Increasing Ebook Sales: Different Marketing Strategies for your Ebook

One of the most common questions we get here at Troubador is what to do to promote an ebook after it has been published. A lot of time and effort has gone into getting to this stage – from the cover design to the actual ebook production – and we want readers to be able to find and buy the ebooks! 

As with any title, it doesn’t matter how far and wide you distribute your ebook, if no one knows it’s there, it won’t sell. Importantly, a part of promoting the ebook is by promoting you, the author - creating trust between reader and writer is key! 

Reviews 

Once you’ve encouraged readers to go to your ebook retailer page, how do you then convince them to buy a copy? Well, the best way to do this is to have as many reviews as possible for your title. The more reviews you have, the more visible your ebook will be, so it is worth asking for reviews. Of course, it would be wonderful if they were all 5-star reviews, but it can often help to have a mixed bag on there, so if there’s one which is not quite as positive as you’d like, don’t let this worry you. In our experience, honest reviews are better than ones which appear suspiciously positive, so don’t be afraid to put your ebook out there for review.

Netgalley 

Our Digital Marketing service includes a 4-week or 8-week listing on NetGalley. NetGalley is a leading review website used by publishers to find readers, who are a mix of journalists, bloggers, reader reviewers, librarians and more. These readers will receive a copy of the book, with the hope of a review. This is a crucial tool in the industry for gaining trust and improving the visibility of your book - and if the reviewers like it, they’ll hopefully share it on their platforms too! We follow up with every reviewer to ask them to share their reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, if they haven’t already. 

Apple Codes 

You can also encourage reviews by making use of Apple codes. If your ebook is available on the Apple Books store, you are entitled to 250 codes that allow for a free, protected copy of your ebook. These are really handy to send out to reviewers or bloggers, and as long as they have an Apple device to use them on, they can get a free copy of your ebook. 

GoodReads 

Make sure you also set up a page for your book on GoodReads - this is the number one platform that readers go to for book reviews. Having an established page, with as many reviews as possible, will help readers feel confident and excited in their decision of buying your ebook. 

BookRoar

BookRoar is an innovative website which connects authors so that they can review each other’s books.  You choose a book from BookRoar’s ‘Review Pool’, and then head over to Amazon to purchase it (or read it for free via Kindle Unlimited). Once you’ve read it, you’ll post an honest review of at least 150 words on Amazon and Goodreads within three weeks, and notify BookRoad when the reviews go live on both sites. The review will then be moderated by the book’s author, and once validated, a ‘credit’ will be added to your book, meaning it gets added to the Review Pool. Hopefully this will bring more reviews in, further boosting your book’s credibility and reach! 

Social Media 

Social media is a really good place to share direct links to your followers which go to your ebook on the retailers. Your ebook will be available for sale on a lot of retailers, so instead of copying all of these individual links, why not use LinkTree to create one link for everything? Here you can consolidate all of the links for your ebook online into one place. 

Social media is also a great place for people to leave reviews - people often do whole posts reviewing your books, which you can ‘collaborate’ on your profile or engage with to further get your name out there. You could also use your profile to create posts about the reviews you’ve gathered - the more people see them, the better! 

Research shows that posts containing images are much more engaging than text-only posts, so you’re more likely to encourage someone to stop scrolling through their feed and read about your ebook. The more exciting you can make a post, the better! Including elements of your writing life to show your readers that future books are coming is a great way to keep followers engaged, interested, and keen to hear more.  

BookBub

If you are looking for a short-term boost in sales, a Bookbub Featured Deal is worth looking into. Bookbub is a website that promotes free and discounted ebooks by sending out daily emails to their subscribers.  By signing up to the featured deal, your book will be included in these emails. You would need to discount your ebook during the promotion, but they are highly effective in seeing a boost in ebook sales. These are paid-for promotions (the cost varies depending on the genre) but they are notoriously difficult to be accepted for. It can sometimes take several attempts to be accepted, but they are something we’d recommend! 

Amazon Author Central

Amazon Author Central lets you create an Author Page where you can share the most up-to-date information about yourself and your books with millions of readers. It helps readers find your books easily and keeps everything in one place; you can add all your titles to your page along with photos and a biography, and share updates with your followers. You can also run your own Amazon adverts through your Author Central profile, with complete control over budget and reach. This is a great way for readers to stay connected. 

Amazon A+

Another way to enhance your Amazon listing is to add A+ content to your ebook’s listing. Amazon A+ is a way of adding enhanced content to the product listing for your book on Amazon to engage readers, give them more information and encourage them to buy. Amazon is one of the first places people go when looking for a book or ebook, so having the ability to add enhancements to your listing helps you to connect with readers and make your book stand out from the crowd. According to Amazon, good A+ content can increase sales by 3-10% as it gives another way to communicate with readers.

Advertising 

Targeted Online Advertising Campaigns 

We offer a four-month online advertising campaign, which is designed to place your book directly in front of a highly targeted audience of potential readers through Google, Facebook, and Instagram advertising channels. These are eye-catching ads that drive traffic to key retailer sites and will be created and promoted using AI company Shimmr, increasing the exposure and sales potential of your book. These campaigns are monitored and refined to optimise results, with reports being shared with you so you can monitor progress and the ability to extend your campaign after the four-month initial period. Increasing your visibility with targeted online advertising is a brilliant way of letting new readers know about your books, hopefully securing more ebook sales! 

Bookbub Ads 

BookBub adverts appear on the daily emails that get sent out to their hundreds of thousands of subscribers (as described above with the Featured Deals). The adverts appear at the bottom of these emails and feature your book cover, a snappy tagline, and a ‘call to action’ such as ‘Read Now!’ or ‘Buy Now!’. BookBub subscribers specify what their favourite ebook retailers are, and so this determines which retailer they are taken to when they click on your ad.

Pricing Strategy 

In terms of free things you can do, why not run a price-drop promotion? The lowest we can drop the price of your ebook to is 99p, and if you tied this in with some posts on social media to let your followers know about the cheaper price, you could see an increase in sales over a short period of time. We’d always advise increasing the price of your ebook after the promotion (you don’t want to undervalue your work!) but an increase in sales can increase your ranking online and maybe lead to more reviews being left.

Author Websites 

Whether an author website is the right choice for you is entirely dependent on the individual - many authors like having a dedicated space where their readers can order books, subscribe to newsletters and find out more information. Having your own space to redirect readers can change readers from curious about a title to invested, as well as building trust in the author’s branding.  There are many website builders out there - in order to help you figure out what is best for you, read our article here. 

Making the right marketing decisions for you. 

With all books, ebooks benefit from consistent marketing efforts, and there will always be something else you can do to push sales, so don’t be afraid to try something new! Remember, you can use these marketing efforts to also benefit all your formats (ebook, paperback, audiobook), so anything you can do that mentions all of these is worth it. For example, you can highlight all formats in a social media post, and make sure that data provided to retailers is correct to ensure that all formats are linked, and that you mention all of them in any interviews or articles you may do. If you have any queries regarding Troubador’s Digital Marketing services, you can check out our Digital Marketing page here.