It’s that time of year again: Smashwords is doing their annual Summer/Winter Sale promotion. For the entire month of July authors can put deep discounts on their books. Those discounts can range from 75% off the retail price all the way down to free. It’s a great way to get your books to more readers, and possibly get some reviews as well. And hey; you never know when that discounted book will make someone a regular reader of your other books or blog.
How It Works
Simply go to Smashwords and look for the link to the sale on their homepage. You’ll see it on the left-hand sidebar and it’ll take you right to a page with all of your published books. You can choose which books you want to discount and by how much.
The beauty of this promotion is that you’re not locked into it. Anytime during the month of July you can pull your books and put them back at their original price. And what’s more, you won’t need to worry about publishing or passing out your coupon codes. Each time someone clicks on your title they’ll see the promotion code right there next to the books stats. All a potential buyer has to do is enter the code when they go through the checkout process.
Another thing for those concerned about losing out on sales is the aspect of the promotion. Only the books that people buy from the Smashwords website will have the discount. That means if someone buys from Apple, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble they will still pay the retail price. That sounds pretty good to me!
The beauty of this promotion is that you’re not locked into it. Anytime during the month of July you can pull your books and put them back at their original price. And what’s more, you won’t need to worry about publishing or passing out your coupon codes. Each time someone clicks on your title they’ll see the promotion code right there next to the books stats. All a potential buyer has to do is enter the code when they go through the checkout process.
Another thing for those concerned about losing out on sales is the aspect of the promotion. Only the books that people buy from the Smashwords website will have the discount. That means if someone buys from Apple, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble they will still pay the retail price. That sounds pretty good to me!
If you take the link to my Smashwords page you'll see all of my books. You can click on one that interests you and be taken to its page.
Let's say you're interested in my book "Write Now!" You can see the promotional code on the right. Just enter that and you'll get the discount. Since it was originally listed as $0.99 that means you'll get "Write Now!" for free!
How to Make it Work For You
Simply putting your books out at a discount won’t do much for you; you’ve got to get the word out. There are several things you can do publicize the promotion:
- Blog: One of the best things you can do to promote your sale is to talk about it on your blog. I’m doing it right now, and if you’ve got a lot of traffic and loyal readers, you should be too. One of the things that you might want to do is list the coupon codes for the books. This isn’t really necessary if you have a link to your Smashwords books on your blog.
- Promote: Most authors hate promoting their books and all aspects of marketing gives them a headache. I’m the same way, but it has to be done. If you use Facebook you’ll definitely want to put something up telling people you’re doing a promotion. If you use Twitter you can do the same thing. Goodreads is a great option, especially for those authors who regularly contribute comments as readers. There are plenty of author promotion threads on the group pages where you can give a shout out.
- Encourage: Tell those authors you talk to regularly about the Smashwords promotion. Chances are they might not know about it, but would certainly be interested if they did. There are more than 60,000 authors listed on Smashwords, and the more of them that participate in the promotion, the more that readers will benefit, and hopefully you as well.
Should You Participate?
Now, you might not see a whole lot of extra sales of your books just because you’re in the promotion. But if you’re not seeing a lot of sales anyway, how can it hurt? If you are getting a lot of sales each month, however, you might want to think about it a bit more.
Will you be losing money through the promotion? Or will you actually be gaining more readers? It might be a tough decision and every author will have to find the solution that works best for them. Good luck, and I hope you have a lot of July sales!
Will you be losing money through the promotion? Or will you actually be gaining more readers? It might be a tough decision and every author will have to find the solution that works best for them. Good luck, and I hope you have a lot of July sales!
My Discounted Prices
I decided to offer discounts on all of my books starting on July 1. I may not leave all of them at a discount for the entire month, so you check out these discounted Smashwords books today!
- English Rocks! – 25% Off. (Was $4.99, Now $3.74)
- Tribes and Trappers – 25% Off (Was $4.99, Now $3.74)
- Write to the Top – 25% Off (Was $2.99, Now $2.24)
- Tarot: The Mystery and the Mystique – FREE. (Was $0.99)
- Write Now! – FREE (Was $0.99)
- The Jongurian Mission – FREE (Was $2.99)
- Trouble in Jonguria – 50% Off (Was $2.99, Now $1.50)
- The Jongurian Resolution – 50% Off (Was $2.99, Now $1.50)
- The Warring States – 25% Off (Was $3.99, Now $2.99)
- The State of Qin – 25% Off (Was $1.99, Now $1.49)
- The State of Chu – 25% Off (Was $1.99, Now $1.49)
RSS Feed