speaker 0: 0:00
10 ways to resurrect a dying book on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by ECM Rush started in 2008 with one mission. To make online competition fair and transparent, with equal opportunities for all. To find out how SCM Rush can help you compete with the big boys. Go to serve no master dot com Backslash ECM rush today. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. No matter how hard you try, how much work you put into a book, do everything right during the launch. Eventually, you'll notice those numbers start to slip. The tropical go down, the sales will go down. The following will simply fade away, and this happens to books all the time. Sometimes it happens after a month or two, and sometimes it happens after a couple of years. I've had books stay number one or number two for two years, and I've had books that were very successful disappear start to slip after six or eight weeks. Part of the reason that our books start to slip is when we're in a competitive niche when we're in a competitive category, their new people launching books in there all the time and they're buying traffic and doing all the right things to. So in those days, when your book is just coasting, someone else is spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to steal your books position. So, of course, your book is gonna slip. It just It's totally natural. We want to do is adapt to that situation so that when it does happen, rather than freak out and go, I'm a failure. My book is over, it's dead. The numbers are gone. We want to take action. We want to get our book back in the game and bring it back up. And really, when your book drops below 30,000 that's when you should start doing things. So if you track your book rankings, that's the time to start taking action. The first thing you could do is an email push. Hopefully, by following my other systems on the teachings, you know that you want to collect e mails every time someone buys one of your books for all of your funds. Would have a big as big an email list as possible. Email everyone and make sure they cross by. So everyone who bought Book One, you say get booked. Two. If you haven't bought Book one and you've got a book to get Book one, get the other book in the series. A push like this could be very, very powerful, So you're just kind of getting your own followers who bought one book, too, about the other one. That's a really simple way to use your email list. And there's other, more effective things you can use evenly combined with some of the other techniques I'm gonna share with you in the moment when you have a technique, when you are running anything for a contest to lower the price, you can email people and just really, really cool things. I just for one of my promotions, just for her Christmas lower the price of the servant Master book for two days tonight and Sense and I messaged everyone who follows me on my list run social deviance and hay for the next two days. The book is nine and sense. This is a great time. Somehow you want people hasn't a chance to grab it, grab it. And it's also a great time to buy is a gift for someone else. If you think it's a good book, you could give it to someone else for nine cents. So it gives. Give someone a gift about time they notice it. The price has gone back up, and it looks like you bought him a full book in a full price. That's okay, Gift. It's horrible. And a little massive spike for me really pushed the rankings back up, which was really nice. A preholiday big boost, very simple technique. Using email and the 99 cent campaign. Another thing you can do is run a contest attaching a contest. Your book promotion is really, really powerful. There's two ways of running contest, you know that I like to use gleamed out. I owe for my contest. Gleam is really cool piece of software, every contest using in the past. When my friend runs doesn't the contest a month using gleam, it's really great. What you could do is reward different actions and say, Oh, there, you know, share about this book or get someone else to buy the book. You don't have to tell your contest to people buying the book. What you could do is have contests around all the people who already bought the book, leaving reviews or all of you about the book sharing with their friends and things like that. You could do a social contest where you have a page. It's all about a great The book is, and people share that page of their friends and you begin to bring in more people who are interested your topic and again this leads us into idea. Number three would just tell a friend to get your audience to tell a friend. Anyway, you can say to people, You just email us and say, Hey, if you like this book, it'll be a great time to let your friends know about it. This type of technique is very, very powerful because of people like you, people are followers you. If your book is successful, then people would gladly share it most of time. You don't tell. A friend does have a lot of doing, but as soon as you mentioned the idea, they go. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. That is a cool lady I should share with a friend. I should tell my friends about this book because it helped me, and I think it will help them. I really enjoyed. I think they'll enjoy it. How many times in my life I read a book my parents recommended many, many, many times? How Times Writer book. So when you worked with her friend recommended many times, book recommendations are very normal. They're very natural thing. It's We wouldn't create an audience. It does the same thing now. All of these techniques as well are things that you can turn into recurring or perpetual, which means you, Adams, your automated email statements. So people do them all the time. You create something that people are always doing because they get the evil about, Oh, share with a friend. You know, 14 days after the buy, your books will be coming for your auto responder. really, really powerful to me. Okay? Now they've done a little warm up is to run a free promotion. Amazon months. You run the promotion of their Kindle countdown deal or free promotion five days out of every 90. So if you wanted, your book could be free 20 days a month, 20 days a year. Or it could be free one day in months to be