At the end of 2019, I remember planning my upcoming ad strategy and thinking, There are totally different ways to think about selling books than I have in the past.
This single thought lit a fire that, five years later, continues to shine a path around my strategic thinking and keeping my books in readers’ hands.
At the time, my business model was just shifting into the burgeoning concept of direct sales, and the first quarter of 2020 would prove to be explosive — in more ways than one. When COVID-19 rocked the world, I happened to be in the right place at the right time to make my direct sales skyrocket.
And to think differently about books and the sales space.
Five years and lots of testing, learning, and pivoting later, direct sales is still my favorite business model. Thanks to being open to new sales strategies and adopting a long-term view of the book sales process, I make anywhere from 60-80% of my monthly revenue in a direct way — through my website, Kickstarter, in-person sales, and more. I’ve quadrupled my sales and my readers, and negotiated relationships with businesses like Tantor and Audible Studios.
That said, strategic and long-term thinking does change year over year, so I’m always reevaluating how I spend my time. Below, I’ll share a few tips from the road that I plan to take with me into 2025. I hope these insights into how I make my business decisions help you plan your own strategies for the year.
Lessons from 2024
My direct sales model has had two main shifts over the past several years: two years with major paid advertising (I spent over $250,000 one year across several platforms) and two years with none at all (less than $200 per year). 2024 was the second of two years without paid advertising. That provided me with the data I needed to make a business decision from either end of the spectrum. All in with advertising, or none at all?
I decided that, per usual, the middle ground was where my path lay. 2024 taught me that advertising is a necessity if growth is desired, but it can’t take up all my bandwidth. Writing earns that honor.
For 2025, I plan to use slow-growth strategies and steady, low budgets for advertising that lean on audience building. My goal is to spend no more than 30-60 minutes on ads per day. For paid advertising, I plan to use Facebook ads so I can focus on both sales and email acquisition. For unpaid channels, any social media service with live capabilities (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook) has my attention. My team and I are just starting into it, so the data is still building on whether it’s worth it! Keep reading, because I’ll talk more about that below.
Another interesting lesson that I already knew — but felt strongly reiterated in 2024 — was the necessity of new reader flow. While I have my rock star readership that will stay with me until one of us dies, not everyone fits that category. A continual stream of fresh, new readers keeps a business healthy.
For 2025, I plan to focus more of my “time” budget (meaning the hours I have to work) on very targeted work toward finding completely new and fresh readers. While this very targeted work picture is still building, my plans revolve around partnering with other companies to create visibility for me, using live narration on various platforms to attract new readers, and advertising without audience control. In 2023 and 2024, writing ate up about 80% of my time budget. 2025 will shift that to around 60%.
I spent a lot of 2023 and 2024 focusing mostly on my existing readership — which was the perfect model for me and my family at the time. But something new and different sounds more exciting to me now, so I’m taking a slight pivot in 2025.
The 2024 market was an interesting reflection of a lot of influences on reader purchasing and behavior — whether we’re talking about existing readership or new readers. For my company, new readers were a little slower to spend dollars on new books, but I still had my core readership that continued to purchase. For the most part, my established readership continued to buy from me when I gave them what they wanted. Namely, books.
Of course, attrition happens, but the core group stayed true. This proves that when a brand is built around us as authors, readers stay through thick and thin.
Strategies for a stable 2025
Not surprisingly, my goal every year is to provide books to readers, work for my team, and maintain a stable cash flow. Here are a few high-level ways I’m looking at this in 2025 (that don’t require you to be in the direct sales game to use!).
1. Continue my #1 laser focus on writing and producing more books.
This is, above and beyond, the single most important thing that I do. Not because it creates new products for our company to sell, but because this is my best life. I want to be in the stories every day, which means I show up for my readers and my team as the best Katie Cross possible.
That means I hand off any title management work I can. I pay my virtual assistant to run audits, troubleshoot issues with the website, upload files, tweak mistakes, and schedule social media posts. That frees me up to write, and it doesn’t have to be as expensive as it seems.
A hard-working VA with good training and guidance can do a LOT of those tasks for $250 USD per month or less. As a rule, I try to keep business management to less than 30-40% of my work hours, with writing taking the rest.
2. Take my time adopting new ideas.
TikTok has been one of my targets for social media growth this year, so I’ve been taking a slow-and-easy approach to trying the platform. Some other platforms where I’m testing the same content are Instagram and YouTube, which helps us have a plan in place in case TikTok is banned. The past several years have proven that booklovers congregate in these online spaces. They make entire cultures and movements. I like to be where the readers are.
However, it requires time to immerse, feel the vibe, be part of it, and create a manageable and fun content strategy. If it’s not fun, what are we doing there?! While on places like TikTok, the plan is to learn, connect, be useful, and still make it worth my time, but without performance pressure. All of it is useful experimentation to learn from, and it fits my goal of finding new and casual readers to expose to my brand, while paid advertising locks down buyers.
3. Play the long game.
Instead of focusing on the short-term benefits of a decision, my game is drawing a wider playing board.
As an example, I’m adopting live narrating as a new social media strategy this year because I want to find new booklovers that want to connect with me personally. In the short term, it might seem exhausting. Low video views are frustrating, it’s hard to nail down what “works” (which inevitably changes under my feet), and if I haven’t gone viral after a lot of work, it might not seem worth it.
With a long-term view and a wide playing board, I consider more than just right now. If I posted fun, young adult fantasy–branded topics, and showed up friendly and happy to be there every day for one year, how much impact could that create? A lot.
That impact could be bigger than creating one viral video or giving up on the platform because it didn’t deliver a proven sale after a few weeks. With this kind of long-game view, I want to consider what’s happening now and what could happen in the next month, year, decade. Can I leverage relationships built on TikTok for other purposes? Can I connect with other authors or influencers on YouTube?
That sort of information comes from long-term data gathering, as well as general observation. When you show up and listen up, a lot of great things happen. That’s why I’ll only commit to something in 2025 if I know how it fits the long game.
You might be thinking, this is really vague advice, Katie! You’re right. In fact, it’s supposed to be, because no business is the same. These are top-level ideas to get you asking the right questions as we ring in the new year: What is my #1 focus? What new ideas can I slowly adopt without changing my non-negotiables? and How can I play the long game?
What strategies do you plan to apply to your author business in 2025? Let me know in the comments below — I can’t wait to hear from you!
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.
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