Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Wednesday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts


By: Katie Donelan

We already know that running price promotions is an effective book marketing tactic. But before you drop the price of any of your ebooks, you should have a specific goal in mind. Without a clear goal, it will be impossible to measure whether your promotion was a success. And the best strategy for your discount will depend on what you’re hoping to achieve. Is your aim to increase revenue for a backlist book, or would you rather hit a bestseller list? Are you hoping to get more series readers, or trying to promote a new release?

In this post, we’ll uncover four of the most common marketing goals authors and publishers aim to achieve through price promotions, and outline how you can accomplish each of these goals yourself. The data presented here is from our partners who have amplified their price promotions by running a BookBub Featured Deal.

1. Hit a bestseller list

Discounting an ebook can help drive it to bestseller status. Authors who run BookBub Featured Deals often hit the New York Times, USA Today, or Amazon bestseller list during their price promotions. In fact, 26 BookBub books hit the New York Times bestseller list in the past month alone!

This is possible because discounting can lead to high volumes of unit sales with the right supportive marketing. On average, BookBub users bought 5,200 copies of each of last month’s NYTbestsellers across all retailers. Keep in mind that fiction will likely need more sales than nonfiction to hit a list. Books that hit the NYT ebook fiction list last month sold an average of 8,000 copies during their BookBub promotions, while the ebook nonfiction titles sold an average of 3,500 to our members.

When you’re trying to hit a bestseller list:
  • Discount your most popular book. 
    • BookBub’s NYT bestselling books had an average of 171 Amazon reviews before their price promotions. Additionally, we see a 15 percent increase in sales when a book we feature has at least 150 Amazon or Goodreads reviews going into the promotion. It may seem counterintuitive to discount a book that’s performing well, but your aim is to drive unit sales if you’re trying to become a bestseller, and popular books sell more.
  • Maximize promotion during a specific week. 
    • Focus all your marketing efforts in a single week to drive as many unit sales as possible in the lead-up to that week’s list.
  • Choose the lowest price possible. 
    • Sales are over 75 percent higher at $0.99 than $2.99. Since your aim is to drive unit sales for this goal, you need to price low.

2. Market a series

Dropping the price of one book in a series is an excellent way to drive sales for other books in a series. In fact, 94 percent of BookBub authors who discounted a book in a series sold more of other books in the series during the promotion. This works so well because once readers are hooked, they’ll be eager to find out what happens next in the series, and they’re often willing to pay full price for the subsequent books.

When you’re trying to increase series sales:

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Read the full article HERE!
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Happy running and writing, Kathy

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