Publishing is strategy.
If you don’t have a strategy, you don’t have a business. And unless you write just for the fun of it, you must treat writing like a business — because it is. As with any business, the name of the game is to monetize what you have, and for authors, that means your books. The most successful way I’ve found to do that is to publish in multiple formats.
My name is Kathryn Le Veque. I’ve been publishing seriously since 2012, and almost 15 years and 165 books later, I still release about eight to 10 books a year in Medieval Historical Romance. In 2016, when competition became really difficult for new authors, I founded Dragonblade Publishing, a boutique Historical Romance publisher, to use my platform to help other authors find an audience.
My strategy for publishing in multiple formats comes down to treating each format differently:
- Ebooks are king: These are my bread and butter. I box them up and price them as loss leaders to hook new readers who buy the rest of the series at full price.
- Paperbacks aren’t just a format: They’re a very important marketing tool. I’ve always looked at paperbacks as business cards, and I give away more than I sell.
- Audiobooks are another revenue stream: The outlier format, audio can be a substantial revenue stream and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Here’s how I use each one.
Ebooks: Make Your Backlist Work for You
Ebooks are king. They are instant gratification for readers who can store thousands of books in a little device and read anywhere. Ebooks emerged in 1998, but when Amazon launched Kindle in 2007 and KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) in 2009, everything changed — suddenly any author could reach any reader.
I have an enormous backlist, and the strategies I’ve found most effective for moving backlist books are box sets and free series starters.
For box sets, I recommend packaging books by series (first three books), by series starter, or by trope. Box those babies up. But keep this in mind — you are looking for exposure, not revenue, with a box set. You want readers to read the first book in a series in a $0.99 box set and then run out and buy the rest of the series at full price. Consider box sets loss leaders. If you’re in Kindle Unlimited, keep the price at $0.99 because you’ll likely make more money on pages read.
For individual titles, I only run free deals — never $0.99 because the response isn’t nearly as big. The objective is to get as many copies as you can into the hands of readers, and if a reader has never read you before, they’re much more apt to take a chance on a free book rather than pay for one — even at $0.99. I know there is a school of thought that some readers are only looking for free books and therefore won’t pay for a book, period, but I haven’t found that to be true. I believe a free book acts as a business card: it gets your name out there and into the hands of readers.
BookBub Featured Deals are the most powerful tool I’ve found for introducing new readers to a series. Here’s an example of a free Featured Deal I ran last month for Absolution, the first in my three-book Guard of Six series, to support the fourth release in the series:
Unit Sales for Book One: Absolution
The next two books in the series also showed a significant bump in sales as a result of the Featured Deal, and that’s exactly what you want to see. These next two graphs show unit sales for books two and three (note this deal was less than a month ago, so you can’t yet see the full trickle-down sales tail for these books or the new release):
Unit Sales for Book Two: Insurrection
Unit Sales for Book Three: Obliteration
The point is this: publishing is a long game. You’ll see that return on your investment over the weeks and months as the same readers who picked up your free book also buy the series and your other books. BookBub Featured Deals are promotions you can count on in a publishing world where not much is certain.
Paperbacks: Your Marketing Tool
If ebooks are king, paperbacks are the OG. This is where you’re really going to make connections with readers. Why?
Book cons!
Much like free ebooks, I have always, since the very beginning of my career, looked at paperbacks as business cards. I hand them out at book conventions, and I sometimes give away more than I sell.
That sounds backwards, but think of it this way. You give a paperback series starter to someone at a con who has never read you before. It didn’t cost them anything, and what’s important is the perceived value: a free book at an event where they’ve already spent money feels like a genuine gift. They take that book home, read it, love it, and buy the rest of the series. They go on to buy more from your backlist. That one book, which cost you around $4 to produce, has potentially made you hundreds of dollars from a single reader. Multiply that by every free book you handed out that day. That’s exponential income from one small investment, and that strategy has worked for me for 15 years.
