47. Reviving a Dead Book Series (Case Study 3)

Welcome to the Book Marketing Show Podcast, where each week we'll show you exactly how to sell more books and have fun doing it. And now, your host, Dave Cheson.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Book Marketing Show podcast. I'm Dave Chesson, and today we're going to do another one of our fan favorites, which is reviving a dead book series. Now, in the reviving the dead book series is that I look for authors who have had a book that... was out there that wasn't making any sales at all. And then they decided to take some actions and they got great results.

Now, what's amazing about this is that you will find that if you are one of those authors out there that knows that they have a great book, and that they also know that there's a market that could benefit from their book, then pay attention. Because sometimes when we launch our book, we do things wrong.

And over time, we learn more and more about book marketing, and hopefully you are too, especially if you're listening to this podcast. So in today's episode, I'm going to bring in Ethan Jones, who published a book years ago. And it got zero to no sales over time and finally decided to use some of the lessons he's learned over time, give it a brand new launch, and this time... do it right let's hear exactly how he did it and what kind of results he saw

All right, guys, I've got Ethan Jones on the line, and we're going to jump into his story and start with exactly when he published the first book, what kind of things he saw, and ultimately what led him to reviving the book. Ethan, thank you so much for coming on to the Book Marketing Show podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to your listeners. So, Ethan, let's start from the beginning. When did you first publish the book?

The book came out in May 2012. Wow. So that was a while ago. That's pretty awesome. And what was the title of the book? Arctic War Games. Nice. What kind of success did you see when you first launched it way back then? Well, at that time, I didn't know a lot of the marketing know-how that I have learned over the years. So I sold. five copies the first month. So I don't know if that was success or not. I was really excited to sell books to strangers.

Yeah, no kidding. Well, you got to start somewhere. And I take it that your launch plan was just you hit published and that was it? Or were there certain things you did back then? No, no, pretty much it. And it was only on Amazon. So it was really... smaller market nowadays. Most people publish wide, but again, I had no idea that it was even possible. Wow, got it. Okay, so then we're going to fast forward a little bit. What made you finally decide to relaunch the book?

Well, I had seen from the reviews that there were some major issues with the book, being that it was the first book I had published. My writing, hopefully, has gone better by now. So some of the one star or two star reviews reflected some of the typos. There were some technical issues there. I also went on and on in some of the chapters. So there were some major parts of the book that I had thought needed some rewriting and some readjustment, I guess.

So not only did you improve your marketing skills, but you also have kind of improved as a writer. You saw that there was opportunities to improve the book itself. And so you finally decided to basically tackle the project, correct? Yeah, I wanted people to come to the series and see a good book in order to decide to continue. And I didn't feel like Arctic War Games at the time was my best.

effort. So I took about a month and a half and just did a complete rewrite. I cut off almost 15,000 words. I added a couple of new chapters. I gave it a better ending. I also put a cliffhanger in there so that readers can move from book one to book two. They have a reason to be more engaged. So I did pretty much all that I had learned in order to make a book more captivating for the reader.

Nice. And then bring them into book two. Okay, so you improved the book. But here's something that I really thought interesting was when you went to relaunch the book, you actually republished the book. Can you explain that a little bit for the listeners? Sure. So what I wanted to do is I didn't want the reviews to be still attached to the book because the reviews nowadays would not be...

reflective of the new book, the quality and the content. So even though I had almost 500 reviews, there were 499, 98, depending on the day. As we know, sometimes Amazon removes them. I made the hard decision to remove it completely. And most of the reviews were four stars, five stars. The overall rating was 3.8, 3.9.

I just wanted to start with a clean slate because in my mind, it is a brand new book. It is much shorter and much better. So I wanted the reviews to actually... reflect the new reality so i didn't want to carry any of the old burden that came with the old reviews nice now for the listeners out there you might not know but that if you do upload a new book you have two ways of doing it you could either

upload the book to replace the old book. So it's all right there. Okay, you're just updating the content file. Or the other way is that you can make it a new book. Now, there are two options. If you decide to make it a new book, you could either do what we just heard, which is where you just disregard the old book, you cancel it, and the new book is truly, truly a new book. Or...

You make it a new book, but then you contact Amazon. You say, hey, can you transfer over the reviews? All right. It's a bit of a process, but do understand that if you do that, you can bring over your reviews. But Ethan had a really good reason. for why he didn't do that. And that was truly because he had taken value from the reviews.

implemented them, and now this truly new product was an indicative of the old reviews. So, Ethan, I really love that you did that, and that really highlights a case. where an author wouldn't want to bring over their old reviews because they did improve the product. Okay, you have now improved the book itself, and you've now listed it as a complete new project.

