This is a follow-up article to How to beat Amazon’s book marketing system. In that article, we saw that Amazon gives your book a thirty-day boost when you first publish it. After that, if it hasn’t done well enough, it sinks without trace. But you can relaunch a failed book or series, and give it a second shot at success.
Why did it fail?
The first step is to think about why the previous book or series failed. It may have been through lack of marketing, or there might have been something wrong with the book or series itself.
Look at your reviews
Reviews are a good place to start, if you have any. Do any of the reviews point out problems? Is the story implausible or full of plot holes? Are the scenes poorly described? Is the plot too predictable (or too unpredictable), or too boring? Is the ending too easy to guess, or a complete let-down?
What about your characters? Could your readers pick them out in a crowd or a police line-up? If not, think about how you could better describe them to make them instantly recognisable. Are they the right characters for the story, the genre, and the market you’re aiming at? Would different characters make a better story or be more appealing to your readers?
NOTE: If you don’t have any reviews, we’ll look at how to fix that in the next article.
Get other writers to help
Have any other writers read your book? If there’s a writer’s group near you, it’s worth going along. The members will read your work and suggest improvements, and you can do the same for them in return. There are plenty of online groups too. If you’re a member of Facebook, search for a writer’s group in your geographic area, or in your genre or subject. Join a group and ask if anyone would be willing to read your book and help you fix the issues. Volunteer to do the same for other members. You might end up forming your own little private group where a few of you read and fix each other’s books.
Another option is to pay an editor to fix the problems.
Your book might just need a quick tidy up, or no changes at all. On the other hand, you might discover that it needs a complete rewrite. Hopefully it won’t take too long to fix the problems.
Fix the title
The next thing to look at is your book’s title. Does it grab your attention like a stunning newspaper headline? Does it make you want to immediately grab the book from the shelf to find out what it’s about? Can you tell what it might be about – or at least which genre it falls into?
If it does none of those things, or it doesn’t do them well, it needs to be changed. Again, a writing group should be able to help you with this. If you’re working on your own, try coming up with some tabloid newspaper-style headlines that describe the story and characters in just a few words. Make those words sensational and over-the-top, and really over-sell it. You can tone it down a little once you’ve come up with something great. (Or, if it’s a comedy, don’t tone it down at all!)
Fix the subtitle
Does your book have a subtitle? If it does, is it any good? Does it clarify or intrigue? If it doesn’t have a subtitle, would it help if it had one?
It’s worth looking at other books in your genre on Amazon or another bookstore to see what other writers have done. Look for books with subtitles and see which ones you like best. Can you give your book a subtitle that’s even better than theirs? Once again, your writing group could help with this.
A new cover
Now let’s take a look at your book’s cover. If you have a printed copy of your book, how does it look when you put it alongside the others on your bookshelf? Does it look like it belongs there? Does it stand out or does it get lost? Is it stunning? Do you feel a desperate urge to pick it up?
Once again, this is something you can try with your writing group. Show them a selection of books in your genre, with yours amongst them. Ask them to choose the one that appeals to them the most. If they don’t pick yours, ask them why. How can you make your cover better than the others you showed them, so they always pick yours?
This isn’t something you can do on your own; you need to involve other people. You might think your cover is fabulous, but your potential readers might be completely turned off by it. You won’t know that, nor how to fix the problems, unless you ask them.
Fix the blurb
So, your new title, subtitle and fabulous cover have convinced someone to take a closer look at your book. What do they look at next? Probably the blurb or book description – the little piece of marketing text that convinces them to buy it. Is yours any good? Does it convince and persuade?
Here’s an easy way to write a blurb. Imagine that your book is a movie and you’re watching the trailer. What would the voiceover say. Listen to that deep, rumbling voice… “In a world where ostriches rule the land and barnacles rule the sea, only one man can save humanity from a fate worse than death. Stan Bean is that man, and these are his adventures.”
Then briefly explain why the world is like it is and who Stan Bean is. Mention a couple of the things he gets up to as he struggles to put things right. Don’t give the ending away, but pose two or three questions that hook readers in. Will Stan succeed, or is humanity doomed? Will he be forced to marry the Barnacle Princess and father their children? Or will the ostriches kick him to death before the end of the first act?
(I just made that blurb up, and I really want to write the story now!)
End the blurb by saying that your book would be perfect for fans of [whatever type of story it is] and authors like [name two or three famous authors in your genre whose stories are similar(ish) to yours].
If you need more help writing great blurbs, follow Bryan Cohen on Facebook. He holds regular free classes – and even Amazon recommends him.
Don’t forget to choose some awesome keywords, as we discussed in the previous article.
Time to republish … but first some marketing
You’re almost ready to relaunch your failed book or series and turn it into a big success. The problem is, if you publish it the same way you did before, you’ll end up with another failure. You don’t want that. So you need to do some marketing before you publish it.
But first, let’s get rid of the old book or series. Sign into Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or whichever book distributor you used and unpublish it. (Note that Amazon won’t let you delete it, but you can archive it so it doesn’t show up on your bookshelf. It will still be lurking in the background, though, and you’ll be reminded of it whenever delve into your archived books.)
The sneaky relaunch (again)
So, a great way to begin the marketing process is to do what I suggested in the Sneaky Relaunch section of the previous article. Build up a mailing list of at least 300 people before you publish the book, or the first book in the series. If it’s a series, make the first book free if you can. Republish the rest of the books in the series at thirty-day intervals. Make sure there’s a link to the next book in the back of the previous one.
Once you’ve republished your book (or the first in the series), and announced it to your mailing list, it wouldn’t hurt to do some advertising. My advice would be to advertise it heavily for a couple of weeks to give it a big push. We’ll look at advertising in more detail in another article.
Get lots of reviews
Another thing that helps sell books is reviews – you want as many as possible. Over a hundred, ideally. We’ll look at how to get more book reviews in the next article.
More great tips
Would you like some more tips, ideas and advice on how to launch a successful book or series? I have a book! Check out The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book.