It still works for ebooks, too, but there’s something to be said for that tangible product. Readers like the feel of a book in their hands. And that’s how you bond with them. I don’t go to book cons or events expecting to make a fortune. I go to play the long game, and best of all, to meet readers and network with other authors. In the digital age of instant gratification, paperbacks aren’t simply another book format. They are a very important marketing tool.
How I Bring Books to Audio
There was a time when the only formats you really wanted to offer were ebook and paperback. Believe it or not, audio is the second-oldest book format in existence. The first real audiobook came out in 1932. But audiobooks really weren’t a thing in the early years of indie publishing, even though ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) came around in 2011. No one seemed too eager to offer this format right away because it was new and also expensive.
Now, audio is a substantial income stream for me. For a significant portion of readers, it’s their preferred format, so it’s one you can’t afford to ignore.
I got into audio early, when ACX was offering stipends to help pay for audiobook production. Unfortunately, that program is gone now, but there are still several paths to making an audiobook depending on your budget:
- Royalty split with a narrator (no out-of-pocket cost, lower per-sale return)
- Royalty plus (you pay the narrator a small stipend and split the royalties)
- Paying outright for production (highest up-front cost, best long-term return)
- Selling your audio rights to a publisher like Tantor or Recorded Books
Given my large catalog, I went for the 50/50 royalty split model for many of my books. It makes audiobooks affordable for authors who don’t have the budget to spend on production, even if the royalty return is low. Some income is better than no income — and once you have audiobooks in the market, you have another way for readers to find you.
Marketing audio works differently from ebooks. You have less control over pricing than with ebooks, but you do have options. One is giving away free audiobook codes. You can generate up to 50 free codes per title through ACX for giveaways and promotional use.
For paid advertising, I run ads on both Facebook and BookBub for my audiobooks, which are only available on Amazon because that’s where I make the most money overall. So I don’t customize my ad images for specific book formats or retailers, although you can do that. I send all readers to Amazon, where they can choose ebook or audio.
What’s imperative is that your ads reach readers with the best bang for your buck. That can take a little experimentation, but I’ve always found BookBub to be a solid option. You also have to decide what distribution is best for you and your audience — ACX/Audible exclusive, or available on more platforms? There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so be sure to do your research and know your audience.
A Brief Note on Translations
Foreign translation deserves a mention, though it’s a topic worthy of its own article. I have around 40 books translated into German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The revenue potential is real — I know authors who make good money in other languages — but the markets are nuanced and fickle. My own experience has been modest financially, though I still believe it’s worth pursuing. Every additional format is an additional revenue stream, big or small.
But translations should be considered strategically. They can be very expensive, so you should calculate your return on investment based on the popularity of the language, and treat translations as a longer-term play than the Big Three.
Building a Readership Across Book Formats
A final note on something that cuts across every format: discoverability. That’s the buzzword. Even now, after 165 books, I’m always looking for new readers — and for that, I use Facebook groups, BookBub Featured Deals, and smaller ads through other paid newsletters. But the value of a personal connection with readers can’t be overstated, for new or veteran authors. That’s what makes us different from authors of the past — there is no publisher gatekeeper. We can talk to our readers. That’s the most important thing.
For new authors, I suggest finding reader groups in your genre. Make friends with other authors in your genre. Cross-promote using BookFunnel. How does that connect to discoverability? Simple — those readers buy your book on platforms, which lifts you in the algorithms, which puts your name on rankings and lists. Every tool in this article puts you in front of new readers, but it’s the relationships you build that turn those readers into lifelong fans.
As I said at the beginning, be strategic. Understand you can’t do everything. Believe me, I live with FOMO every day. But make sure your books are definitely, without question, in ebook, paperback, and audiobook. Ebooks are your bread and butter, paperbacks are your marketing tool, and audiobooks are another solid revenue stream. I’d rather do those three things with excellence than do everything with mediocrity.
Happy writing!
The views and opinions expressed in this guest post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of BookBub.
