Can Authors Revive Sales for Previously Released Books?

EPISODE SEVENTY ONE

A question Jenn receives a lot in her DMs is if it's possible to revive your book sales years after the launch. Absolutely! In this episode we will outline a strategy to help you breathe new life back into your previously released books.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jenn Hanson-dePaula: Hello, and welcome to the Book Marketing Simplified Podcast. I'm Jenn Hanson-dePaula.

Marcus dePaula: I'm Marcus dePaula. Jenn, a lot of authors come to you asking for help with their new book launch, but there are lots and lots of authors that have more than one book.

Jenn: Absolutely. I receive many, many DMs and messages from authors who have had-- usually it's one of two situations. The first one being they signed a publishing deal. They were promised the moon and the launch comes and it's crickets. They don't see anything, and they don't get that footing underneath them to really take off. The marketing isn't there, and it just peters out just as quickly as it was released.

Marcus: In the past, that meant you just had to write that book off. Thanks to the internet age we're in now, they don't have to just cut their losses and move on. They can actually go back and try again with that earlier book, right?

Jenn: Absolutely. 20 years ago, if a book was released, you only had a three to four-month window where you could really, really promote it and get publicity, get all that stuff. This was pre-social media. Now that we have digital space and infinite space online, we definitely have way more opportunity and many more resources than we did 20 years ago. There are those that within this first group that we're talking about who had a release that did not go well. They didn't get the marketing that they needed or they just didn't receive what they were promised from a publisher.

Marcus: It happens a lot more than we'd like.

Jenn: Exactly. When the pandemic hit, that was also a very confusing time. There were many authors that released books back then, book tours, signings, all these different things that were canceled because we had no control over that.

Marcus: Totally wrecked some people's launch plans.

Jenn: Exactly. Then there is the second group of people who might have written a book, and a few years go by, they've written other books and they focus so much on the new book that they just completely have ignored their past books. They want to know, can those be revived? Can you start talking about them?

Marcus: The answer is?

Jenn: Absolutely.

[laughter]

Jenn: I love to tell authors that books are infinite unless they're about something very topical or very specific on a certain timeframe or a current event. You can talk about this book forever. You can always come back to it. You can always revive it.

Marcus: What do you recommend?

Jenn: There are two main scenarios that I see most often when it comes to reviving the marketing. The first scenario is that the author wants to have a bigger release, meaning they want to make it a little bit more celebratory and get a lot of attention on this book. Many times, if an author wants to redo the book cover, or if there are new edits, or if there's new content that's being added to the book--

Marcus: A new edition.

Jenn: Yes. Then they want to do something a little bit bigger than normal.

Marcus: Make it an event.

Jenn: Yes. Then that is one scenario that you can do. If you are changing a lot within the book, whether it be within the design or anything like that, that does call for a little bit more attention in regards to a launch. With that scenario, you definitely want to pick a re-release date. If you know that you want to make these changes to the book, give yourself that buffer time. If you need to get a designer, if you need to get an editor, and get all of that stuff in place. Map out, reverse engineer, and go, "Okay, if I want my book to come out in August, I know that by May, I have to have a designer set up and ready to go." You just map things out.

With that, you also want to plan out the marketing. You want people to get excited about this re-release. You want them to be curious about, oh, what's the new cover? What are they adding to the book? It's really about leaning into these new features that you are going to be making to the book. Then once you have a good idea of when that book is going to be able to be released, you really just start talking more and more about it. You approach it like you would with a release of any new book.

Marcus: That's pretty much what I was going to ask, but how similar was it to a regular new book launch?

Jenn: They're very similar, but it is more of the marketing saying that this is a re-release, this is a new edition, this brand-new cover, and you feature these things. Because if people who purchased the previous release of the book, you'll want to get them excited, "Ooh, I want this new cover," or, "I don't have these added chapters," or, "It's a new edit." It could be a multitude of different things.

Marcus: Right. Then what's the second scenario?

Jenn: The second scenario is if you have a book that you just have not talked about maybe for a couple of months, maybe for a couple of years, no matter what it is, but you don't have any major changes to it but you just want to breathe new life into it and bring sales in, you just need to start getting it into your social media schedule, into your marketing schedule. For example, if you've been really focusing in on your current release but you want to bring in these other books that you have, start intentionally--

I'm a big fan of creating a content calendar and knowing, "Okay, I'm going to be talking about this first book on the first week of the month. I'm going to be talking about my second book the second week of the month." You could even do, "I'm going to be talking about my new book this month. Next month, I'm talking about my second book." You just assign the book per month or per week, whatever it is that you want to do. It's really about just starting to fold it into what you're currently doing. It's not something that needs to have this huge pomp and circumstance before you start talking about it.

It's focusing in on, what is this book about? What are the highlights of it? What's the essence of the book that you're wanting to share? It's really thinking about how you have been marketing your other books and just applying it to this other book as well.

Marcus: If you've already done all the work for knowing who your ideal reader is for your newest book, it should pretty much apply to the old books in some way. I can hear some authors already asking, but what if I have different ideal readers for my different books or different genres or different topics altogether?

Jenn: Yes, especially if it is a different genre. This is a big holdup that I see many authors have. When we think about our ideal reader, our ideal is 90% of the time a reflection of us as the author.

Marcus: In some way, at least.

Jenn: In some way, absolutely. If you yourself as the author enjoy writing in multiple genres, you enjoy reading in multiple genres, there's a very, very good chance that your ideal reader is like that as well. It's not something where you have to completely reinvent your marketing or you have to completely redo everything. It's thinking about if I love multiple genres, my ideal reader will also love them as well.

It's really about focusing on the fact that readers love how you write, how you write a story, how you present or create characters, and that can cross multiple genres. It's thinking more about it as you as an author rather than as individual genres or individual books.

Marcus: It's so easy for us to get so focused on that product or that book that we're trying to market right now that it becomes about that story or the book instead of about us as an author. All of the strategies that you provide for listeners here are to help authors not just sell the book that they're working on right now but to build their careers over the long term.

Jenn: Exactly. I think we get lost in the weeds sometimes where it's very easy to be in the center of it and not see it as the bigger picture. When we get lost in the details of, "Oh, what if my ideal reader doesn't read this genre?" It's not thinking about the what-ifs of those small details is really, again, all-encompassing.

Marcus: All this to say, your previous books are not lost causes. There is opportunity to actually use them to engage further with your ideal readers on a whole new level.

Jenn: Absolutely. We can always, always breathe new life into books. Don't give up on those titles that might not have sold well the first time. Maybe look at them again and see, where are there ways that you can make improvements, where are there ways that you can get some feedback on that to see ways that you could improve it. You can always revive and even restore books that might not have done well in the first pass.

Marcus: As a creative business person, as we all are here, it's always an ongoing process. We're always constantly learning. Thank you for being on this journey with us learning together.

Jenn: Absolutely. If you found this podcast helpful, please feel free to share it with others. We would love to hear your thoughts on the podcast.

Marcus: If you have a second in whatever app you're using to listen to this, it would be super helpful to rate us and then leave a little comment to let us know how we're doing.

Jenn: All right. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.