Daily Archives: May 5, 2021

Release Month…What Happened?

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers. 

I just finished the first release month for The Good Girl Part Trois.  That statement brings to mind a good question…how long is the new release period for a book?  I haven’t got a clue.  I saw some blogs hinted at one to three months.  Here’s the thing, depending on the supplemental formats of your book, your new release period can last a few months.  

• Check out this timeline:
• eBook Pre-order: 30+ days 
• eBook Release Day: 1 day
• eBook Release Month: 30 days
• Paperback Release Period: 30 days
• Audio Release Period: 30 days
• Hardcover Release Period: 30 days

If you used this proposed plan, your new release would last 5+ months.  This seems like a long time and it doesn’t count the amount of time required to write the book.  

Here’s what I mean.  If I’m focused, I can write a book in a month.  Then add in another week for a couple rounds of edits before sending it to my editor.  While waiting to get my book back, I deal with the other aspects…cover design, social graphics, ads and setting up a launch strategy.  Those things can add another month to the timeline.  Don’t forget edit review.  When  you combine those tasks with the release schedule, you will have been with your book almost a year.  In your mind, your book is no longer new, because you’ve moved on to the next book.

How did it go? I had a forty percent increase over the first month.  Let me clarify the first month was only a couple of days, thirty day pre-order and a couple of free giveaway events.

What were the results of my efforts?

Ads…

BookBub…not too good.  This is unusual for me to admit, I gave up.  I tried four different ads and none worked for book three.  However, they did well for the other two books in the series, but I attribute that to those books being free.

Facebook…good.  I haven’t done a thorough assessment, but it appears the ads are paying for themselves.  Again, the ad I’m running (I turned off the ones that weren’t producing) is doing well, but I’m about to tweak the copy to reflect that only one book is free.

AMS…I turned them off the second half of the month.  Risky move, but it saved me money.  I picked up sales from the Facebook ads.

Newsletter…I really don’t remember how these did.

Promotions…

These did exactly what I wanted. The free giveaways led to pre-orders and sales of book three. Plus I added 1000+ new additions to my mailing list.

Reviews…

This one really pleased me.  Reviews help drive sales of a series.  I had a few reviews on the first two books in The Good Girl series and was going to book a spot with a review service.  However, I waited too late to get reviews before my release.  Upside as a result of the free promo I got about the same number of reviews I was going to pay for. Plus I got reviews for my new release.  Here are the review numbers for the series as of this post.

If I’d booked a review service I was going to have to give the first two books away as well.  By participating in two free giveaways, I got more than I asked for.  I was in the number one spot  in a couple of categories on several of the Amazon stores for quite a while.  

If I had gone with the service, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get eyes on me.  Making the books free for a month across all platform, helped me get noticed and sell some backlist books.

So where am I in the release timeline?  I’m still pushing the ebook and prepping for the print book release.  I just received my print proofs from Ingram Spark.  OMG!!! I have found my print book soulmate.  I love the way these books turned out.  I have a couple of things to fix which were my fault.  I’ll talk about my experience with Ingram later.  I also used the Vellum print book tool.  I really liked the template I was using…thank you Kitty Bucholtz, but I was so overwhelmed with work, I needed a quick fix.  I’ll share about my experience with this tool later. 

The other thing I’ve decided to do, is make The Good Girl Part One permafree.  I want to see how the series does with book one free and pushed with Facebook ads.  

Happy May. See you next month.