Reviving a Dead Book (Case Study #1)

00:0:22 – What you will learn
00:2:32 – Interview with Kevin McLaughlin
00:12:57 – Recap

Once you’re an experienced author, you might realize your earlier book marketing efforts fell flat. In today’s episode, we’re going to take a look at how to take that earlier book from “Dead Book” status and revive it using a few techniques mentioned by today’s guest, who did just that with one of his books.

Since there’s no specific formula for doing this, each episode will be called Reviving a Dead Book with a different Case Study Number at the end. The first case study is Kevin McLaughlin, who took his book, revived it, and got some great results and success.

Reviving a Dead Book (Case Study #1)

Kevin McLaughlin started off with six books in a series that were the lengths of short novels or long novellas. They made good money and he was happy with the sales. He then decided that with the seventh book, he would use that to launch a new series, and the book was written as a novel.

But none of his readers found it and the sales were dismal. That was when Kevin realized he had a problem, so he took some steps to revive the previous books, including re-writing the first two books in the original series to flesh out the story more, which made them into better novels than before.

He also packaged the original two together, made new cover art for the first three books in the series, and released them again to much better sales in the first two months than he had seen in the initial launch a year earlier.

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Kevin also used the following tools for his relaunch:

• A Bargain Booksy ad
• A BK Knights ad
• Two Facebook Ads
• An AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) ad

Another tip Kevin recommends to help book sales is to build your email list so when it comes time to ask for reviews, you can ask for volunteers.

One key thing that helped with his relaunch was putting the book under a new ASIN while keeping the title and series name, but it’s marked as a second edition. The reviews from the first edition were transferred over, adding to the reviews sent in by his email list subscribers.

Kevin also recommends having a solid ARC (Advanced Review Copy) team in the case that Amazon doesn’t decide to move the old reviews to the new book. Kevin's tips are not only great for right now, but these tips can be used over and over again to expand and update your books and rerelease them.

'This is property that we're creating and it's really valuable, so it's important to remember that as we move forward.” - Kevin McLaughlinClick To Tweet

Bio of the Author in the Case Study:

Kevin McLaughlin is a USA Today Bestselling Author, and his award-winning short fiction is available in digital form at all major ebook retailers, alongside a variety of newer work — both short stories and novels — in science fiction and fantasy.

Kevin resides in Boston and enjoys sailing, constructing medieval armor, and sword-fighting with his friends.

Resources Referred to in this Episode:

• Kevin McLaughlin’s Author Page on Amazon
• Scott Paul’s Author Page on Amazon
• Bargain Booksy
• BK Knights on Fiverr
• AMS (Amazon Marketing Services)
• Craig Martelle’s Author Page on Amazon
• 20Booksto50K Facebook Group