Shelley Hitz - Book marketing success 04: 7 book marketing case studies and other lessons learned

7 Book Marketing Case Studies And Other Lessons Learned

2013 Body and Soul Publishing

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T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

You have written and published a book. Now it is time to market it! However, it can be difficult to know where to start and what will actually work.

Every book is different, but I wanted to share 7 book marketing case studies of my own with you. I share the exact steps we took and our results. These case studies are for nonfiction books, but similar promotions may also work well for fiction books.

I want to be REAL with you and share what worked and what did not work. One of our promotions failed miserably and I share my thoughts on why I think it did so poorly. Some of our promotions did really well and others were just okay.

Feel free to use these case studies as templates for creating your own book marketing promotions. I also encourage you to use similar e-mails and social media posts but simply ask that you do not copy them word for word. Instead, make them your own and insert your own personality into your book marketing.

Finally, I share other book marketing lessons I have learned that I think you will find useful.

Ultimately, I am an author in the trenches. Like you, I am learning as I go. However, I want to share with you what I have learned. I hope you learn from both my successes and my failures!

What Are You Waiting For?

Are you ready to get an inside look into my book marketing efforts and see what you can apply to your own books?

Well, lets get started!

C ASE S TUDY #1: P RINT B OOK S ALE

Summer Celebration Print Book Sale June 16-30, 2013

This sale went live on June 16 th , my husband CJs 40 th birthday. It is a print book bundle sale and you can see the details on our blog here: http://www.bodyandsoulpublishing.com/summer-celebration-sale-on-all-print-books

The exact steps we took:

* Write & schedule a blog post about the sale

* Research a Summer Sale graphic from Fotolia.com for the blog post (see the graphic on the blog post link above)

* Write & schedule a broadcast e-mail to our reader list

* Created the form for people to fill out at the end of blog post to submit an order

* Write & schedule tweets & Facebook posts using Hootsuite

* Posted across our social media platforms

* Participated in a tweet exchanges with Grace & Faith and Indie Authors on FB 6/18/13

Copy of email sent to list:

**FIRSTNAME** ,

We are fast approaching the first official day of summer and if youre like us here in Colorado, the temperatures are heating up quickly!

Summer can be a great time to do more reading as many are on summer vacations or have extra down time. It can also be a great time to knock out some early Christmas shopping by finding a smokin deal. This is one reason were having several hot summer sales coming up.

Our first sale is on ALL our print books! We are excited to celebrate several things during these last two weeks of June including my husband, CJs, 40 th birthday on June 16th!

Therefore, between June 16-30 th we are offering a nearly 40% off discount on any 5-book bundle. For $35 which includes free shipping, you can choose any 5 of our print books. For example you can choose 5 of the same print book or 5 different print books at this discount. And the amazing thing (at least to me) is that we have over 20 books to choose from! God keeps doing things in my life that I would have NEVER thought possible and having published this many books is just one of them. :)

So I encourage you to go right now to the link below and get ALL the details about our summer celebration sale on print books here:

http://www.bodyandsoulpublishing.com/summer-celebration-sale-on-all-print-books

Enjoy!
Shelley Hitz

p.s. If you know someone who might want to take advantage of this sale, feel free to forward this e-mail to them. Thanks!

Our Tweets:

Check out the Summer Celebration Sale going on over at Body And Soul Publishing 40% off book bundles #checkitout http://ow.ly/m0LmY

Christmas shopping in June! Summer Celebration Sale on all print books at Body And Soul Publishing June16-30 http://ow.ly/m0O4l #share

Summer Celebration Sale! 40% off print book bundles of 5 at Body And Soul Publishing - Over 20 books to choose from http://ow.ly/m0Pt5

2 weeks only! Summer Celebration Sale on print books at Body And Soul Publishing through June 30th http://ow.ly/m0RwH #share #books

Looking for an encouraging gift? Head to the print book Summer Celebration Sale happening at Body And Soul Publishing http://ow.ly/m7ZPv

40% off print bundles of 5 for Starting Off On The Right Foot and #Smoothies For Runners! Check it out here http://ow.ly/m9TZi #Share (5k Running Tips)

Our Facebook Posts:

Check out the Summer Celebration Sale going on over at Body And Soul Publishing 40% off print book bundles of 5 with over 20 books to choose from! - http://www.bodyandsoulpublishing.com/summer-celebration-sale-on-all-print-books

(Pinned to Pinterest)

Looking for a gift that sharpens and encourages? Head to the Summer Celebration Sale happening at Body And Soul Publishingall print book bundles of 5 are 40% off through June 30th! - http://www.bodyandsoulpublishing.com/summer-celebration-sale-on-all-print-books

Our Results:

We sold one bundle of 5 for $35 (total profit $13.12). We were a bit disappointed by these results as we thought it would produce more sales. However, one benefit from this sale was that someone ordered a BIG order of 65 of our teen devotional books for her school. This one order gave us an additional $180.31 in profit which I dont think would have happened had we not had this summer sale.

Total profit = $193.43

C ASE S TUDY # 2: B ARGAIN B OOK OF THE D AY

By FAR, one of the best ways we have found to get hundreds of sales is to be featured on the Ereader News Today website as a $0.99 bargain book of the day. Your book can always be $0.99 or you can lower it to $0.99 for the dates they choose to feature it. There is NO guarantee that your book will be chosen, but when you areget ready to watch your sales and rankings increase.

To help boost our summer sales, we submitted the book, 21 Prayers of Gratitude and it was chosen to be featured 6/21/13. We are grateful.

Exact Steps We Took:

* Submitted our book to ENT: http://ereadernewstoday.com/bargain-kindle-books/

* Received an e-mail that our book was chosen to be featured on 6/21/13

* Wait for the sales to start rolling in. :)

Our Results:

The eBook started at Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,959 Paid in Kindle Store and i ncreased to #495 Paid in Kindle Store. We sold over 200 copies on 6/21 & 6/22/13 due to this promotion and paid 25% to ENT for this promo.

C ASE S TUDY # 3: F REE KDP P ROMOTION

Free promotion for the book 21 Ways to Save Time and Money Cooking Vegetarian Recipes.

This is a book I wrote under a pen name last year and is not currently selling well. We figured it would be worth trying another free promotion. The ranking as of 6/18/13 was #637,353 Paid in Kindle Store. Not very good.

Exact Steps We Took:

* Enrolled the book in KDP select

* Set up the promotion for 3 days (6/26-28)

* Notified websites of the free promotion. This usually takes us 1.5 to 2 hours. Find the 11 step process we use and the sites we submit to here: http://www.trainingauthors.com/47-places-to-submit-your-free-kdp-promotion-for-your-kindle-ebook/