By Kristy Tate //
A few days ago, I published the fourth book in my Witching Well series, The Rainforest Rendezvous (clean and wholesome time travel romance). I didn’t put the book on preorder, and I did almost zero promoting on social media.
A little background: I published the first book in 2014, the third (and up until a few days ago, final book) in 2015. So, yes, it’s been a while. I sincerely doubt anyone was waiting with bated breath for this book. I don’t think anyone was even expecting it. But sometime ago, I decided my series are too short (typically about three books) and my marketing dollar would stretch further if I could lure readers into longer series with each book ending with a clear and compelling hook to the next in line. Better yet, if I could tie the series together somehow. (I still don’t know how to do this, but it’s percolating in the back of my mind.) Going forward, I’ll be adding onto my existing series and scheming on how to loop them all together. The Witching Well books are not in the Kindle Unlimited program—mostly because I have two audiobooks in the series soon to be released, and I don’t want them to be exclusive to Amazon. Also, they’re rather short, so the royalties from pages read would be puny.
Here’s what I did for this fourth book in the series:
For the last five weeks (or so), I posted a chapter on my blog each Wednesday.
To be completely honest, I asked my newsletter subscribers if they’d like to receive ARCs (advance reader copies), but then I failed to send them. (My bad, and yet I’m not sure if I regret the decision. We’ll see.)
I made the first book in the series 99 cents and the second book free. Why? Because I prefer the second one, and I know I’m not the only one. A few of my readers have told me it’s their favorite book. My pricing looks like this:
Book 1: 99 cents
Book 2: free
Book 3: $3.99
Book 4: $4.99 (new release)
Book 5: $4.99 (preorder)
I applied for (and got) a Bookbub featured deal for the second book. Common wisdom says you should stack your ads in rapid succession and culminate with the Bookbub powerhouse. I didn’t do that. I ran the Bookbub ad first.
I have a theory, and I’ve yet to test it to see if it’s true. Book marketing may be a lot like weight loss. (Stay with me, even if you’re a perfect size six, this might be interesting to you.) You can stack all your ads and score big, post about it on author platforms and make all your cohorts jealous just like you can go on a crash diet and squeeze into that dress for a high school reunion and have everyone talking about you at the class picnic (where you’re munching on celery and eyeing the brownies.) Or, you can adopt the water-torture treatment. The slowly but surely tortoise approach. The sometimes you eat brownies and sometimes you eat nothing method (because no one wants to be pulling celery strings out of their teeth). For this launch and this book (fourth book), my goal is to run four to five ads a month on the second book (which is what I consider to be the best book in the series). I’ll do this for six months. I have enough ad platforms so that I don’t have to use the same platform more than once every six months. If you’d like to see my list of ad platforms, it’s on my blog.
My ads lineup:
Bookbub August 31
EReader News Today September 5
Ebook Betty September 6
Freebooksy September 7
My Book Cave September 14
Robin Reads September 24
October (not yet booked):
Fussy Librarian
KindleNationDaily.com
ManyBooks.net
RiffleBooks.com
TheBooksMachine.com
How will I launch the fifth book in the series? Quite differently. I’m hoping, of course, that all this advertising will kick up interest in the series and the read-through will be a nice, steady stream. But in hopes of turning my stream into a raging river, here are my goals for launching Book five:
Launch Checklist:
Three months before:
One- to three-line excerpt and teaser image on social media, blog, and in my newsletter.
Two months before:
One- to three-line excerpt and teaser image on social media, blog, and in my newsletter.
A month before:
One- to three-line excerpt and teaser image on social media, blog, and in my newsletter.
Three weeks before:
Long excerpt on social media, blog, my newsletter, and in the review section of the Amazon page.
Two weeks before:
A second long excerpt on social media, blog, and in my newsletter.
A week before:
Post blurb and cover on social media, blog, and in my newsletter.
Request ARCs (and follow through)
Release week:
Blog post
Like two to five reviews daily
Also, the audiobooks for the first and second books will be available sometime probably in October, so that should also boost the series.
Am I making an investment? Yes. Do I sometimes think I’d rather spend my money on a new piano? Almost every day. But you know what keeps me going? Good books. I love to get lost in a good book. Sometimes when the world is too hard, too noisy, too scary, and the pandemic has gone on for too long, I need to get lost in a good book. And I know I’m not alone in this. Books are the best form of escape, especially now that it’s safer to stay at home. So, whether you’re reading or writing that good book, I hope you’ll tell other readers about it and give them a chance to escape too.
KRISTY TATE is the Social Media Director for O.C. Writers and a USA Today bestselling author. To date, her newsletter subscriber list is edging toward 15,000. www.KristyTate.com.
Hi Kristi, I’m new to OC Writers and have a book being published in March, non fiction on the history of the planning and development of the Irvine Ranch . I am collecting connections to planners architects and local library and history groups but wonder if there are broader strategies I might try
If you be available for a call I’d be interested to hear any thought s. Thank you