Are Authors Your Targeted Buyer?

[Jane Austen Dickey]

Are Authors Your Targeted Buyers? Social networks are great for socializing but should they be an author's principal venue for trying to sell books? What is your experience?

Consider those networks principally populated by authors. Some are extremely useful for providing resources, sharing ideas, experiences, obtaining inspiration, finding writing tools, and creating mutually beneficial relationships. However, taken alone, these networks should not be an author's sole or primary venue for selling books. What is your experience?

So, what else should be considered? Okay, you're on Amazon, have your own web site, and are a member of a gazillion networks. What's missing?

Question: how much hard-earned money was spent to create your literary masterpiece? How much is in your budget for carefully-chosen promotion? Often, the answer is little to none. If you do have such a budget, where should that money be spent?

Let's be honest, while gathering with other authors can be rewarding, educational, and very productive, authors need to reach willing buyers. Unless you pen books that instruct and inform authors, they are not your primary target.

When Gene Cartwright conceived of and created iFOGO.com (iFOGO Village is its network component) his purpose was, and remains, to bring "Readers (buyers) and Writers Together." The purpose is to grow an interactive venue that attracts and holds buyers; to step away from the ordinary. We do that.

We continually stress that once and author is placed on iFOGO.com, his or her role really BEGINS. We encourage them to incorporate their iFOGO.com links in blogs, web sites, networks, emails, Coverblast.com e-cards, brochures, bookmarks, promo postcards, and other media.

Promote, promote, promote, and do so shamelessly.

So, I end where I began:
Are Authors Your Targeted Buyers? "Who are your targeted buyers, and what are you doing to reach them every single day?