are about to read. This will give your marketing material a high-tech feel.

You may also want to use Issuu as an option to sell e-books. Issuu gives you the ability to upload your publication and set the link as private. Setting the link as private means that no one can find the link without knowing the exact web address at which the publication is stored. Only you know that web address.

TIP: Setting a document to private only allows you to keep the web address private. If you use this service as an e-book option, please be aware that users can still download, and even embed this private document in their website,.

Issuu does offer premium services, but for authors, the free version of Issuu is adequate.

Screen Recording Software

Your book should be a gateway to more sales. Many times a single book sale will convert into 3 more sales through your website. If your book lends itself to this type of follow up sale, check out Camstudio.org and utipu.com. Both offer a free program that allows you to record your every movement on your desktop. This recording can then be transferred to a video format, where you can then post it anywhere on the Internet or your website for free or paid viewing. Tip Cam is a more feature rich program but a bit more difficult to use than Cam Studio.

OoVoo

Oovoo.com adds a human experience to online interaction. With OoVoo, you can experience free video conferencing with an easy to download and install software program. All you need is the OoVoo software and a couple buddies with a webcam and you can all connect live, via video, on one screen. The free version allows three people to connect at once. If you want more than three, a paid version is available. As an author, OoVoo can be used to connect live with customers on your website. Go to OoVoo.com and follow the instructions to add the "Call Me button" to your website. You can even add it to your e-mail signature. Once a contact sees this Call Me button, they simply click the button and will connect to you live via streaming video. This software easily puts your face directly in front of customers.

Michael Volkin is the author of Social Networking for Authors-Untapped Possibilities for Wealth. If you sell any product or service online, please go to http://www.SellaTonofBooks.com.

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