If you feel like you’re sending lots of visitors to your Amazon ebook pages, and it’s not resulting in many sales, you may want to make some changes. While you’re probably not going to tinker with the story itself (although some ebook authors do!), it’s a simple matter to upload a new cover image or blurb, or to change the price.
At the beginning of August, I uploaded new cover art for Encrypted and trimmed a couple of sentences from the blurb (more details on the changes I tried in this post). While I can’t say that my tweaks drove sales through the roof, they did resulted in an increase.
Prior to August, Encrypted’s best sales month came in June where it sold 340 copies on Amazon. It broke that number a couple of days ago and will probably end up selling about 400 copies by the end of August. (No, that doesn’t include sales at Barnes & Noble and Smashwords and such, but those guys don’t break down monthly sales for each ebook, so it’s a little more work to calculate totals. Also, Amazon is the big kahuna and represents 80-90% of my sales, so I worry most about them.) Since I make about $2 on each sale, that means the new cover art will already be paid for with the increased sales from this month.
In case you’re wondering, sales for the rest of my ebooks remained fairly steady for August. With one exception (which I’ll touch on in a minute), they may even end up down a smidgen. (I’ve heard summer isn’t typically as busy of a time for book sellers, so we’ll see if things pick up this fall.) I also didn’t promote Encrypted any more than usual. It came out in January, and I don’t tend to plug it as much as The Emperor’s Edge or Flash Gold, since those two are Book 1s in series I’m working on. In short, I believe it’s safe to credit the new artwork and perhaps, to some extent, the new blurb for the increased sales.
I’m not usually great when it comes to “split testing” and making these types of changes (I’m always hesitant to try something that might harm sales), but it’s worth tinkering with the “packaging” if you’re wondering why your book isn’t selling more copies. It’s one thing if you’re just not marketing it, but if you feel like you’re putting a lot of work into promotion and nothing is happening, some changes may make a difference.
Ask friends, too, to give you their opinion on your book’s sales page. It’s hard for us to judge these things ourselves. You could run a couple of different blurbs by them to see what strikes a cord. I’ll be the first to admit that writing a blurb doesn’t necessarily come naturally to authors. It’s more akin to copywriting than storytelling.
My other improved seller for August
Because I know you’re wondering, the other ebook that saw a noticeable increase in sales this month was my children’s short story collection, The Goblin Brothers Adventures. I haven’t marketed that one at all since I switched my focus to my adult fantasy novels, and it usually only sells about 25 copies a month at Amazon.
The Goblin Brothers have sold 46 copies so far this month (more than they have since their release back in December when I was bribing all my friends and relatives to buy them).
What changed? Not much. Just a tweak to the title.
Before, I’d titled it “The Goblin Brothers Adventures (middle grade fantasy stories),” figuring that adding the parenthetical aside would help it place in Amazon’s internal search engine (in case someone was looking for middle grade reading material). As I recall that worked, and it was the first result for “middle grade fantasy,” but the sales numbers suggest there aren’t all that many people searching for “middle grade fantasy.” So, I took that aside off, and it’s now just The Goblin Brothers Adventures.
I changed the title because I thought more of my adult fantasy readers might give it a try if it wasn’t labeled as something for kids. It’s still apparent from the blurb that the characters are young and the stories are suitable for all ages, but I’ve had lots of adults like them, so why pigeonhole these poor goblins?
It seems to have worked, for that little change has nearly doubled sales for that title this month. Sure, the ebook is still my least impressive seller by far, but every little bit counts when you’re dreaming of writing for a living someday. It’s easier to make more money from the books you already have out than to write all new ones (though, of course, I’m doing that too).
For those of you still reading (how do my posts always get so long?), have you tried tweaking your “packaging” to increase sales? Do you have any success stories to share?
Re the What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item? percentages, I’ve started noting mine lately, and currently 85% buy one or other of my books from each page. This is higher than when I was selling more copies a few weeks ago, suggesting fewer but more likely-to-buy readers are finding my books.
What are your thoughts on this?