Tell me a little bit about your marketing. And by the way, before we get to that, did you change your cover at all or did you just keep that the same? No, I kept the cover the same because I had changed it about. four or so years ago so i had a cover that wasn't that good i didn't know a lot at the time when i got the original cover i didn't have a lot of money

And then about three, four years ago, I switched cover editors and I tried to rebrand. So now all the books have the same font, sharper colors, a more unique feel to it. The new version of Arctic Hell has the older cover. Okay, so you had already improved the cover a while ago. And from what I remember, too, is that it was six months before this launch, you even improved the book description as well.

So although this isn't like some of our previous dead book series, right? Like we had for episode 20 and episode 13, where both authors did a new book cover upon launch. This book cover had been improved. It was just time to send in a little bit of life and get some traffic to it and see what happened. All right, so you just went, you published it. Then what did you do? What did you do differently this time? Because I...

Take it it's not the publish and wait method, right? Right, right. Like I said, I had learned much, much more. And most of the work actually went in the pre-launch. stage so to speak so I did a couple of major things well three-pronged approach so to speak one was I work with my list I have a list that is about 10,000 readers but

Usually about 2,000 to 3,000 are the folks that open the emails that I send, at least from what I can tell. So I ask them to either consider putting a review if they had read the older version. And if not, I was glad to give them a new version so that they could read it and then they could consider to post a review if they wanted. And I also asked all of them to...

Please buy a copy since I was launching it at 99 cents, which pretty much is the lowest that you can launch. I mean, I guess you could do free, but... That kind of defeats the purpose of bringing people into a series where you want them to pay. So I definitely try to sell as much as I could to my reading list. I also did a lot of promotions, the paid promotions. So I hit a lot of the second tier. websites, Robin Reads, ENT,

I did a couple of the smaller ones, free Kindle books and tips. I think it's another one. And then the third prong approach, I contacted a lot of my author buddies, folks that I have already a relationship with, done cross promos. trying to ask if they could hit their newsletters, their reading list, so they could showcase my book, this new re-release, so to speak, to their readers. So I try to hit pretty much.

as many readers to get as many readers to see my book within that first 10-15 day window right after the launch. Okay. What do you think was the most effective method other than your pre-existing list? I think the second best was a couple of heavy hitter authors. So one day when one of them was helping me, I got almost 300 sales and I can attribute that to just... this particular author along with cumulative effect the more the book climbs up the more eyeballs can can actually

see it. So I would say if you are able to have a relationship, strong relationship with an author that can help you, that would be second best after your readers, which of course, they're your own. All right, guys. So just to kind of recap here, like we talked about in episode 21 with start your email list ASAP, you can see how important an email list, especially over time.

Listen to how many emails he had collected from that. Another thing that we brought up multiple times throughout the podcast is discussing how to network with other authors. We always make the mistake that... We look at other authors in our genre as competitors, but they aren't. This is an opportunity to really build each other up. Ethan has readers, but... He doesn't have a book every month to keep his readers engaged, whereas other authors do have readers that he can help.

and vice versa. So really, guys, keep that in mind that other authors are not your competitors. Ethan, that's a really great point. Now, tell me a little bit about your AMS ads and Facebook ads. I did some AMS ads and they've been somewhat successful. So I'm not losing money there, but definitely I'm not also making a lot of money. So you spend $2 and you make $6, things like that.

I tried some Facebook ads. They weren't as successful as I had hoped they would be. But this is my first dabbling with Facebook ads. So I know there is a lot of learning to go on there. So I use those more as... a secondary approach, like throwing a little more power, so to speak, to the campaign, but definitely they were not the major thrust of the campaign. I also tried to do some bookbub.

ads those the pay-per-click paper impression at the bottom of the email i got some mixed results there as well the problem with some of these ads is i don't know a lot how to track the sales other than amazon ads which tell you how many sales the other ones only tell you how many people have clicked or seen your ad so i know facebook has the capacity to pixel it or somehow track it but that's beyond my understanding. I'm just happy to see that some people have checked out my ads.

