Post-Launch Book Marketing Tips with SA Bradley | Author Spotlight

What works and doesn't work when it comes to marketing and selling a book? When you are an unknown author in a genre that is more passion than profit driven, if you're wondering that and what kind of things you can learn from an author who's published their book more than two years ago and sales are still going strong, then this Author Spotlight with S.A. bradley is absolutely for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers and done right will help you grow your brand, build your business and make you money. The best part? You yes, you keep all rights and royalties today. I am so incredibly excited for you to meet this author. If you've been around the book launcher scene for a while, you've heard me mention him and his book because this book is absolutely one of our favorites and it was challenging. It wasn't a business book or a self help book. It didn't have a clear hook or even a perfectly clear audience when it arrived on our doorstep. But the passion of the author sells you on it, and his massively deep knowledge of the subject matter is something so rare to find. Oh, it's been such a fun journey working with him and we are so honored that he continues to work with us more than two years post launch. That's a big hat tip to my marketing team too, keeping him busy and growing his book sales month after month, year after year that he sticks with us. So without further ado, because nobody tells it better than SA Bradley himself, I'm going to turn it over to him to let you know what his book is about and who it's for. Take it away.

The title of my book is screaming for how horror makes you happy and healthy, and it's a love letter to all things that go bump in the night and how horror not only reinvents itself to reflect each generation's anxieties, but also how it can be healing as well as thrilling to a culture and as to an individual. I talk about horror as art and as social commentary, and so the audience is. If any of that sound provocative to you, if it sounded like something that made you curious, that's who the book is written for. So horror fans and specific, but really anybody who is somewhat intrigued by the idea of me saying something about horror being healing as well as thrilling, thank you Mr. Bradley.

Or as my team calls him, our historian of horror. His book launched at the end of 2018. So what has he learned in more than two years of marketing his book? Well, I asked him to tell you what worked and what didn't work so well. First, let's hear what did not work.

What didn't work for me. Bundling. Bundling with another author. In other words, creating a deal with another author where both of your books are showcased and there's a sale. Unless one of you of the two authors have a significantly bigger audience, you're not really helping each other. I sold very little. And if you can't help the other author, that person has a much larger group. They don't really have a lot of initiative to do any heavy marketing for this. This thing. So I found a kind of A lot of time went into working with an author on that. A lot of time to market it and build things up to have it really go nowhere. So that didn't really work for me. Online magazine articles outside of the obvious niche. So working with Sci Fi Channel, I had a Sci Fi interview that was really great. Book riot did something with those things really work well because they're part of the niche of entertainment that I'm working in. But then if you're talking about things that are outside of that, like putting me involved with something with psychology or self help, they just don't know what to do with me. I don't fit well next to pie recipes and things like that. So there were times that we had articles that they didn't even give me advanced knowledge that the article had actually come out. So they had no idea what to do with me. I was definitely the loose sock in the washer and dryer. It doesn't really work.

Ultimately, book marketing is experimentation, Especially when you're starting out without a big platform of social media followers or newsletter subscribers or fabulous, fabulous or fabulous YouTube friends. That means you don't know what's going to work until you try it. And then here's the part that can be hard to swallow. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. So you really do have to try with your book. Okay, so that's what didn't work. You here's what did work.

What did work? Well, Amazon ads. Probably the best return on investment of anything that we did. The budget goes to connecting the book to search engine keywords. So Amazon keywords. Somebody types in to the thing, what they're looking for. My book will float up to the top. I get anywhere between 750,000 to a million impressions every month and around 1,000 clicks through the service a month. It's not all book sales, but I certainly do sell quite a few books and that's without doing much outside of the ads. I have yet to be in the red on that. Every time I'm making more in sales than what I put in the budget on a monthly basis. Other things that work, anything that gets me talking to potential readers. So being a guest on podcasts, going to conventions, being a panelist, talk shows, things like that, where people can hear me articulate a little bit more of some of the ideas that are in there, let my personality come through. My passion tends to sell quite a few books.

Now here's a fun thing I wanted to ask him about. He's found a lot of success with live appearances. In fact, that's where we focus a lot of our efforts for him, on marketing, getting him in front of audiences, but not as a keynote speaker, which is what a lot of authors think about when they think of speaking and live appearances. We focused on niche audiences and book driven events where readers are hanging out. And that's what's really worked for screaming with pleasure. And here's S.A. bradley to explain.

