Using Pinterest to Sell Books

If you’re under the age of 30, you probably use Pinterest all the time. If you’re over 30 (like me), you’ve probably heard of it, but haven’t really used it. Well, now I’m going to tell you how you can not only use it, but use it to sell books.

First, let’s define what Pinterest is. It’s a social networking website (like Facebook), but it’s focused on photos. It describes itself as “an online pinboard” where you can “organize and share things you love.” Basically, it’s a place where you can “pin” the photos you find on the web that you like, and your “friends” — or people with common interests — will come to see what you’ve added to your pinboard recently. Each of those images will then link back to the website from which they came.

Okay, so how can you use this to promote a book? Well, a few ways…

First and foremost, make sure to pin your book cover to your Pinterest board! This is a no-brainer, right? It’s a great way to get your book cover in front of new eyes.

Next, make it easy for others to pin your photos to their boards. Again, a simple solution that not everyone is doing.

On your author website, offer a “Pin this” option on not only your book cover, but all the images you use on your profile page, your blog, your events, etc…  There are simple Plug-Ins in WordPress that automatically add that option to your images.

So how does this help? Well, the more photos of yours that people are pinning, the more traffic will ultimately link back to your author website. And the more traffic you get to the website, the more books you’re likely to sell. It’s a chain reaction.

According to author Julie Ortolon, “Rather than simply pin things straight to Pinterest I post things on my site, then pin from there which embeds a link to my site with the pin. Pinterest let’s me post it to Facebook as well. Every time someone repins my original pin, the link to my web site travels with it. I’m offering content that brings traffic to my site, so more human eyeballs on my ebook covers without me ever having to post or tweet ‘buy my ebook!’”

Yet another great way to use social networking to sell books!

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