free every month of the 19th if you wanted to. And when your book is free, the exact same thing you get the word out, you say. Hey, everyone, tell your friends my book is free right now. If you thought this book was good, this is a great chance for you to get a copy for free to get a copy of your friends. Get the word out. Get that book out there, share the book. Would your book is free. You can also buy traffic from a lot of different places. You can advertise on different newsletters. You could post is different. Websites have a whole list on my block, and another post lists all the different places where you could announce what a book is gonna be free. We do this What? We're launching a book that could also do it any other time we want. Any time your book is free, you could announce on these websites and they love it. You don't have to just do it the first time. Your book is free when you're first promotions happening. By pushing a book for free, you could very easily go back up the rankings and start getting some traction You could also do. And 99 cent promotion, which is where you just dropped the book. Die intends. Hey, I don't want to devalue my book too much. And I wanted to free campaign. Maybe you've used all your days. Maybe you did it, kid. A countdown deal. You could put your book down to 99 cents and again combined with any of these other actions you should believe in 19 cents for one or two days. My book is only doing 48 hours at night. I'd sense doesn't need be crazy. Just have time for able to check it out. You can just do 24 hours announced your list announced on social media, email Everyone you don't have my book is not. And since I was a great time to buy it. Sometimes when I'm doing a really hard push, I'll even say to anyone, Hey, if you grab a copy of the book, message me, don't pay, pal. You, the dollar pay nine. And since I sent him a dollar to make a penny, you may have even been one of the people that I've done that for. Sometimes I run one of those campaigns, and I am in my whole life because I really want as many cells as possible and for me paying some of the dollar. So big deal, because it pays me 35 cents on paying 75 cents a sale. But it's a way of getting more readers of paying 75 cents for a new customer or for a new person is not a lot. Their companies out there pay 17 or $35 for acquisitions. Anything under dollars? Okay, especially because it's a person is a buyer. It's a personal buy stuff on Amazon. That's a great acquisition for you. That's a really good person to add into your final order over to your other funnel. You could also buy a lot of traffic There are places where you can buy traffic, even if you don't lower the price on your book. There a couple of sources and I'll find them post them below this episode. But there are places where you can spend 5 2050 or even $100 say 70 bunch of traffic, and you don't have to lower your book price. It's really nice, and you congenital some sales. Usually, if you could just give five or 10 sales in one day, you know, chick book back in the momentum. There are other things you could do to change the course of your book or to make things a little better, you can change the free gift, and even more importantly, you can change the cover. Even you had it really a successful run with your previous cover, sometimes just changing it for a little while. We'll make a really big difference. It can really get all those people who saw before didn't buy it, and now they grab it and vice versa. So you start to get people who bottom before wouldn't like the new cover, but they already bought it. So now the new people, people see who would have been ordered before they saw the cover once and didn't pay attention to it. And you could grab a second round of people, especially because it will look like a brand new book. So all the people who scanned past your book in the past and ignored it, they'll scan, pass down, go Oh, that's a new book. They won't even realize that the book that's round for a while. So that looks like a new book with a bunch of reviews, which is great. Also, I recommend changing the book description. I changed my book descriptions about once a year, and I should probably do it more often, probably every three months. You should change your book description or tweak it or added it. I just don't put as much time and into it as I wish I did. I do do it once a year, but I just wish I had more time to do it by changing your book description so she would change. Your book covers well, tons of people about your book before or saw your book and didn't buy before, will think it's a new book now. People who already bought your book. Amazons say you already bought this book or you really read this book? I kill limits. You don't have to worry about tricking people. Amazon doesn't let that happen. I know this because I accidentally try to double by books all the time. I'm like, Man, Here's a science fiction book with nine years with nine books. I know I read some of them, but I don't know which is the last one I read. So what I do is I go to, like, book number four and click. Try to try to grab it and they go. No, you already read this. Try number five in the number six and I say Yes, six is the first time you ever read. So it was definitely buy things you already bought. It prevents you from making that mistake. It's very helpful. See, don't worry about people already bought your book. Accidentally re buy it by having a new covered in description. You basically breathe totally new life into your book, and it's like a brand new a brand new experience in a brand new chance. The next technique who try is to do a book tour this is where you pay a couple 100 bucks to a service and they help you get interviews and experiences and get your book out there on a bunch of blog's. So you go to a different log every day or different, like every couple of days, and they post a post or interview or different things like that, and getting more and more people aware and talking about your book is really good. It's a way to get access to new audiences. If you follow my launch strategy, my book launch strategy may have bought some traffic around that free promotion date and maybe even some minutes in traffic. When you first lost your book, he probably didn't do