\n

“Discoverability” is one of the newer buzzwords in the book publishing industry. Maybe you’ve heard it a few times by now. Hearing it and understanding it are two different things, however.<\/p>\n

As Thad McIlroy (quoted above) explains in his brief article, “Findability, Discoverability, and Marketing<\/a>,” the difference between “finding” and “discovering” a book is that with finding, you’re looking for something specific — you know what you’re looking for. Discoverability is what happens when you’re looking, but not for something specific. Because of that, discoverability might bring with it more of a sense of delight than “finding” offers.<\/p>\n

For example, I’m always looking for books that help authors solve a problem. Always. It’s one reason I’m on author and consultant Kristen Eckstein’s mailing list — who knows what resource I might learn about from her? Last Friday, I received an e-mail from her that offered one of her short e-books free on Kindle that day only. I immediately downloaded her\u00a0Author’s Quick Guide to Creating a Killer Non-Fiction Book Title<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>because I had discovered something useful for me — something I hadn’t been specifically looking for but knew I wanted when I saw it. That’s discoverability.<\/p>\n

I shared the link and offer with my social networks, too, hoping that others would experience that “Yes!”<\/em> that can accompany discoverability.<\/p>\n

Get discovered<\/h3>\n

You want your books to be discoverable, too. Ideas for doing that include:<\/p>\n

\n
• Go where your readers are. Maybe they’re on Goodreads.com, maybe they aren’t. Maybe they use Twitter, maybe they don’t. You have to know your target audience<\/a> to get in front of it.<\/li>\n
• Talk to your readers about how they discover the books they end up buying and reading, then act on what you learn.<\/li>\n
• Figure out who influences your target audience and get copies of your books into their hands so they can become your evangelists.<\/li>\n
• Offer promotions with discounts, as Eckstein did, or special bonus material with a purchase. Host contests to get people interested and engaged.<\/li>\n
• Build a strong, solid author platform that helps you and your books get found when people are looking for what you write. Eckstein’s mailing list is part of her platform.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  What are you doing to make sure your book gets discovered?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  ~~ I use Grammarly’s free plagiarism checker<\/a> because “Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do.” — Lemony Snicket,\u00a0The Wide Window ~~<\/em><\/p>\n

  <\/a><\/p>\n

  “Discoverability” is one of the newer buzzwords in the book publishing industry. Maybe you’ve heard it a few times by now. Hearing it and understanding it are two different things, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[425,426],"class_list":["post-5643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-tactics","tag-discoverability","tag-thad-mcilroy"],"yoast_head":"\n