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Publishing using a launch company

Omni

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@Justin Gesso Thank you for sharing your results!

I'm really surprised at a few things Epic Launch missed for being a company that specializes in ebook launches and hope the following comments help you and others reading.

1) The Publishing Date and New Releases badge. The book shouldn't have been published 1 month prior to release. Maybe a week before, at max, so your advanced reviewers can post their honest reviews. Because it's been past 30 days, you won't rank on the top right where there are "Hot New Releases." Keeping in mind that more sales means higher sales rank and more organic visibility, that's a LOT of lost sales and email captures.

2) At 7.95, your book will vanish off the front page without paid traffic. Then it'll lower to 1 sale every other day (200k+ ranking). Your current number of reviews won't organically sustain a $8 book, especially with the competition you have in your categories. I'm assuming you've increased the book price so your FB Ads and Amazon Ads have a positive ROI. If that's the case and the strategy works, continue with it. If the paid traffic still produces a negative ROI, you need to think about the purpose of your book. If it's a lead gen to signup for your email list so you can sell a higher value product or service, then you should keep it at 99c or 2.99 for a much longer time and ride off the front page traffic. Then supplement that with paid ads depending on the purpose behind this launch. Although 2.99 will subsidize your ads and you still won't breakeven, you'll get a lot more sales, more email signups and make your real sales on the backend with your products or services.

3) Audiobook? For non-fiction, this typically adds another 30-50% of sales.

4) Bestseller status: I've personally never liked how authors claim to be international bestsellers by ranking on top of sub-subcategories and selling <1000 paid copies...but to each his own.

5) Going forward (assuming you have an upsell product or service). I would determine the price point so your lead gen has maximum downloads and stays visible on the front page. Do your media tour and have them link back to your site for some backlinks and to establish more authority. Continue FB ads to your book if it's an effective lead gen or maybe straight to your product or service if the kindle demographic doesn't match your target audience. Explore other marketing like email ads (e.g. bookbub). Ensure you have a FB pixel to fire on certain pages for retargeting efforts on the upsell. That's all I can think of for now. Good luck!
 
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Justin Gesso

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
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134%
Jun 4, 2014
122
164
Colorado
@Justin Gesso Thank you for sharing your results!

I'm really surprised at a few things Epic Launch missed for being a company that specializes in ebook launches and hope the following comments help you and others reading.

1) The Publishing Date and New Releases badge. The book shouldn't have been published 1 month prior to release. Maybe a week before, at max, so your advanced reviewers can post their honest reviews. Because it's been past 30 days, you won't rank on the top right where there are "Hot New Releases." Keeping in mind that more sales means higher sales rank and more organic visibility, that's a LOT of lost sales and email captures.

2) At 7.95, your book will vanish off the front page without paid traffic. Then it'll lower to 1 sale every other day (200k+ ranking). Your current number of reviews won't organically sustain a $8 book, especially with the competition you have in your categories. I'm assuming you've increased the book price so your FB Ads and Amazon Ads have a positive ROI. If that's the case and the strategy works, continue with it. If the paid traffic still produces a negative ROI, you need to think about the purpose of your book. If it's a lead gen to signup for your email list so you can sell a higher value product or service, then you should keep it at 99c or 2.99 for a much longer time and ride off the front page traffic. Then supplement that with paid ads depending on the purpose behind this launch. Although 2.99 will subsidize your ads and you still won't breakeven, you'll get a lot more sales, more email signups and make your real sales on the backend with your products or services.

3) Audiobook? For non-fiction, this typically adds another 30-50% of sales.

4) Bestseller status: I've personally never liked how authors claim to be international bestsellers by ranking on top of sub-subcategories and selling <1000 paid copies...but to each his own.

