Look, I run a marketing company. I’ve done research on what it takes to sell books. Not just other people’s books, but mine as well. I’ve seen the studies and the ad results, but I’ve also heard the advice of the people who know best – successful authors. And now I see the results for myself.
I published 3 ebooks in fairly quick succession last year – July, September and November. Since then, nothing. However, I’ve kept putting up notices and running promotional pricing. I can tell you what sells existing titles – new titles.
As long as I had fairly recent new titles, all the books kept selling (or renting, via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Program) pretty steadily. But after a couple months of no new publications, the sales started to dry up fairly quickly. In march I moved over a dozen copies, which was down significantly from January. This month, I’ve sold 3 copies.
I can tell you from personal experience that new books drive sales of older books.
The experienced authors will tell you to just keep writing. It helps you ignore the fact your books aren’t moving. But it also generates new work that, when published, will help promote your older titles. I’m doing tons of work right now for clients of my marketing biz, and not publishing any work under my own name. I’ve got to change that soon.
Of course, in addition I’m also producing video clips that help promote and expand on my previous written work. No, it’s not publishing new ebooks and no, it’s not helping sell those titles either. Not right now, anyway. But I need them in place for when people re-discover my original titles.
If you’re an author, what are some of the things you’ve been doing to promote your past works? Hearing my highly subjective testimonial, how likely are you to push for your next publication?




