HelloOoOo everybody!
Have you self-published or do you plan to self-publish a book? Wanna sell a shit ton of copies of that book? Today I'm going to teach you how to plan a group sale.
A group sale is when multiple authors discount the ebook version of their book together, and they all promote the sale at the same time. Typically, you need at least five authors to make a group sale work. Usually, these authors are indie authors, because indie authors have control over the pricing of their ebooks. Traditional authors usually do not have this privilege.
These sales typically last for a few days to a week, maybe two weeks. It depends on the discount price, as well as the strategy, which is what we're going to talk about first. There are usually two possible strategies for a book sale. Let’s get into it.
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Number 1: Strategies
The most popular strategy is for writers of series. Typically, you would put book one of the series on sale, in order to drive a lot of traffic to the series opener. If readers enjoy book one, they'll feel compelled to buy books two, three, and so on at full price. This is what we call a loss leader. Book one is sold below its market value with the intention of snagging a great profit on the other books in the series.
The second popular strategy for a book sale revolves around exposure. You can do this for the first book in a series, you can do it for a standalone, or you can do it if you only have one book out. In this situation, you're putting your book on sale for the sole purpose of getting it to as many readers as possible, because readers are more likely to take a chance on a book if it's discounted. With this strategy, you know you're not going to make a substantial profit, but that's not the point. The point is to expand your audience and reach as many new readers as possible. So it's a good strategy to utilize if you're an author who doesn't have as large of an audience as you would like.
Now that you've chosen your strategy, it's time to pick the duration, start date, and shtick.
Number 2: Duration
Starting with the duration. Usually, a group sale lasts from anywhere between one day to two weeks. If the book is being discounted for free, usually the sale is much shorter, we're talking a day or two. If the book is being marked down to $2.99 or just $0.99, then usually the sale is a little bit longer.
Number 3: Start Date
So when do you start your sale? If you have a popular platform that updates on a particular day of the week, then that is a great day to start a sale. For example, I post videos on Wednesdays, so Wednesday is a great day for me to start a sale because then I can announce the sale in my next video. That said nine times out of ten, it's a good idea to start a sale either at the start of the month or on a Monday. Mondays signify the beginning of most people's week, thus, it's really easy to figure out the sale.
Number 4: The Shtick
Lastly, we have the shtick, which is the theme of the sale. If it's February and your sale consists of romance novels, the obvious theme is Valentine's Day. If it's November the shtick can be Black Friday. But most of the time the shtick usually revolves around the genre of the books included, which is what we're going to talk about next.
Number 5: Author Group
How do you choose the authors to participate in your sale?
This is a very important step because if you screw this part up, you are ruining the sale for everyone involved. Multiple books by multiple authors are being put on sale, and it is expected that every single author advertises that sale. That means multiple audiences are going to be exposed to different kinds of books. Say, I'm hosting a group sale with author Iona Wayland, that means my audience is being exposed to Iona’s work, and Iona’s audience is being exposed to my work. This is called cross-promotion, and it's the entire reason group sales exist. It's also why you have to select your authors carefully.
Number 6: Similarities
The first thing you wanna do is select authors from the same or similar genres. For example, when I host a group sale for The Savior's Champion, I usually choose other authors who write fantasy, dark fantasy, or fantasy romance. This is because again, you are trying to expand your audience. So it doesn't make sense to tap into say, mystery readers when I'm writing a fantasy romance.
Number 7: Platform
You also need to be particular about choosing authors who have a comparable size platform to you. Say you host a group sale with ten authors, one author is huge, and the rest are teeny-tiny. This means that one big author is the only one bringing their audience to the table. Which is great for the teeny-tiny authors, but it really sucks for the big author, and they're gonna be pissed. Obviously, no two audiences are identical but try to find authors within the same ballpark.
Most sales I've been involved in have a mix of very large authors and some smaller authors. But most of the authors involved are mid-size, which is fair. There are also some group sales that will literally include hundreds of authors, and in that case, it doesn't really matter the size of every author's individual audience, because so many authors are being involved.
Number 8: Communication
The next thing you need to do is start a line of communication.
Most sales I've been involved in establish communication by good old-fashioned email. When getting the communication going, the steps you need to take are:
One (1): Let authors know what you expect from them.
Typically, authors need to put their books on sale for the appropriate timeframe. They need to advertise the sale on social media, and they need to advertise the sale in their newsletter. This is what is expected from group sales at a minimum, and it needs to be communicated.
Two (2): Let authors know if this sale is domestic or international.
Different publishing platforms have different methods for setting sales. So you need to let the authors know just how far-reaching the sale is supposed to be.
Number Three (3): What you need from the author.
You will probably need a variety of elements from the author in order to set up the sale, and that's what we're going to talk about right now.
Number 9: A Landing Page
The next point is setting up the landing page. If a bunch of books are going to be on sale at the same time, it really helps to have a landing page that showcases these books side by side. That way readers can easily shuffle from one book to the next, in order to make their purchase. Typically, the landing page is on the hosting author's website.
The minimum items you need from each author for this landing page are:
The author's name.
The book's title.
The book’s genre.
And most importantly, a link to buy the book.
Depending on the sale, you might also need:
A summary or description of the book.
Popular tropes in the book.
A link to the author's website or newsletter.
The author's photo.
A picture of the book cover.
Whatever items you need, you gotta ask the author to provide them via the email chain. Once you have acquired these items, you can set up your landing page so it can be the hub for your group sale.
Number 10: Social Media
The next step is to prepare the social media images. It's time to create social media images for everyone to share throughout the sale. You can use Canva. You can use Photoshop. I don't give a shit. If you're not good at this step, find a friend who is, because group sales do not work without promo.
Typically, you want to create one to two images that showcase all the books in the sale, or at least as many of the books as you can fit in the image. And then maybe one image per book in the sale, that way the author feels special. Then you need to make sure these images are available to all the authors in the sale. The easiest way to do this is through Google Drive, Dropbox, or an email zip file.
You also need to provide the description for the social media posts. That means the text for the body of the social media posts that explains the instructions of the group sale, as well as details all the authors participating. This is especially important! If you don't provide the description, that means the other authors are gonna wing it, and they're not always gonna wing it right. Make it as easy as possible for the other authors to promote a sale, because the easier it is for them, the more rigorously they'll promote it.
Number 11: Launch!
And the last step is to launch the sale and share it. Remember, you gotta share the sale on your social media platforms, as well as your newsletter at an absolute minimum, and the other authors have to do the same. If you did everything right, you could potentially receive hundreds of orders.
I once received 300 orders for a sale that I barely promoted, and 900 orders for a sale that I promoted hardcore. For context, many books don't see 900 orders in their lifetime, let alone within a few days. Follow your order progress and see how it changes throughout the sale. Then ask the other authors how their book is performing. This should give you the data you'll need to make your next sale even better.
So that's all I've got for you today!
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