Change your Book Cover and Increase Your Sales?

Change Your Book Cover and Increase Your Sales?

Can changing the cover of your book really increase sales? Well the last couple of weeks I have been a little quiet on the blogging front because I have been concentrating on finishing my current book and marketing my other books. I had a rather lovely synchronicity whereby my friend had figured out how to market his company's health products to the world. In doing so he managed to completely wipe out all of their stock. What a success story eh? So after excelling at that marketing challenge, he decided he would like to see whether his formula worked on books. Yep and you guessed it - I am the experiment. I do like being an experiment in marketing - especially when it my money being invested rather than the budgeting resource of a company.

So how we went about it was go to Amazon Ad Sense. We created an advertising campaign using my top selling book. We started the campaign and registered the number of impressions according to key words. We then counted how many clicks are made on a key word and which key words generated the most clicks. Take for example my LOVE HUNT - The Love Game. This was listed under romance, contemporary romance, love, dating etc. All these key words are linked to your book and when a book in your genre is being looked at, yours joins a queue to be listed as relevant. When your book is noticed and the customer clicks on your book, that is when you are charged a small fee. The fee is based on a bidding process. In actual fact it is all quite simple: basically every time your advert is clicked upon you are charged. You can set an advertising budget each day which once it is reached your advert will no longer appear. That means you can invest as little as a few dollars each day to advertise your books to a specific target audience, according to your key words. In the case of LOVE HUNT - THE LOVE GAME - the most impressions and clicks were made by those who were looking up romance or contemporary romance.  The romance market is huge and one of the most popular so it was not a surprise that this was the 'big clicker!'

So how does this relate to a change of cover?
Well there has to be a reason that a customer potentially clicks on your book. What makes your book stand out against the others that are lined up to advertise at that very same customer? Well it is the cover and the 'strap line.' So I have to be honest my click rate was failing dismally. After 32,000 impressions, where customers had my book appear on the page, I had a whole - are you ready for this - 9 clicks! They did not result in sales. So I was affectively advertising and getting no response. Boooo!

Admittedly it takes time for a sales campaign to kick in; however, something has to make the 'customer' want it now. People don't have time to return to a book they might have seen briefly and they certainly don't retain the title unless it is astounding! So what do you do? You make a cover which screams click on me. So here is my 'before' cover - I quite liked this one... 

I thought it was clean, quirky and to the point. According to my marketing pal it needed to appeal to the 'romance market' and stand out as fun, mischievous and girly. Hmmmm!
So this is the new cover:

Yes it is very pink!!!! Very, very pink! The thing is I then had to change the second in the series too from:

I really liked this one too. I liked how clean it was...
So this then was changed to:

Again - it is VERY PINK!

So guess what happened? The number of impressions continued at the same rate and the click rate increased. What do you think happened with the sales? There was a gradual increase. So what did that mean? Well, it meant that my blurb had to change. I know... Something was stopping people going 'yeh! now! Now and NOW!' Also my friend said that the reader wanted to discover something: an insight.

So take a look - this is how it was:

Come on admit it - as much as we deny it - we ladies like a good love hunt.
We have tick lists, ideals, and we hunt in high-heeled packs. Of course, we're all hunting for that elusive right man who ticks every box and even has tidy nostril hair. Okay maybe not you, but you know other ladies who love the hunt.

Well, it's time for Eva and Gracie to love hunt, and their 'targets' are rich men - the golden sperm. Such exciting escapades would provide the pair with entertaining discussions during their dull office hours - or so they thought. What they did not anticipate was the discovery of the "booby man"; humorous but very hard truths about wealth, themselves, power; and the RichIdiot.com phenomenon.
The question remains: can love really be hunted?

THIS IS THE NEW VERSION

LOVE HUNT - Dating Game: A Kiss and Email Romantic Comedy

Did you know there are numerous secret female dating discussions taking place in your office? Discover the hidden world of women hunting rich men in hope of escaping office drudgery. All around you your colleagues are gossiping about their dating adventures whilst pretending to work. This laugh out loud romantic comedy reveals numerous dating disasters, female analysis and an insight into the world of ridiculous dating rituals - all of that in hope of finding that Mr Right. Does he really exist?

This and more from Eva, the Russian gold digger, who reveals a world of high-class meals and luxurious lingerie. While Gracie, the straight-laced female analyst demonstrates how the mind can run riot with random thoughts: what about the grey-knicker women who have settled for the men with sheds? Are they happy? Why are their knickers grey? Why choose a man with a shed?
A laugh out loud conversation in the form of emails about life, hide the sausage and dating blooming disasters! Be astounded by what is discussed during nine to five!

___________________

So what do you think happened? Honestly I have no clue how life works....

Well the audio sales went up! Admittedly Helen is a fantastic narrator and her Russian accent is brilliant, I just have not quite figured out how that has worked. Also what is also interesting is there is a higher level of sales in the U.K. than the U.S.

My friend Matt says that is because the U.K. has 11 5 star reviews whereas the U.S. have not been placing so many reviews. Again I wonder why that is. So in answer to the question - Can changing your cover increase your sales? Most definitely; however, there are other factors such as 'strap line and your blurb.' If you manage to combine the perfect formula then you have a potentially winning advertising campaign! YEY!!!!

Good luck. I hope this helps all the other lovely authors out there who are also attempting to figure the marketing puzzle out. If I find out anything else I will definitely share. If you have any comments or findings please could you add them to the comments. I would love other authors to have an easier journey to making a living from the book market!

LINK TO KINDLE:

LOVE HUNT - Dating Game: A Kiss and Email Romantic Comedy
by Ruby Allure  LINK: https://amzn.com/B00ATF8QF2

LINK TO AUDIO :https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Hunt-Dating-Game-Idiot/dp/B015G4GAIU/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1470326107&sr=8-2

Oh and I just worked out why the audio sales went up - the audio is on at £3.99 rather than £15.69

If I had not written this blog I would never have figured it out. So that is why the audio sales increased because the advert worked - the customer just happened to explore further. The only problem now is how do I change the audio cover? Any ideas?