Yeah, the big thing about ads is I've always found that they really help to maintain continuous sales. And continuous sales is what kind of keeps one book alive. So just the existence of the AMS ads can really... keep it afloat and therefore making amazon kind of like it are you going to have giant sales no unless you're really really really putting a lot of effort into it but it is definitely a way to blow in some life into the book itself

After doing all that and that launch, what kind of sales did you initially see? And then what were your results like later? So just for comparison, the old version of Arctic was around for almost six years. And I sold about 10,000 copies during this six years. So nothing to sniff at. I sold it at 99 cents. I've sold at $4.99.

One time I even sold, I think, one or two copies at $9.99. I was just trying to see, can this thing sell? So for comparison, that was $10,000 over the course of almost six years. During the first two weeks, I would say... I've sold over a thousand copies. Now, again, this is at 99 cents, but still, I'm really excited with that result. And from that time on, there've been about another 200 or so sales.

So for a month and a little bit, I'm extremely happy with the results. So to give a perspective, guys, over the six years, that's about 130 copies a month, but that petered off pretty quickly. What was it? One month before you launched it, what were sales like? Was it even lower than 138 copies? It was. It was probably 20, 30 copies, maybe. Now it was $299. So again, the price makes some of the difference.

But definitely, even if we try to average for price, I would say it would be maybe 60, 80 copies, not more than 100 copies a month. So it had something. It wasn't completely dead. But however, just giving that new relaunch and then battling for the reviews, you were able to see a lot more as well as more sustainability, correct?

That's correct. It wasn't that it was like palliative, I guess. Yeah, fully understandable. Is there anything else that you did or anything that you would recommend to any of the authors that are looking at their books and wondering if they should try to do this sort of tactic?

Sure. One of the goals that I hope to do is look at book two and three in the series. These ones, I think, are better than the first one. So I may not do a complete rewrite, but just try to... smooth some of the wrinkles that might still be there and some of the reviews have already highlighted things like that so for other writers i would say it is a dreaded process at least it was for me i would compare it to repainting an old painting so

you're not starting with blank canvas, right? You're starting with something that is already there and you're trying to erase some things and add some things. So you don't have that creativity, that freedom.

that you have when you are just starting a new story that can go whatever direction so it is a dreaded process i should have done it a long time ago so if people are on the fence i would strongly encourage them to do it it doesn't take as long as you can and definitely put some marketing effort in it i don't think it is enough to just rewrite the book get a new cover get a new description and not do anything it's like opening a store

You need to tell people there is a store open in their neighborhood and whatever you're selling, you need to advertise. So like I said, those three pronged approach, try to network with the authors in your genre. two-way approach that you give to them. And definitely some of the authors will reciprocate and they'll give back. Try to put some money if you can into promotional sites, Facebook ads, whatever you are.

capable of doing and thirdly if you have a mailing list definitely try to rely on your readers as much as you can and as much as they'd like to support you that's amazing ethan and hey Thank you so much for coming on to the Book Marketing Show and sharing this experience with us. I appreciate the opportunity and I love the shows. I'm a regular listener.

I actually keep notes. I listen when I go for my lunch break walk and I keep notes and I pause and restart whenever I hear something that I really want to use it in my marketing or... in my career so thanks a lot for all the hard work you put in in your shows oh you bet well that means a lot to me All right, guys, so we just heard from Ethan, who had a book that had been out for a long while. It was getting some life. It wasn't completely dead, but it was definitely not where it should be.

Plus, with the reviews, he knew that he needed to do something about the book. He chose to basically truly republish it. Disregarding some 500 reviews, I mean, what a gut punch, right? But he knew he had to and he wanted to give it that fresh new start. But the most important part was he used all the things he learned in the past couple of years.

He had used networks with other authors that he'd built up with. He had an email list that he had worked hard to get over the years. And remember, start your email ASAP, okay? Can't stress that enough because you never know what's going to happen. If he hadn't have done that years ago, he would have had zero from this launch. So he sent out a concentrated email. He got all these reviews. He used another author network.

And finally, he started doing some of the big promotion sites. He started doing AMS ads and Facebook ads. And those things helped to reinvigorate and start sending off. his sales, which by the way, make sure to check the show notes where I'm going to show you his actual sales so you can see what it looked like before and then after. And more importantly, the continued amount of sales over time.

So there you have it, guys. If you're sitting there with a great book and you know it could be doing better, go ahead and use some of the stuff you've learned. Give it a fresh new start and revive that dead book. I'm Dave Chesson. of Kindlepreneur and the Book Marketing Show Podcast, signing off.