How to Identify and Respond to Backlist Sales Opportunities

Veteran marketer Peter McCarthy offers a case study on how an old book can learn new tricks

At Digital Book World 2019, Ingram’s Peter McCarthy presented a digital marketing session on surfacing opportunities for sales growth. While geared for traditional publishers, the principles could be put into use by authors as well. He started by saying, “There are millions of consumers who buy books, and in the industry we do a poor job of reaching them. Part of it is there are so many books. But part of it is we’re not responsive.” First, we must listen and watch for signals in the market; then we must act on them.

He offered a mini case study using a 10-year-old memoir published by Alaska Northwest Books, Last Letters from Attu by Mary Breu. The title’s Amazon rank jumped “an unbelievable percentage overnight,” said McCarthy. What caused the move? A new Atria title had just released on the Battle of Attu, and the author was featured on 60 Minutes. That guest spot spiked searches for Attu Island books. The publisher responded quickly with the following steps:

• First, they changed the book’s description on Amazon so that it began with a bold first line (sometimes called a strapline by marketers). These are shown to dramatically improve sales conversion.
• The book’s metadata had not been touched in ten years, so they updated it.
• Because the book had been out for so long, there were few or no recent social media posts that linked to the book’s product detail page on Amazon. So the publisher created new posts to promote the book and used appropriate hashtags for visibility.
• The publisher launched a brief Amazon advertising campaign (just for a couple of days) to drive discovery based on the Atria book and encourage placement alongside it.
• Because the author wasn’t very digital-media savvy, the publisher updated their Amazon Author Central page and added a lot of relevant photos from the author.

In the end, McCarthy said, just a day’s worth of effort (and a couple hundred bucks) resulted in expanded reach and sales that covered the marketing cost. The book was cross-sold with the Atria frontlist title organically after the ad campaign was over, and Amazon and Barnes & Noble both bought ads on Google for the 10-year-old title. (This happens on an automated basis at no cost to the publisher.) And once the book’s product page on Amazon was better optimized, enjoyed more traffic, and showed signs of renewed sales, Amazon’s algorithms automatically adjusted the price and availability. The price dropped from $18.99 to $14.98 (the publisher’s and author’s earnings remain the same in such a scenario), and Amazon started to fulfill orders directly as the default buy-box option, instead of a third-party seller being listed on the buy box.

Even though the publisher’s marketing efforts stopped after a week, McCarthy says algorithms picked up on the book, leading to an increased baseline of sales. That couldn’t have happened unless the book was in fact a good fit for those interested in Attu Island. Amazon sales increased by 128 percent, and Barnes & Noble sales increased by 225 percent. “This stuff is multi-channel,” McCarthy said. “The point of conversion is not as predictable as it used to be.” That means even if you focus your marketing efforts solely on Amazon, sales will show up in other areas as well.

Bottom line: McCarthy said that, too often, 1997 marketing methods are applied to today’s world. But 87 percent of today’s product searches begin in digital channels, and 50 percent of those are on Amazon. (Amazon is the world’s fourth-largest search engine.) Marketing in 2019 has to look for and pay attention to signals such as jump in Amazon sales rank or similar—then take advantage of it. McCarthy said that about half of consumers don’t find what they’re looking for when they search online. His case study demonstrates how publishers and authors alike can fix that.