The Marketing Domino Effect

Successful Fiction Writing = Creating + Organizing + Marketing

I blog weekly on one of the above three topics, alternating between them. This week, I’m blogging on Marketing. Our topic today is what I call the “Marketing Domino Effect.” 

What’s that? When you have a series of novels, in theory each one can sell the next one in the series. In practice, that can work very well, once you’ve got 3 or more books in the series. But it’s not all smooth sailing. Some authors will have it easier than others. Read on…

Why Traditional Publishers are Wary of Series

When a series of traditionally published novels goes big, it can really go big. You can easily think of examples. The Harry Potter series. The Jack Reacher series. Sue Grafton’s “alphabet” series of mysteries. These were long series that did great. So traditional publishers love successful series. 

But there are a couple of issues that traditional publishers have to worry about, which make them wary. 

First, traditional publishers have to pay advances on novels they contract. They usually don’t want to pay advances for more than three books in a series. So even if you envision dozens of books, your proposal will probably only contain the first 3. And you won’t get the full advance on books 2 and 3 in the series until you write them. You’ll get some fraction of the advance. But even a fraction of an advance is cash the publisher has to commit far before the book starts earning money, and cash is precious, so that’s an issue for them. 

Second, you can’t predict when a series is going to be wildly successful. Most traditionally published series have tapering results. The second book usually sells fewer copies than the first. And the third book usually sells even fewer. Of course, there are exceptions, but publishers have steely-eyed accountants who don’t bank on exceptions. So they want to make sure the series is really going to fly before they commit to more than 3 books in the series.  

Despite all that, if you have a series in mind, do put that fact in your proposal. But the proposal should probably spell out only the first 3 books. You can add a sentence saying that you have ideas for more books in the series, but very few publishers are going to want to contract those until the first book or three has panned out. 

Why Indie Authors Love Series

Indie authors really love series. Let’s define what we mean here. An “indie author” is an author who acts as their own publisher. They don’t get an advance. They pay for their own editing, cover design, proofreading, and typesetting (or they do some of these themselves). Then they upload the electronic files for the book to Amazon and to the other online retailers and collect all the rewards, if there are any.

A lot of indie authors write long series of novels. 10 books or 20 or 30 in a series is not out of the question. 

So why do indie authors love series more than traditional publishers do? Because both of the issues faced by traditional publishers are reversed for indie authors. 

First, Indie authors don’t get an advance. So they don’t have to commit any money long-term. They just write the first book and hit Publish. The up-front cost for Book 1 in a series is exactly the same as the up-front cost for a standalone novel. That’s a huge advantage. 

Second, indie authors are better able to market Books 2, 3, 4, … in a series than a traditional publisher can. The reason for this will take some unpacking, and most of the rest of this blog post will do that unpacking. 

In a nutshell, indie authors are a bit more flexible than traditional publishers. As each new book in a series comes out, an indie author can easily change the back matter in the previous books to promote the new ones. They just change a few things, upload the new electronic files, and every book sold after that has the new back matter. And the back matter can be incredibly powerful in making the Marketing Domino Effect work…

Why the Back Matter Really Matters

Before we talk about back matter, we have to stipulate that Quality matters most in selling a novel. (See my article on The Success Equation to see my definition of Quality.) If a book has low Quality, selling its sequel is going to be a tough slog, no matter how smart your marketing is. 

But let’s assume each novel in your series has high Quality. Then how you do sell the reader on the next book? You sell the reader at exactly the moment when they’re most in love with your current book—right after they finish it. 

You do it by creating “back matter”—the stuff that comes immediately after The End. Back matter can have a lot of stuff, but here are the crucial Big Three marketing elements you want:

• A one-page sales pitch for the very next book in the series. 
• A one-paragraph request for a review for the current novel. 
• An “About the Author” page that invites the reader to sign up for your email newsletter.

Your back matter will typically have other elements too—Acknowledgements, Glossary, References, Book Club Questions, etc. There are no rules on what to put in, so these are all optional. 

But if you want to get the Marketing Domino Effect working for you, focus on the Big Three elements. Let’s look at each of them in turn.

Asking For the Sale

Immediately after the final page, add a one-page sales pitch for the next book in the series. Make a strong headline. I usually use, “Continue the Adventure…” for my headline, but use whatever you like for yours. Include a postage-stamp image of the cover of the next book in the series. Include a one-paragraph summary of Act 1 of the book. 

In the e-book version, you can also include a link directly to the sales page of the next book. But be careful! For each online retailer, put ONLY a link to the sales page ON THAT RETAILER for the next book. So in the Amazon edition of your book, put a link to the Amazon sales page. In the Kobo edition, link only to the Kobo sales page. The reason is that Amazon doesn’t want you putting links to Kobo or B&N or Apple in their books. And ditto for the other retailers. Putting in customized links to specific retailers is easy to do using Vellum, which is a commonly used typesetting tool that indie authors use.

Asking For a Review

After you’ve asked for the sale, ask the reader for a review. Do this with a light touch, and keep it short. I usually use the headline, “If You Enjoyed This Book” for this page. Then I have one paragraph saying that word-of-mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, and I’d appreciate it if they’d leave a review on the retailer where they bought the book. That’s all. 

