If you are an expert who has written a book on your area of ​​expertise, or is in the process of writing it, I am sure you already know that it is not enough to just publish the book and wait for the money to roll in. You need to do more, much more, to promote it (if you want more sales) and you (if you are using the book to position yourself as an expert).

Webinars can be a powerful tool to help you as an author. Here are three ways you can use them to help you as an author.

1. Market research

Your readers are looking to you for help with one or more of these four things:

• Solve their problems
• Answer their questions
• Face your challenges
• Meet your goals

The more your book does these things, the more successful it will be. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to know exactly what readers want.

One way to find out is with a free question and answer webinar. You invite everyone on your network (and ask them to forward it to their networks too), the day shows up, and you just spend an hour answering the questions people ask. Don’t promote anything; just answer their questions. You provide an extremely valuable service, and in return, you discover exactly what your market wants to know.

I’ve seen people do this with no more structure than what I just described. But you can add some extra features, and make it easier for yourself at the same time, in several ways:

• Invite attendees to email their questions to you ahead of time, so you have time to prepare their responses.
• If you already have some structure for your book (for example, you know that it is in four main sections), organize the questions in this same broad structure.
• Record the webinar and transcribe the recording; this might even provide new material for your book.

2. Additional webinar for clients

To encourage people to buy your book as soon as it’s published, host an additional webinar for customers who purchase it before a certain date.

In this webinar, you simply give a presentation that outlines the main concepts of the book, answers questions from readers, and perhaps even offers some additional material. Don’t worry about repeating some of what is in the book, because attendees will appreciate learning the information in different ways.

Of course, a webinar is just one of many ways you can encourage “early” sales, but it has a number of advantages:

• A webinar has a date attached, so this creates a natural deadline.
• You can serve all of these readers at the same time, so you don’t have to limit your offer to a certain number of readers (as opposed to, say, offering them a free 15-minute consultation).
• The recording can be turned into a product in its own right, which you can sell individually or as part of a bundle with the book.

3. Webinar series

One downside of a book is that it only gives you one point of contact with your customer. Most people will not read a book more than once, and very few will read it in its entirety even once!

You can address this by offering a series of ongoing webinars on the content of the book, either just for clients (as a bonus) or for anyone (as a promotional opportunity).

The purpose of your webinar series is not just to promote book sales, although you will do it anyway. It’s also about continuing to position yourself as an expert and staying in front of the mind of your target market, so that when they are ready to buy what you have to sell, you are their first choice.

Again, webinars are not the only option available to you. But if you’re willing to compromise, they can be a very powerful option, because your attendees can interact with you live.