So, my launch strategy for this book included:
- an announcement about the preorder,
- a blog post released during the pre-order period,
- an announcement on launch, with a one-week 25% discount
- one final announcement on the last day of the discount
Today, the discount ended and I raised my price up to full for the book. I have one more blog article related to the book that will go live this weekend, and I mention the book in that post, but do not push it directly.
The launch was not spectacular. I did not expect it to be. Frankly, the timing was bad. I should have launched it about a month earlier for much better success, but I missed that timeline and didn’t want to wait another full year. Despite that, though, I had decent success with the launch, as far as I can tell. I can only see the data from my direct sales, Kobo, and Amazon, but based on that, things went well.
Preorders: I had three preorders from my direct sales platform and three on amazon.
Orders: During the discount week, I sold only three more books directly, including two on the day I announced the final day of the discount, but I also sold three copies of other books (with four total sales after the announcement of the final day of the discount), and I have to believe those were related.
On Amazon, I sold five more copies during the launch week sale, including two paperbacks that were not on sale, and also sold five other books during that time. Just like the direct sales, I saw a spike of sales on the last day of the sale, with six total books sold.
The biggest takeaway here is that the discount and last-day warning really seemed to work, so I will be using that in the future on my fiction, too.