Promotional opportunities are almost always aimed at new books – the media, retailers and readers all love to have the latest reads. So how do you keep the momentum going with your older titles? They are, after all, just as good as when you first published them.
Here are five easy tips to keep readers engaged with your books.
Box Sets
Box Sets can be created for both physical books and ebooks. They are a great way to bring together the individual books in a series and to keep readers reading. A set of 3 or more books, competitively priced, can seem like a great bargain for your audience and help your overall visibility as an author while costing next to nothing to create. If you have a very large series consider several box sets – perhaps with 3 books in each.
Pricing
Consider setting book 1 free for a time as a loss leader. If your book is well written you will find that it funnels readers into the series and you will more than make up for the loss of income as they purchase your other titles.
You can even create a tiered pricing structure for your books, transitioning from a free ‘book one’ to a 99c ‘book two’ and so on. Again, you are incentivising your readers to keep reading and are creating a path for your audience, directing them through the series. Experiment with prices and check the results to hone the best prices for your books.
Rebranding
If your sales have gone off the boil, sometimes a fresh new look or rebrand can get the revenue moving again. The big publishers do this continually with their backlist covers to keep them from looking tired and outdated
But don’t just redo your covers, look at everything related to your book – the description blurb, the metadata etc. It is amazing how quickly information can become outdated if you are not continually changing it.
It is good practise to study the top 20 books in your genre as they will provide a good steer on the latest trends.
Fresh Marketing to Your Readers
Create a promotion schedule for your newsletter with new themes, incentives, excerpts and features about your backlist titles. The key is to keep the attention of readers while they are waiting for your next masterpiece. You don’t want them to drift away and an enticing newsletter is a great away to keep your friends close.
Paid Advertising
Paid online advertising is now a well-established method of finding new audiences for old books. The three most popular platforms are Facebook, Amazon Marketing Services (AMS ads) and BookBub.
With pinpoint ad targeting and instant sales data, online advertising can be a great way to hone your advertising messages and reach people who love books similar to yours.
Cameron Publicity and Marketing have a range of services that can help you with this.
We hope this was helpful. Do you have more tips? Do write in and tell us at info@cameronpm.co.uk, Twitter: @CameronPMtweets or Facebook: www.facebook.com/CameronPublicity