Lexi, I haven’t noticed the percentages in the U.S. store for a while (I see they still show up at the UK one), so I haven’t paid too much attention to that, but I do think that’d be something of an indicator. If people are looking at your book page and then going on to buy other books instead, that could be a sign that tweaks are in order.
Been thinking similarly – but I think that’s natural for something just released. Mine eBook isn’t selling whopping numbers (not that I expected as such), but I am wondering if the book cover is appealing, or the blurb.
Time to request some comments, me thinks.
It’s definitely hard to get the ball rolling on that first ebook. I’m sure things will pick up when you get some reviews on there too.
My book has only been out for a month and I think it’s doing alright, but I’m still thinking about changing up the cover art. I’ve put it out there for opinions but the opinions I’m getting are pretty evenly split. I’m not sure where to go from here.
I like your cover art, Stephany. Given my knowledge of art, I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not though. 😉
I have yet to sell except my free reads. I finished reading John Locke’s book on Friday and made a more conscious blog post today. And I did notice my downloads increased. I also made a conscious effort to make new friends up at the observatory and passed out a bunch of cards. The motivating factor was me deciding to be a small business last week – opening a checking account for writing expenses only [and hopefully income at some point] and hiring an editor. Suddenly my perspective on a lot of things changed. Weird how that works.
I could spruce up my blurbs for my free reads, and I will. Need to work on the new piece’s blurb, too.
But, yeah, just starting to see this as my livelihood made me a lot more sociable last week. All my conversations led to me passing out cards. So, a different application of Locke’s advice.
I have Encrypted on my Nook. I love having all books by people I know on the Nook. I brag about you all when I show off my new gadget.
Yay, thanks for plugging Encrypted, Mary! 🙂
I saw your blog post today. Yes, it’s good to actually mention your stories to your blog followers! I work that in fairly often, heh heh. You have to assume some folks are just reading your blog on their favorite feed reader and won’t necessarily see your book covers over in the side bar, or any of the other parts of your site for that matter.
Now, when is Semper Audacia coming out?
I have been thinking about changing my covers lately, I think one is a little too racy for Amazon. Great advice, thanks!
This post has been rolling around in my head since I read it. When I read it I was like, pfft. Blurbs. Who cares.
But now that I think about it there’s a lot about blurbs that I do care about.
A lot of people put in a piece of prose from their novel. That is not at all helpful to me. Once I’ve decided to read a book, a powerful piece of writing near the beginning will help hook me, but when I’m browsing it just makes my eyes glaze over. TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read) kind of effect. It usually doesn’t immediately tell me any genre information, what is going to interest me about that characters or really much of anything.
On telling me about genre, there’s also blurbs that seem to be a conglomerate of buzz words. Urban steampunk fantasy romance YA novel about a young vampire who blah blah blah. It’s not that these aren’t helpful, they are definitely more helpful than the above example, but they do kind of make you feel like the author has a checklist they’re going through. And it doesn’t tell you what’s unique about the novel.
So that’s the main thing that I want to know about a novel. It’s very nice to know you novel has a female main character, and what the genre is, and what all other things that I like are in your novel. But there’s tons of female main character steampunk vampire romance YA novels out there.
Tell me how YOUR story is different. Sell the novelty! Especially when I’m reading self-published and indie works I want to know, what are you doing with all this wonderful creative control?
In short, Why YOUR novel?
So now I definitely get the hub-bub. You have to sell it, be entertaining and be brief. Quite a challenge.
Someone on Fiverr.com needs to start selling blurb making services. They’d make a killing.
Thanks for the thoughtful “reader” response, Sarah!
I agree that it can help to work in your unique selling proposition (to use the business world term, hah). What usually gets me to click “download sample” is a little bit of attitude/humor and some interesting-sounding characters.
My novel was only out about one month before I changed the cover. I think I’ve done pretty well so far for having it on the market about 6 weeks, but I have high expectations for this novel and so I wanted to present it in the best light. Despite a few people that insisted the old cover was good enough, I didn’t want just “good enough,” I wanted great. I’m happy with the change, and although it’s hard to tell number wise because the novel is so new, I think it did help increase sales. Who knows, maybe a blurb change will be next, lol. I hate doing blurbs though, so I hate to change it.