a book. Tour is a little more expensive book tours or anywhere from 155 or $600 depending on your budget range. But they could be really good at adding new continuous traffic source to your book that adding new place where any time people see that block post to go check out your book, it could be really, really good, and the tent thing you could do the 10th step when your book is dead is to create a bundle. I was just talking to someone this week about how, when you have a series of 45 books, you have to create a bundle option. People need to be able to buy all 10 books together. Now let me explain the bundle really carefully to you. You don't want to make it look like it's three books in one, or it's one book like it looks like a picture of a book like a paperback book, and it says There's three books in here. People don't perceive a lot of value from that. Instead, you want it to look like a box set so it looks like a cardboard box with 345 book spines, all showing just like if you go to Ah Bookstore and you look at the Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe. Siri's at seven books, and it comes with a little cardboard box that looks kind of fancy. So knows they have a picture across the spine of all five books. So you know the order. Put the books until the picture appears. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. This is just the one I remember for non McKay because I said, my sister had those seven book series. It looks really cool and it looks like, Wow, this is really valuable. This is a box set, whereas if you just get one paperback book and says There's three books here, Yeah, but it looks like one book. So you want to, as they always say, control perception. All businesses, based on perception of warfare, is based on perception. That's one of my primary tenets, and we want to make things seem as valuable and as high quality as possible. The more people feel like they're getting something amazing, the better. So as you're working in your book, when you notice that your book is starting to dip, it's simply about taking action. It's not about giving up. You now have 10 really key steps you can use when you follow these very simple steps. When you do any of these, just a couple of them usually are enough to give your book of boots. Now, if your book has been dead for a very long time, let's say your book has been dead for a year, three years, your book, instead of being like number 31,000. Your book is in the millions. You haven't sold a copy in months or your only selling couple copies every few weeks. We want to develop a very simple strategy for bringing it back to life. And to do that, what I recommend is change the cover. Change the description, do a free promotion day followed by one or 2 99 cent days. Okay, put all that together. Have those free and set of the few commotion about 10 days in advance or at least a week in advance. Then announced your free day as many places as you can't get the word out of your book is gonna be free. You could even buy free traffic from one of my traffic sources. If you spent about 100 bucks, your book is gonna be number one in your category. You have to spend a lot of money. So that's about the traffic budget you can think of for a free day for a good promotion. Then on the night and sent days, I also recommend buying some onion and sent trapping. He could spend $5.2050 dollars for civilians and traffic is really valuable that instant traffic system. Amazon. Hey, when this book is free, people like someone's got nine and sense it's done. I even recommend if you can do a little, rewrite a re edit and make the book version two point or something. So it seems like two new book, and he added a new chapters. You've done a little bit a couple steps to breathe life into it. So now when people come to it, they see a new thing. While this is going on, you also want to do it big push for reviews I cover in a previous podcast episode like a dozen ways to get reviews, Do whatever you can to get reviews. There's a lot of people that will only review a book when it's free or when you send them a copy and you can send him a copy on three days. That's the best time to send a gift copy out of free or nine and sent day if someone gets a Kim Unlimited download. The review is considered a non verified review, but if someone buys your book free, they get on the free promotion day leave review. It's considered a verified review so no Amazon's little quirks, but it really makes a difference. Verified reviews worth about 10 or 20 Ian Verified. I almost never get unverifiable views. The only time I get unverifiable views is when I send out copies free copies of the book in advance to some of my followers. And when they leave reviews, Amazon messes up. You know they leave a review so fast. The Daily Review Before they downloaded the book, you know, before I even sent out them a free copy. That book. They're so excited and that's okay. But that's how you end up with some and the only way I get on verified reviews. You have a book. You think it's dead. It's not dead. You could bring it back to life, change the cover, change a description. Do a little launch campaign free day, followed by one or 29 cent days by a little bit traffic. Or if you can't afford any traffic, that's okay. Go to the page of my block, where I tell you all the places to announce when a book is free and when a book is discounted. I know it's everywhere you can about the free day, you know, go to each of those blog's you just Twitter things and Post Post Post so that they'll put it on their list. Had this book is free today and then on the night and Sunday, Just do everything you can announce it to your list. Post messages on social media Do tell everyone, you know, do everything you can to drive traffic. Email. Everyone who's ever bought your book say, Hey, if you got the book yesterday for free and I thought was cool, tell a friend it's dealing 19 cents. You could still get to a friend, not spend too much money. It's a great gift. There's a great Christmas gift in the world. Spend a dollar, not incense hay. If you buy my book fry and since I'll send you a dollar so that way you're not spending too much money, right? You're not really buying anything. You only sending money to people who bought your