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?
Your books are published, you’re building a social media presence, and you’ve got an official author website and/or blog. You’re rocking it! But…do you have a newsletter?
The other day, someone forwarded me an email because the original sender had wanted to contact me but hadn’t been able to find my address on my Facebook page. That original sender even included a link to a blog post about how authors should be approachable.
When it comes to promotion, whether we’re talking books or blogs, there are some tedious chores that sometimes don’t get done just because they are so tedious.
I finally got around to creating a 