I get the best results with horror and science fiction conventions, especially ones that are book centric. They're book conferences. The people who are going to be there are readers. I'm the best advertisement there is for my book. I love to talk with people and I really get passionate about the topics that are in my book and just the topics in general about horror. So when people come up to me and they're curious, they read something off of the back of the book or they've heard me in a panel. Once I start rolling, rolling with them on something, they really do tend to buy my passion as much as they are buying the book. Things that I look to do, panel discussions, book signings, book readings at libraries, book readings at bookstores, all that stuff is really good for me. Going to meet and greets, meeting with other authors and doing joint conversations with them. Anything that's not where people have to read if they hear us, it tends to be a lot better on that.

All right, now it's time for the question that you've all been asking me to ask our authors that come on here. And that is what is your experience working with book launchers and what advice do you have for authors who might be considering working with us or another similar type company? And let me tell you, SA Bradley is about to reveal something I haven't talked about on the channel yet. Yep, he's actually Going to teach you something and share an analogy of our service that you will never find in our marketing brochures. This is the real deal, my friends. Raw and real. Here he is.

So what I will say is that I'm still using the service. You don't know how much you need some of the services that are involved with Book Launchers until you're on the other side of a potential disaster. And that means getting to the release, after the release and even after the book is on sale for a while. You know the term death by a thousand paper cuts. Reality is you don't know what you need to be wary of. So you get the paper and think of each paper cut as like being a dollar lost out of your return on investment because you have to make the mistake before you know how to repair that. Book Launchers has already gone through all of that and they are basically helping you get past all that. Amazon may make it easy to get a book published online, but not to get it effectively online. In other words, they will give you the bare minimum. Being able to know how to play that system, how to make a robust sal on that system really is the finesse that Book Launchers is able to bring. One example of that that I want to give is called controlling the box on Amazon. This is something that happened with me, controlling the box. The box is the little box that says how much your book is selling for. There are third parties that are able to link to Amazon and sell your book at a lower rate. So you're maybe selling some extra books, but they're cutting into your bottom line because your book may be selling at $18.99 on Amazon through your own ownership of that box and being able to type in the number. But if they link to it and it starts selling a bunch of books, it goes down to say $14.99. Suddenly $4 is lost on that. I had no idea that was even happening. I had no idea the third party sellers could do that, that that was legal and it was all okay with AM to do was get in touch with Amazon and say, hey, somebody's taking liberties with the prices of my thing and they reset it and you have control over your box again. Something I would have never known. And that's one paper cut. That right there can take some money out of your pocket, but you will find out that there are legal things that you need to watch out for. What you say is there forever. And what I like to say, the copy editor and the content editor is like, it is like having a one on one conversation with the the absolute worst troll that you would ever have online instead of embarrassing you in front of millions of people and writing a really bad review that you can never get rid of. Instead they meet with you privately and tell you how terrible what you have said is and how you can fix it. And they make you fight for some of the things that you believe are your opinion. If you can get past them, you know they'll let that go. But most of the time what I found is I ended up with a much better book because of the input of the copy and the content editors.

So there you have it. Working with our editors is like having a one on one conversation with the worst troll you can find online. Oh, color me proud. I actually love that genuinely because we take editing very seriously at Book Launchers. We will not do just one edit of your book just because you try to convince us that's all it needs. No, we are for serious authors who want the best the best book possible and we do not want trolls out there tearing your book apart. So we do it for you. Now I am sure I have to do another video for you after that because you're going to be asking about controlling your Amazon buy box. That was a pretty golden tip and comment from him, wasn't it? Dropping massive value for you in a section all about Book Launchers. So that was pretty awesome. But we're not done yet. My personal favorite question is coming up. What is the biggest surprise for you since launching your book? And I have to tell you, this is quite possibly my favorite answer to date. Just watch his face as he shares this with you.

The greatest thing is that my book is now part of the curriculum at a film class at Webster University in St. Louis and I've been asked to speak as a guest and to introduce films during that class and also take Q and A with the students who have all read my book because it's part of the curriculum. That's pretty damn cool. Feels like you're a real deal author when something like that happens.

How cool is that to have your book as part of the curriculum and get to speak with the students who had to read your book for class? I love it. It was very, very cool and I love seeing his face as he talks about it. If you want to connect with the horror historian himself, visit hellbentforhorror.com where you can check out his podcast, find links to buy his book, and connect with him directly. Please join me in giving Sabradley a huge thank you for this incredible value packed video. So go ahead, smash that thumbs up button in. Thanks. Try it. It really does feel good. And let's chat about what you learned in this video in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbookswag like our mug and our oh so soft journal. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday so make sure you catch everyone by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on on. You are a delight to spend time with. Would you like to hang out for a little bit more? Great. Okay. Do you want to meet more of our wonderful authors and hear their advice? This playlist right here is our Author Spotlight videos. And if you're good with that and looking for tips on what makes a great author website because you're going to need one of those, then this video is exactly what you need. So go ahead and click on what you want to watch. I'm waiting for you.