Three of the five Prose on Fire books are on sale this week for $0.99.
I messed up and somehow didn’t save the scheduled promotion for Nail Your Story. At first I was disappointed in myself, but then I realized it was probably a good thing to have both Nail Your Story and Writing Productivity Bundle in my back pocket for near-future promotions. You never know when you might need a boost of sales for something, or a special promo offer!
I imagine both will go on sale at some point in the coming weeks. For now, I have three books on sale: The 8-Minute Writing Habit, Write Better, Faster, and Dictate Your Book.
You can get them for $0.99 until 10/25/16 here —> http://proseonfire.com/ghfs
I wanted to share the timeline for doing this promotion and what I’ve done before and after to make it successful.
10/17 – Monday
I ran a review drive to my email list. I promoted it lightly to my social accounts as well. This gave me 44 additional reviews spread out across the five books in ~3 days.
The reviews were important because they wake up both my list and Amazon a bit, AND they are huge conversion factors when people land on the page and want to buy.
10/19 – Wednesday
I sent a second email about reviews, plus a notification that the $0.99 promo was happening. This is the day the promo started, a Wednesday. Sales basically picked up, and by Thursday/Friday the books were sitting on the first page of Authorship, which is really the best category/judge of how well a book like this is performing.
I also submitted the three books to a bunch of notification sites via KDROI, which is a simple piece of software I purchased awhile back. These sites are set to blast the info on Monday and Tuesday.
10/21 – Friday
I added promo reminders to my “timely” category in the #LetYourBookFlow email newsletter. Most people don’t know this… the newsletter goes out every day, but some days are designated “evergreen” days and some are designated “timely” days. This means that I can build onboarding sequences in the evergreen days, AND I can also send time-sensitive announcements on the timely days, and it all blends together in one experience for each person.
(Sidenote: The #LetYourBookFlow newsletter is EASILY the best thing I’ve ever done for my business.)
These promo reminders will go out Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday (the last day of the promo).
10/22 – Saturday
Sales slowing. Whenever I’ve run these promos in the past, I always get a nice burst the first day, a steady pace the second and third days, and a sharp drop on the fourth day and on. That’s why I decided to save most of my juice for the last few days of the promo rather than the first few.
My goal is really just to show Amazon that I have steady sales. I would like them to help me maintain my spot on the first page of Authorship.
Unfortunately, I had to run tons of house errands + move furniture and boxes to the new house this weekend and didn’t get through all my to-dos beforehand. So the weekend passed with very little activity from me aside from the #LetYourBookFlow newsletter, when I normally would have done a bit of push during these days.
10/24 – Monday
The 8×8 Challenge starts today, so we’ll be interspersing that Twitter activity with the promo info using hashtags. It should be a decent trickle!
To get this trickle, I needed to set up social to go out for Monday and Tuesday. I mocked up this super simple graphic and I’ll be posting it to my social accounts manually, since my team usually can’t turn something like this around in just a few hours.
I’m also sending emails to everyone on my list aside from the Prose on Fire list. This includes:
- My Discover Hot Romances and romance pen name lists – I have a few other things to send them (free books) and I’m just going to put a P.S. at the end for “if you are an author or know an author.” I know there are at least some authors on my list who haven’t necessarily gotten my books, so why not?
- My Monica Leonelle fiction list – This list is fairly dormant, but a lot of people on it are friends, family, or former readers of my blog who might be willing to support me. Again, I’m sending it as more of a, “if you are an author or know an author or want to support me” type of thing. My main purpose is to start my sideways storytelling email series with this list, to get them excited about Waters Dark and Deep!
I also shot an email over to my contact at Goodriter to see if they could post a message. Hoping something goes out—that said, I probably should have emailed them a bit sooner.
10/25 – Tuesday
I sent a final reminder email (plus notification about the giveaway) to my email list today.
The 8×8 Challenge is also in full force, AND there is still time to join!
10/26 – Wednesday
I’m going to get hardcore about Amazon ads once my pricing goes back up to keep sales going for as long as possible. We’ve written a lot of great ads, so I think we’re going to tweak some targeting and go for it.
Why wait? The cost of it! I could never break even or come close to it on Amazon ads with a $0.99 deal. And the extra sales are ultimately not worth it to me.
I’m also going to set up a podcast blitz. I did this last year around this time (or maybe a little earlier in the year) and it was critical to my book sales success. My aim this year is maybe a little crazy—a 100 podcast interviews by mid-March of 2017. It’ll be a lot of work, but definitely worthwhile to create the buzz I need while my new POF books are releasing. Luckily, I’ve already been on a number of shows, and I think I can easily pitch them again with a new topic.
Sometime this week and next
The first few Waters Dark and Deep books will trickle out. This will keep going until November 9th, when the fourth book hits. I don’t have exact dates, I just know what my goal is 🙂
11/2 – Wednesday
Prosperous Creation and Accelerated Author launch!
What I Didn’t Do
There were a bunch of things I didn’t do that I probably should have to get maximum impact for this promo. I want to share those ideas in case someone is looking for more stuff to do, and I’ll also share below why I held off.
Paid Email Blasts
I’ve done these in the past, and they’ve been fairly effective. I didn’t do them this time because I would have had to book last minute, and also I didn’t feel I really needed to this time around. I just didn’t need the extra sales to get to the first page of Authorship, and I want to save that advertising money for something else.
Facebook Ads
Same as the paid email blasts. I didn’t want to lose money or break even, I didn’t need the sales, and to be frank, Facebook ads are challenging and a huge hassle to experiment with for a 7-day promo. I would usually only do them if they were evergreen or for a promo I knew I’d be promoting for several weeks/months!
Calling in Favors
I did not reach out to any of my friends with lists for this promo, again because I have something more important coming up that I need to save my asks for. What I would have done is created a post on Facebook and asked if I could share the post in their group or if they’d be willing to.
I also did not reach out to any podcasters I know, because my larger goal is doing the podcast blitz with them!
More of Everything
I could have done more social, but didn’t. I could have done more emails to my list, but didn’t. It came down to time and promo juice… I really need to SAVE my promo juice for the next thing, which is a giveaway. For that, and because it’s a way to build my list (and a long-term investment) I’m more than willing to pull out all the stops (time permitting).
My next post is going to be about a giveaway… for Waters Dark and Deep!
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Monica Leonelle is a USA Today bestseller and the founder of The World Needs Your Book.