Growing Your Book Sales

Since Graphite and Turbulence has officially been out for a month now, I thought I’d share how the release affected my book sales.

Drumroll please… March has been my best sales month so far. As in, the sales this month has more than doubled my total sales figures from the previous six months.

Let’s let that sink in for a second.

Over the last thirty days, I sold twice as many books as in the previous 180 days. I’m new to marketing, but I’m pleased with how things are going and thought I’d share what I learned, what worked, and what didn’t work.

“Marketing is hard. Selling is scary. But… talking to people about what we love to do is something we do every chance we get.” – John Rakestraw

A Multi-Pronged Approach to Growing Book Sales

I used a faceted strategy to support the launch of Graphite and Turbulence. First, I put up ebook preorders on all the digital sites before the publication date of Oil and Dust. This allowed me to add store-specific links for Graphite and Turbulence at the end of Oil and Dust. While the preorders made up only 10% of the total sales this month, they helped to boost my overall book sales.

Next, I made sure my email list knew about my upcoming book by discussing its progress in my monthly newsletters.

I also commissioned an animated book cover and promotional graphics to use on social media.

How pretty is this??

Another prong in my approach was booking a promo tour for Graphite and Turbulence. I used the same company that had promoted Oil and Dust, but frankly, based on the number of reviews received, the promotion fell flat. It had far less of an impact with Graphite and Turbulence than it did with Oil and Dust. I suspect it’s because it was harder to find ARC reviewers for the second book in the series. Still, I probably won’t promote the launch of subsequent novels in the series, at least not with the same company.

Other Marketing Efforts

Besides setting up promotion for Graphite and Turbulence, I also signed up for a book tour for Oil and Dust. In doing so, I hoped to draw new readers who would then read Graphite and Turbulence. Unlike a promotion tour, a book tour puts your story in front of book bloggers. The reviewers who signed up to be part of the tour shared their reviews on Instagram, review websites, and one of them even made a podcast review. If you’d like to read them, I’ve posted links to their reviews on the OIl and Dust book page.

To my delight, the folks at Barnes and Noble also selected OIl and Dust as their March serial read after I confirmed Graphite and Turbulence would release on schedule. While I didn’t have any visibility into how well the promotion did overall, it certainly drove sales of both books. Even though the promotion made Oil and Dust free to read, I still sold a lot of copies. Even better, readers purchased Graphite and Turbulence too. In fact, I sold three times as many copies of Graphite and Turbulence as Oil and Dust!

Because of the NOOK promotion, I didn’t focus on advertising the release of Graphite and Turbulence on my social media accounts. Instead, my “release” post on both Facebook and Instagram were about the NOOK promotion. I also shared the NOOK promotion news on Twitter in three separate tweets over the month.

A Welcome Surprise

Something I didn’t expect was how much the release of Graphite and Turbulence would affect the sales of Oil and Dust. Even tossing out the crazy spike from the NOOK promotion on the Barnes and Noble site, the sales number for Oil and Dust were consistently between 65-100% of the sales of Graphite and Turbulence. But, because of the book tour, I don’t know how many of the sales were driven by the new release versus the sales that came from the reviewers’ audiences.

Still, after 30 days, I’ve sold nearly as many copies of Graphite and Turbulence as I have of Oil and Dust. When I compared the numbers of total units sold, Graphite and Turbulence has sold 90% as many copies.

“…the work of promoting the book requires just as much work as writing the book, if not more so.” – Adam S. McHugh

It takes Time to Grow Your Platform and Book Sales

I’ve read it is easier to grow a following if you focus on one platform, which for most indie authors means Amazon.com. However, while my growth has been slow on the other platforms, I’m seeing physical and digital book sales growth on all of them except Google. Want to be the first? Here are the links! Oil and Dust and Graphite and Turbulence.

And, besides book sales growth, I’ve also seen an increase in the number of email subscribers which I’m super excited about.

While I use social media, I don’t push my books on my platforms. Perhaps I should, but I use the platforms more to engage with readers and other writers.

Although I can’t expect another amazing promotion from a retailer, I suspect the release of Charcoal and Smoke, book 3 in the series, will reinvigorate sales of the first two books too. I’ve scheduled its release in March 2023, and I’ll report back afterward.

Have you experienced a similar spike in your backlist’s book sales when you have a new release?

Header Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash