AP 0847: How Do I Boost Ebook Sales?

AskPat 847 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 847 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a great question today from Jules, but before we get to her question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks, one of my favorite companies because they help me not only with bookkeeping and keeping track of my income and expenses and those kinds of things. Also with tax season it makes it really easy to find these reports and stuff, but they also help me with invoicing. Invoicing is really important because that's how I bill people who I coach, my students or companies that I consult with, those kinds of things. It makes it really easy because in less than 30 seconds, I can send them an invoice. I get to keep track of who opens, who pays, all those kinds of things. It's super simple and I highly recommend it. If you want to check them out, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and just make sure enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. All right now, here's today's question from Jules.

Jules: Hi, Pat. I'm Jules from HelloImHandmade.com, and first I just wanted to thank you for your podcast and your book, Will it Fly? You've been incredibly helpful helping me build my online businesses and setting up streams of passive income and you didn't even know it. Thank you. I am grateful for you. My question for you is this, about a year ago, I wrote an ebook about how to get more followers on Instagram. Sales were great at first. I had a five figure launch I was ecstatic with. I almost couldn't believe it, but after six months or so sales really started to dwindle and now it's about a year later and it's at a point where it's only really selling about two or three copies a week. I've been thinking about taking two different paths. One would be to update and revise the current ebook and relaunch it. There have been some changes to Instagram that I could include like Stories, etc., but the second idea would be to simply reformat the current ebook to sell on Kindle for 99 cents or $1.99 or whatever, because the content is actually still perfectly valid and works to this day.

I still use it myself, and so I know it helps people get more followers. It seems like that would be easier. Honestly, the thought of revising and relaunching kind of seems daunting to me, but I might be able to make more money in the long run. My brain is just going back and forth. Maybe I wouldn't make more money in the long run. I'm not sure. I've never sold on Amazon before and I have heard good things. Anyway, I'd just really love to know what you think. I need your input. Thanks again, Pat, for everything you do. You're the best.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Jules. Thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and all of your support. I love the name of your site by the way, HelloImHandmade.com. I just want to give you a quick shout out there. Now, when it comes to your book, there's like you can tell, there's a number of different things you can do. Let's start with the second question. Should you go to Kindle? Kindle I believe is an amazing platform because there's a lot of people searching for books. It's a search engine or algorithms are involved so that you can be found by more people too, and you can make some money from it, from passive income, because it's there and once people start to find it and leave reviews and all those kinds of things, it also helps you with building authority because people can go and see those books there. That can help, but I wouldn't discount your book to just 99 cents right at the start, so if you're going to do this I would go and actually launch it on Kindle like a real book, similar price to what you were offering already, perhaps. I don't know what the price point is on your site.

But here's the thing, I would also relaunch a brand new revision. I know maybe that's not what you wanted to hear because you wanted these things to be easy, but when you revise your book it's going to last you much longer. Like you said, there's some updates. Even though the content there now is still useful, having a relaunch or a second edition is going to give you an excuse to make a huge deal out of it, to have some of your previous customers who enjoyed the book so much get access to it, but more than that, it's going to let them share it. It's going to be because it's of this huge event that you're creating now because it's a revised edition. It's going to increase your authority. It's going to increase your reach. It's going to increase your search results on Amazon. I would do both at the same time.

Create a second edition, so revise it. You don't have to revise it a ton. You can add a few more case studies. You can update it with the Stories part. You can correct anything that was sort of done incorrectly the first time around. It doesn't have to be like writing a huge book. I know that sometimes when you think of a revision, that you think of oh, I just have to start over. No, you just have to update a few things and change things around a little bit. It doesn't have to be very much, but a new cover for example and things like that can really give you an amazing excuse, and not really an excuse, a reason to relaunch with a bang, to get more people involved, to make a huge deal out of it. You can even do it on Amazon at the same time so that you can get sort of the rush of people coming and buying your book and getting the advantage of getting on the Bestseller lists and all those sorts of things. We've done a number of different episodes on the SPI podcast like I'm sure you've heard related to book launches and building street teams and all those kinds of things to help you climb the rankings on Amazon and get more book sales. That's the first thing I want to mention.

Should you revise it? Yes, and relaunch. Should you reformat that to sell on Kindle? Yes. I think you should. Yes to both of those. Finally I want to say well, what is the book leading to? This is a big issue that I had when I first started out and I wanted to write a book. Whenever I spoke about my book to my mentors, they were like okay, and then what. I was like what do you mean and then what. The book is the thing. They were like no, the book is the start of a bigger thing. I was like I don't get what you mean. Well, this is why Smart From Scratch, my course came out, as a result of people who have purchased Will it Fly? and who needs a little bit more hand holding, so SmartFromScratch.com has gone through six figure launches now as a result of the book being the start of that relationship building process, which it has been for you already. Jules, I would recommend to you to also think in the future, okay, after this revision comes out, you're going to get more sales. It's going to give you even more money in your bank account to offer something even bigger in addition to that.

What can that be? It could be anything. Obviously related to serving your audience, but perhaps it's an online course on this stuff. Perhaps it is an event or an online summit where you gather other people who you know in this industry together, which I know a lot of people have done in many different industries to very profitable outcomes. Yeah, Jules, I just want to challenge you to think about okay, well, what happens after this book so you don't have to keep constantly coming into this hamster wheel of revisions, but rather keep and focus on this next revision as the start of a new sort of process and funnel, if you will, to get people on your email list, of course, but also to get people into some bigger program down the road. You'll be able to make even a lot more, but again, as a by-product of serving more people, because yeah, a book can do a fantastic job of teaching, but I know from personal experience that having something else beyond the book that not everybody, not everybody who reads the book is going to get it, but some people who will want more access to you or access to more hand holding or accountability or a group or a community or more content or more detailed content; giving them that option there on top of that, it's going to make it easy.

Instead of just launching that straight away, you have this book already to lead into it. Yeah, that's what I would go for. Of course, that's a lot, so take that big goal in mind and rewind. Break it down into steps and focus with deadlines at each of those steps and milestones. Celebrate each milestone along the way, and then you'll reap the benefits. I swear. First thing you want to do, revise the book. Don't feel like you have to start it from scratch again, but just revise it. Number two, relaunch it and if you want to relaunch it on Kindle, yep, you can do that. Then, plan ahead in terms of okay, well what does that all lead to. Jules, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Here is, first of all just one more shout out to FreshBooks. If you wanted to go and check them out for 30 days for free, go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat. Make sure you enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. Then also here is a quote to finish off the day. This is from Thomas Watson. He says, “The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm.” Hopefully, Jules, and everybody else out there listening, that you are enthused right now and excited about whatever it is that you're working on. I hope so, because I am excited for all of my stuff and I want to take you along with me because sharing everything along the way as I always do at SmartPassiveIncome.com. You guys, thanks so much. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye for now.