5) Going forward (assuming you have an upsell product or service). I would determine the price point so your lead gen has maximum downloads and stays visible on the front page. Do your media tour and have them link back to your site for some backlinks and to establish more authority. Continue FB ads to your book if it's an effective lead gen or maybe straight to your product or service if the kindle demographic doesn't match your target audience. Explore other marketing like email ads (e.g. bookbub). Ensure you have a FB pixel to fire on certain pages for retargeting efforts on the upsell. That's all I can think of for now. Good luck!
Awesome feedback. Exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping to generate.

I will pass this info along to the Epic guys to get their take.

I do plan to do an audio book, but did not launch with one. Good to know on the sales percentages.

As for the price, that's very timely. I will certainly monitor and bring it back down to $2.99 if I start losing traction.

Great post...thanks.
 

Justin Gesso

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
134%
Jun 4, 2014
122
164
Colorado
@Omni I took your advice and dropped the price to 2.99. The sales volume shot way up. As I let this rebuild reviews, it's pretty clear I'll need to keep the price down.

Based on your comment, it sounds like you have a price/review ratio or some sort of sliding scale in mind. Would you share more detail (numbers and targets) on how you'd grow a book at this stage?

Thanks again.
 

Omni

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Jul 18, 2014
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@Justin Gesso No golden ratio. It's highly dependent on what your target customers are used to paying for a book in your category. I publish fiction so can't give specific advice here. With a 4.3+ star rating at 100+ reviews, you can typically command a premium. With 300+ reviews, you can command a higher premium. What that premium means is niche specific. Just think about how you approach amazon shopping and at what review count you don't even bother reading reviews.

I'm a little surprised that Epic Launch wouldn't include a post-launch plan for sustaining your sales. What's even more troubling is how your review count is actually lowering. From whatever high it was to 18, then 17, and now 15. This means that amazon is taking down the reviews that were initially there for social proof.

Typically I've found 2 things cause the loss of reviews:
1) Amazon identified a close connection between the reviewer and yourself (usually friends and family)
2) Amazon has banned the reviewer accounts and all the reviews from those account go away with it.

Either way, this means that Amazon does not trust the quality of the reviews and is actually removing them. It indicates that the launch company doesn't have a quality launch list (aka Advanced Reviewers) or YOU didn't have quality list, depending on who was responsible for that.

Your key focus at this point is more traffic and more social proof for higher conversions. Conversions come from the review rating, review count, blurb and cover (your cover is great!). Traffic comes from my earlier post above.
 
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Justin Gesso

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
134%
Jun 4, 2014
122
164
Colorado
@Justin Gesso No golden ratio. It's highly dependent on what your target customers are used to paying for a book in your category. I publish fiction so can't give specific advice here. With a 4.3+ star rating at 100+ reviews, you can typically command a premium. With 300+ reviews, you can command a higher premium. What that premium means is niche specific. Just think about how you approach amazon shopping and at what review count you don't even bother reading reviews.

I'm a little surprised that Epic Launch wouldn't include a post-launch plan for sustaining your sales. What's even more troubling is how your review count is actually lowering. From whatever high it was to 18, then 17, and now 15. This means that amazon is taking down the reviews that were initially there for social proof.

Typically I've found 2 things cause the loss of reviews:
1) Amazon identified a close connection between the reviewer and yourself (usually friends and family)
2) Amazon has banned the reviewer accounts and all the reviews from those account go away with it.

Either way, this means that Amazon does not trust the quality of the reviews and is actually removing them. It indicates that the launch company doesn't have a quality launch list (aka Advanced Reviewers) or YOU didn't have quality list, depending on who was responsible for that.
Thanks, @Omni. Terrific info.

Epic did give me a post-launch plan; however, this is my first rodeo, so I'm trying to get feedback from different sources (such as yourself). This thread helps me do that and also hold Epic accountable.

Your key focus at this point is more traffic and more social proof for higher conversions. Conversions come from the review rating, review count, blurb and cover (your cover is great!). Traffic comes from my earlier post above.

Great stuff. Again, highly appreciated.
 

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