Your reader just finished reading your novel. He’s hooked, raving, and wants more. It’s time to lure him in and make sure he doesn’t stop there!
But how are you going to do that? How are you going to transform a one-time buyer into a permanent client?
It’s not as hard as it seems — you just need to have a useful back matter in your ebook. When he’s ready for more, after turning the last page, you can show him all the ways he can go on and enjoy even more books from you.
In this post, I will be some tips and ideas on how to do just that. Feel free to steal or adapt for your own ebooks!
Give links!
Don’t make him go search for your other books. Give him a link! There are multiple ways to do that, choose the one that correspond best to your situation.
⇨ If you have multiple editions for your ebooks, and can access all the distributors directly (Amazon KDP, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, etc. — without going through another distrubutor like Smashwords), you can give direct links to your ebooks there. Just add a link on the title of your book, linking directly on the distributor’s page. This is great for readers, but can be exhausting if you publish new books regularly, as you have to go back and add the new ones all the time in the older ebooks’ back matters.
⇨ If you have to go through Smashwords (for example, if you don’t live in the United States, you can’t have a publisher account at Barnes & Noble), you can just put a link to all your author profiles on all the distributors. Warning: some distributors frown upon that.
⇨ My favorite option? Put a link on a “Books” page on your blog. There you can cater to all links easily, inform your readers about how many books you have easily, and send them happy to their favorite distributor (not everyone has a Kindle).
On that Books page, add a link to all your author profiles. This is a must. Then you can either add all books after that with all links, or make a page for each book and link to them from there.
Check out my Irma Geddon’s Books page!
Pimp your mailing-list!
In order to get a flow of quick sales whenever you release a new novel, you should create a mailing-list. My tip? Don’t spam it with each blog post, don’t chit-chat, and keep it focused: send an email only when a new book is out.
Mailchimp is free for the first 2000 subscribers. Create an account there and setup a very simple mailing-list. What you want is for people interested in your books to be informed that there is a new book out there that is specifically catering to their interest — and that book is yours!
Put the mailing-list subscriber form on your website or blog, and link there. Make sure to say what they’re signing for:
Sign up here to be the first to hear about new releases!
I won’t share your email with anyone else, and I won’t clutter your inbox (I’ll only contact you when a new book is out).
If you write content for adults, you could also specify that your mailing-list database is confidential and that your emails are discreet (and then avoid sending emails with TENTACLE SEX as a subject, hu hu).
Here is a great post from S.M. Reine that tells how she grew her mailing list and got more and more readers to buy her books: A quick, short, and dirty guide to slowly building sales.
Ask for reviews!
On the new Kindles, the Kindle itself prompts a way to review automatically when you finish a book. Even so, many people don’t read on Kindles, so it’s best to have a sentence in the back matter gently asking people to review your books on their favorite distributor platforms.
Be easy to contact!
Add links to your website/blog, give your email address, and let people know where you’re active (Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads…). No need to link to all your other social media accounts, most of all if you’re not active there!
What are other back matter options? Feel free to add them in the comments, I will update the post with my favorites and credit you.
