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?

Deals do work...

Well it seems that everyone is searching for a bargain. No one really wants to pay the full price do they? So what do you do when you find a deal? Are you one of those who develop a certain kind of smug grin - like the fat kid that ate the last cake? The thing is, we as writers, are on the other side of the deal. To be found and to get known we have to discount our years of work or even put it out there for free in hope that word of mouth will generate sales in the future.

Well, as much as I much as I was reluctant, and after reading numerous marketing books, I gave in and put my books in the count-down deal category of Amazon. I even tested the water in the free section. With regards to promotions, I am glad that I waited because I have nine books that can be promoted in cycles. So this is what I did - I made a consecutive series of count-down deals for each book and as one finished another began. What was the result - so far one hundred and five downloads in three days. That is not bad considering I did not expect there to be much of a response...

What have I learned? If you are new to the world of Indie writing - get your book out there and discount or make it free to get known! Oh and guess which one sold the most? Well actually there were two, the same two: Labyrinthine - the one that is being turned into an audio book and The Ocean Callings - the one that has a script in progress. Following a close third was Davina and the Goyles - this book had interest from a top agent ten years ago. The deal fell through and my heady illusions shattered... I am a better person for it, I try and convince myself of that:)

So with deals and free samples - let's see how the whole cycle of promotions works out:) What I do find strange is that Love Hunt - Dating - has not sold as many, yet has 10 5star reviews. Last year a television producer approached me to turn this one into a television series. It fell through when she decided that she was depressed and wanted to spend time in India practising yoga. She then meditated and changed her life direction. Even the stories about stories are bizarre!

CONCLUSION: From what I am seeing in my sales trending - it seems people go for cheap versus recommendation in this instance. Although the cycle of promotions has not reached either of the LOVE HUNTS. We will see whether there is a spike in sales when they enter into the promotional world.

I hope this helps those who are also on this Indie author journey.

Link: http://amzn.com/B008Y65FWU

 

 

http://amzn.com/B008Y600X4

 

 

http://amzn.com/B00928727A

 

 

Why write a book?

Why write a book?

Do you really want to a write a book? The idea has been buzzing around your head like an aggravating fly. Snatches of scenes keep popping up and your find yourself writing down snippets on random pieces of paper, even loo paper. The characters turn up in dreams or you find yourself drifting off at work and engaging in imaginary conversations with characters and how their day has gone…  Oh and that is just the beginning.

Those who are not of the literary stance will read the above an interpret it as madness and in truth, maybe it is. The thing is the desire and the compulsion to write has to be accompanied with a reason ‘WHY’. Otherwise why else would you sit alone at a desk for hours tapping a keyboard? That is the reality - you are sitting alone imagining and transforming that image in your mind into words in hope that someone will read it. Maybe someone will read it, maybe they won’t – so if no one reads it then what is your WHY?

The WHY could be anything. For me, my why, is that I am able to step into my own inner fantastical world where there are no limits. I can imagine anything I like and push my characters beyond their boundaries rather than have to experience the situations myself. Admittedly, Love Hunt, is based on reality and I would rather have imagined the scenarios rather than experience them in reality.

So once you have your WHY you have your fuel to remind you what you are writing for. Many of the WHY’s from my students have been quite amusing. ‘I want to put characters in some of the weirdest situations and see what happens.’ Some say they want to be the next bestseller (you can’t dismiss someone else’s why by the way). In the memoirs class my students wanted to use writing their life story as a catharsis/healing or for their family to read in future generations.

Something I will mention is that often when there is a WHY outside of yourself motivating yourself to write becomes easier. The WHYs that don’t work are usually based on money. One student once said I want to write to become rich. Well, that why is never guaranteed and there are more ways to make money which are time efficient. I think my favourite WHY came from a girl who wrote some brilliantly humorous pieces ‘I want to make space and time to sit and laugh hysterically at my own jokes while I write.’ Of course the sense of enjoyment she achieved through writing and simply enjoying resulted in her completing numerous books and drove her to make sales. Her infectious enthusiasm and humour shone from her novels.

So my advice: before you begin writing work out your WHY. It will be there to remind you when you are cleaning the toilet to avoid writing that you have a reason why you chose to write a book.

 

Link: http://amzn.com/B00TZWLRL0