Irish writer David Gaughran has plenty to say about maintaining an online “author platform” and driving online sales. Some of his pithier quotes:
“As well as promoting my own books, I’ve run giant campaigns for huge authors over the last couple of years, launching multiple books into the Top 100, running major backlist promotions that generated tens of thousands of sales during their foray into the charts, and million and millions of page reads, as well as multiple Kindle Unlimited awards. Some of these campaigns can generate extraordinary profits.”
“BookBub is the most famous, obviously, and is significantly larger than all the other sites combined with millions of genuine book buyers on its lists. There are no sure things in marketing, but a BookBub Featured Deal is the closest you’ll get. Authors typically report making the cost back in twenty-four hours or less, and then enjoying a significant increase in visibility and sellthrough and email sign-ups and reviews. ”
“Before the “do you not VALUE books?” crowd get warmed up, let me say this: those cheap deals are used to pole-vault us into position to shift even more books at full price. A springboard, if you like. I don’t focus so much on prices anyway, these things are all tools to me. I prefer to look at monthly income. Running price promotions increases it greatly. ”