book. And not everyone who buys the book and I am sensible. Then ask you for the dollar is not too much money, but it's a great little way to push people across the fence and by running a campaign like this. By treating your book like a business, you can turn it around. Your book doesn't have to die. You don't have to let your book fade away. Your book is an asset as long as you treat it that way. Yes, there are books that disappear. I have books that go up and down all the time. I have really good days and really terrible days for different books. Some days the book was still 20 copies. The next day doesn't sell any. If you, enough of those low days in a row or a bunch of the competition with you runs a campaign of their own will, then their books well, push up and yours will get pushed down and slowly work out of the top 10 out of Top 20. And then it will disappear into the hundreds of thousands 1,000,000 anything all my books dead. It's not that anything can be saved on it was. It's a constantly moving out. Whether it's constantly shifting game, you just have to take steps to do it. Now I know you're thinking, Well, this sounds a little bit expensive. I don't have $100 to spend on advertising, and that's okay. You could do a lot of these steps on spending any money. That's why I talk about going all those blocks to manually posting notifying everyone they have a free day. There's also place to see if you notify when you have nine and sent days. You could get a little bit of traffic without spending any money. You could do that. You get enough to bring your book back into the game without spending a penny, but also what I want you to understand. It's so important to have multiple books in your Siri's by having multiple books in the series, you can be profitable because once people by book one, then they buy book to at full price. Once you get people into your sequence or once people grab your book on, Kim can unlimited and they read one of the book to you Make your money back. These little steps are important. That's why having just one book it's very, very hard to be financially successful. The people who do really, really well one booker absolutely out liars, and I could tell you this right now, they're leaving a huge amount of money on the table by only having one book. See, with two books, you can not just double what you make but usually triple because people who buy book one than by book too great you doubled. But also some people randomly find book to and then go by Book one. And that's where you get that taste of the triple. So the other thing you could do what you have, a book that's dying is released. The next book in the series, pushed at book, continue to build your email. Let's continue to notify people of the other book continued to do cross promotion. So hey, thanks, right, But when you gotta check out book to create bundles that Books one and two are bundled, Book 123 Whatever. All of these steps, all these proactive actions, he's how you stay in the game is how you can resurrect a dead book. These air how you can take a debt book and turn into a real champion. Ah, final bonus step is to move your book into new categories. This will turbocharge any of these other efforts before you start a new campaign or try push draft put your book into a brand new category that hasn't been in before. So that way, new people searching for different things will find it. And when you do that, you add a little bit of traffic. You boost it up, you're out in a new category. You'll find this could bring the book back to life. When I took my de cluttering book, I moved into the hoarding category, became number one. We went from a book that was making nothing, had made nothing and was a total loss. The first book I ever did cost me a lot of money because I didn't know what I was doing. I spent money in the wrong way. It's all the things I try to protect you from. Okay, I spent way too much money in that book, and I was like, I'll never make that money back from that book. I'm actually close now, almost two years after releasing the book, but about 20 months or 20 months or so since I released the book, it's close to breaking even on my investment. Now I know that sounds crazy afterward. Two years, maybe it's my one big mistake. I spent more money in that book to any of the book. I've worked on any other book in my entire Siri's. I paid a lot of money for the cover of violence, a lot of money for the person who wrote the book. I made a lot of mistakes, and it's really because the first Kindle coach I hired just gave me awful advice, really set me to people that were way too expensive and what taken way too long I would have never made if I stayed following that pattern to pay what she told me I should pay for every ghost writer I would never make money. And Amazon it's still be massively in the hole, but had this book that was dead, I moved into new category. I put a little traction that you could hear The birds are going crazy, but I put a little traction behind the book, and suddenly it came back to life. And now the book is very, very well because I took these exact steps and took a book that was dead. Moved a new category, putting the traffic behind it boom so very, very well these air steps that you can take don't assume that a book is dead. Don't give up on a dead book. So often people show me their book and five years old, I've sold one or two copies. Just changing the cover alone would change the destiny of that book. If you wonder how to change the cover of your book, go to the old episode. I have an episode about 20 or 30 episodes ago. You go back to a post a link again in the show notes to the episode, right, breaking out exactly how to design and how to get the perfect book cover. If you follow these 10 steps and, of course, the 11th step of changing the categories, you can breathe new life into a dead book. You could resurrect your dead book and start making money again. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts. Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller, serve no master All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening. To serve no master podcast. Head over to serve no master dot com. Back slash podcasts right now to find out how you can win a free copy of my brand new book.