Thursday’s promoting tip for authors

There are few authors who couldn’t benefit from a profitable online store, one that provides a consistent income from sales of e-books and other electronically-delivered products.

One of the best examples is Elise Benum and Peleg Top’s Marketing Mentor Store, called their Marketing Toolbox.

Their store can teach authors numerous lessons.

Have it your way

Perhaps the most important lesson is offering prospects a choice of ways to search the store. Visitors can search:

• By category. Visitors can search for audios, e-books, and reports by information category. Select Marketing, for example, you can view a variety of audios, e-books, and reports, as shown above.
• By type. However, you can also shop by media, or type–as shown below. This allows those who would rather listen than read to see, at a glance, what’s available.

In both cases, the offerings have been tastefully displayed.

How design contributes to author profitability

In the two examples, notice there is a lot of white space on each page. The white space helps frame the text and graphics.

Notice the subheads in the example at left, and how they break the list into smaller sub-lists.

Finally, notice how carefully the text and graphic elements have been sized and arranged. All of the thumbnails–or small illustrations–in the category examples are the same size. The appearance of the Marketing reports also benefits from the way the descriptions are of differing length, which adds visual variety.

Notice, also, how the design of the newsletters–formatted using a 3-column grid with consistent headline typography and the oversize initial capital–project a First Class image. These easily-noticed design attributes help set the Marketing Mentor’s offerings apart from the competition.

What’s your favorite example of an author’s online store?

Share the URL of your favorite author’s store with other Published & Profitable friends and members, and tell us why you like it. Submit your ideas as comments below.