I sat down a while back and looked at everything I had written to date and asked myself, “How do I sell more? How do I make more from this than I am right now?” The specific list of items I came up with for myself isn’t really relevant to anyone else, but I realized today that the three ways to sell more that I came up with do matter to anyone trying to make these kinds of choices.
So without further ado, these are the three categories I came up with for myself:
Get better at selling what I’ve already written
So, for example, for me this would’ve happened when I started advertising my books after the first year. (I laughed as I wrote that since looking back I can’t believe I didn’t advertise my books at all the first year.)
Later, this would be when I learned how to use AMS ads.
If you have a viable product you’ve already created, then ask yourself, how can I sell this product? What form of advertising will work best for this?
For me, in general, what I’ve decided is that CPC ads work best for non-fiction because I can advertise it at full-price and reach customers who are looking for that topic when they’re actively looking for it. With fiction, price discounts and list-based promotions like Bookbub are equally or even more effective.
Expand on what I’ve already written
This is writing the next book in that series. Or in non-fiction it’s writing a related book. For me this year that involved adding 50 Useful Excel Functions to the Excel Essentials series. Last year it involved writing another romance novel set in the same world as my first romance novel.
I think the key here is to see where you have some glimmers of hope and then add onto that. And it isn’t always going to work. My most successful dating for men book has always been the first one I wrote. The other two I added on after that to target different parts of that market never sold as well as that first book.
If you’ve met your consumer’s entire need in that area with your first book, this isn’t going to do much for you. And if you don’t realize what the need that was met with that first book was, then writing more and missing the point won’t help either. You have to have an audience who wants more and give them more of what they in fact want. (With fiction just giving them the same characters will not be enough if the story also doesn’t meet what they liked about your first story.)
Write something new that’s more marketable
I sort of stumbled into this with some of my titles, but I’ve done it deliberately as well. That holiday-themed billionaire erom short story I wrote was very much an attempt to do this. My current attempt at a cozy mystery is as well.
One issue I found here is that some of my ideas that were more marketable also lent themselves to a trade publishing approach. (Such as MG or picture books.) So I had to decide if that was worth pursuing given timelines and other issues. (For example, I can self-pub a picture book and no one will know or care that I also have published erom stories. A trade publisher might. But if I want to make money on picture books it pretty much has to be done through a trade publisher because of where that market finds its books.)
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Anyway. Just something to think about if any of you are asking yourself that sort of question and trying to figure out where to go next. (And the categories are broad enough I’d say they really work for any product you want to sell, not just books.)
M.L. Humphrey 