Bringing a Book Back to Life
Hey, someone put our book to sleep. Our book seems to be hibernating, my self-publishing indie authors. What are we going to do to bring our book back to life? We worked way too hard and way too long for our book to just check out on us. We can’t accept it flat-lining. It was such a cute baby book with so much potential. And we were going to raise it like it was another one of our children, right. But then something happened to it…
Well, we’re now ready again to raise that book. So what should we do first?
Well, my authorpreneurs, an excellent way to bring back that book is to begin with an email blast.
If our book is part of a series, we can go back to the patrons that bought an earlier book in the series and remind them how they bought a previous book. Let’s let them know how they would most likely love this book as well. People who buy from us once are more likely to buy from us again.
Oh, by the way, this can work in the reverse direction as well. If someone read a book that occurred later in a series, sometimes they can be persuaded to go back to earlier books from that series. If they liked one, they would probably like the others, too.
Furthermore, such a series is a winning formula, maybe we should write the sequel to our sleeping book and then cross-promote the two, three, or even more.
Another way to use email to awaken your book is to do a cross-promotion with other authors. By doing a cross-promotion, you get exposed to other authors’ audiences, and they get exposed to yours. This is a great way to use the power of synergy to help each other out and restart book sales again through the gained exposure from a warm audience of one of our authorpreneur friends.
Having a sale is a great way to re-ignite book sales. This sale strategy works exceptionally well during certain times of the year, like Christmas. During particular times of the year, people are looking to buy things for their loved ones. So, why not put your book in their path and make it really easy to choose because it’s on sale?
Word-of-mouth is always a great way to sell stuff. How many times have we gone and seen a movie because a friend told us it was good? What about restaurants? How many times have we tried a new place because a friend told us the food was excellent? Word-of-mouth is powerful. So, email your list and ask them to tell their friends about your book. Do the same thing on social media. This is a great strategy to wake up your book. And if you combine this technique with a sale, your book may be back from the dead before you know it.
If you haven’t put your book into the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program, do so right now. They have all sorts of special programs, sales, and free and reduced options that will get your book moving again. They even have a borrowing program like a library. Believe it or not, some authors are making more money off of their books being borrowed through the KDP Program than they are from outright sales at bookstores and on Amazon.
Another strategy to get your book moving again is to buy some traffic so that people are seeing your book again. There are many places where you can buy traffic through paid ads like Amazon and Facebook.
If these strategies aren’t working, then maybe it’s time to go back to the basics. Does your book cover need to be updated? Remember, fair or not, a book is judged by its cover. Is it possible to put a better cover on our sleeping book so we can bring it back to life?
Maybe it’s time to get back onto your KDP Page and beef-up your book description of your sleeping book. Too many of us make the mistake of believing that our book description is a summary of our book. It’s not. It’s copying. It’s a sales copy to be specific. It needs to be written in a way that persuades people to act right now by buying that must-have book.
An excellent strategy to bring our books back from the dead is to combine all three of these strategies above. Get a new book cover. Write a new book description that sells. And then buy some traffic to get in front of people again. Through paid ads, a lot of people will see our book. And when they notice the great looking cover and moving book description, they will assume this is a new book. And be a lot more people will be eager to buy your book because it’s new, not old…
To keep the momentum going, change your book categories a few times a year so new people can see your book. Remember, people like shiny new objects. And many times when they see something for the first time, they are going to think it’s new.
The great thing about this is that our books are never truly dead. We can always bring them back to life.
Watch the free video lesson on this chapter!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OWxlVSlaqU&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=87