Don’t make this a hard sell. You’re asking for a favor. Be polite, but do ask. Once a book has a few reviews, that provides “social proof” on the online sales page for the book. It’s way easier to sell a book with 2500 reviews than to sell a book with none. 

Remember that you are certain to get negative reviews eventually. Some will be scathing. Don’t read them. Tragically, bad reviews are like a candle, and authors are like a moth. Authors can’t help themselves. Despite my good advice, you’re going to read your bad reviews. Cry a little. Then go read the bad reviews for the book you consider the best novel ever written. I guarantee that novel has some really horrible reviews. Read them. Feel better. Then make a note to yourself to never read your bad reviews again. 

Asking For an Email Address

You would love to get your reader’s email address. That allows you to notify your reader when your next book comes out. So how do you do that? 

Write an About the Author page that comes right after the page asking for a review. The traditional headline is “About the Author,” which is a dreadful headline, but it’s very hard to do better, so just stick with it.

Then write the best, most engaging short bio you ever wrote in your life. If you know how to write funny, do so. If nobody has ever told you that your writing is funny, then it probably isn’t, so don’t try to learn it here. But do be brief and engaging. At the end of the bio, make a pitch to the reader to visit your website. The best pitch is tell your reader they can get some free goodies if they go to your website and sign up for your email list. In the e-book, you can make a clickable link that takes your reader straight to your website. In the paper edition, the best you can do is to show a printable link. On your website, have a signup form for your email newsletter. 

A word to the wise is in order. If you don’t yet have a website, think about simplicity now. You want a website address that will be easy for your readers to type for the next fifty years. Once you’ve created a website, it’s not good to later change your domain name because you’ll lose “domain authority” which takes years to build up. If you host your website on one of those free sites that let you make a website easily, make sure that you get your own domain with your name in it. You want the links in your books to work pretty much forever, and the way to guarantee that is to buy a domain that you will own for the rest of your life. Get this right at the beginning of your career, and your life will go better. 

A Sneak Preview

At the very end of your book, you have the option to add one last powerful tool—a free sample chapter of your next book. This is like the one-page sales pitch you included earlier, but it can go on for 10 or 20 pages. In an e-book, extra pages cost you almost nothing. In a print edition, they’ll cost you a little, so don’t go overboard. 

This can be great at getting the fence-sitters to buy the next book, but it’s not actually as valuable as it sounds. If your reader really loved your book, then they’d have already bought the next book as soon as they saw your one-page sales pitch earlier. Of course, you can’t include this sample chapter until the next book is published, so it’s much more common for an indie author to do this than for a traditionally publisher. Publishers will do it for big-shot authors, but most of us aren’t big-shots. 

This option makes the most sense in one special case—when the current book is the last book in the series. Then you’re probably trying to pitch a book in another series, if you have one, and that is a harder sell. So if you have two series, at the end of each, it makes sense to show a sneak preview of the first chapter of the first book in the other series. Or a sneak preview of a standalone book, if that’s all you’ve got. 

Advertising a Series

Once you have a series of novels with high Quality, advertising them becomes a lot more cost-effective. You only have to advertise Book 1 in each series and then you rely on the Marketing Domino Effect to sell all the others. Indie authors have several good options for advertising—Facebook ads, BookBub deals, other deal sites such as FreeBooksy, BookBub pay-per-click ads, and Amazon ads. Ads can be expensive. The ads will sometimes cost you more than your profit on Book 1. 

But if Book 1 sells Book 2, and Book 2 sells Book 3, and right on down the line of the Marketing Domino Effect, then you can afford to take a loss on Book 1. Authors who have 30 books in their series can pay a LOT for advertising Book 1—as long as the Quality of each book is high. Then you get good “read-through” on the series.

Warning, warning, warning! Paid ads are something only indie authors should do. Don’t pay for advertising if you’re traditionally published. You can’t make the numbers work. Your publisher might be able to, but you can’t. You can ask them nicely, and it’s possible they’ll say yes. 

Back Matter For a Traditionally Published Novel

Frankly, it’s a bit harder to do the back matter well for traditionally published novels. The problem is that when Book 1 is published, Book 2 doesn’t exist. So you can’t sell it yet. If you want to ask for the sale of Book 2 in Book 1, you’re going to have to ask the publisher to change the typesetting of the book after Book 2 comes out. If you’re very lucky, they might even do it. But don’t count on it. However, in a traditionally published book, you can still ask for a review and you can still have an About the Author page that points readers to your website, where you hope to get their email address. 

For indie authors, the moment Book 2 is published, they can revise the back matter for Book 1 and upload it again. And likewise, when Book 3 is published, they can revise the back matter for Book 2. This is one crucial advantage indie authors have over traditionally published authors. 

Homework:

• Are you an indie author with a series of novels already published? Is your back matter working for you? If not, you now know what to do, and it should only take a few hours to make it happen. 
• Are you a traditionally published author with a series of books underway? Tell your editor what back matter you’d like to come immediately after the end of your story. You can’t ask for a sales pitch for the next novel, because it doesn’t exist yet. But you can ask for a review and write a nice About the Author page. 
• Are you undecided whether to write standalone novels or a series? Think about the advantages of writing a series. The Marketing Domino Effect is a pretty strong point in favor of writing a series.
• Are you an indie author with a series of 3 or more books that already have good back matter? Then think about running paid ads on Book 1.