Presented to Literary Press Group, April 30, 2011

1. Turning Conversations into Sales
Driving eBook Sales with Online Engagement
LPG on April 30, 2011
Twitter @boxcarmarketing

2. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
• Alan Kay
“The only thing we know for certain
about the future is that it will be
different.”

3. The distance between when a person thinks about
a book and buys it is now seconds.
• eBook sales have a different pace
than print sales.
• Instant access expedites the
extraction of cash from readers’
wallets.
• Amazon alone has 3 devices: Kindle
Wifi, Kindle 3G+Wifi, Kindle DX. Plus
apps for iPhone, iPad, Android,
Blackberry and Windows 7

4. Previous constraints for print books no longer
apply in a digital world
• Publish compelling ideas at their
natural length.
• In a bookstore, price matters.
In a digital world, time matters.
• Ability to control price is key.

5. Big difference is demand
• In a digital world, demand fades more quickly. In some cases, demand only
during a 2 week period, then it’s gone.

6. Gaspereau Press
• In the midst of Giller furor,
Gaspereau released an eBook
edition of The Sentimentalists on
Kobo - the only place anyone
could buy the book for weeks.
• It was Kobo’s top-selling title in
Canada the Friday after the Giller
was announced.

7. The eBook Buyer is not a different buyer
• BISG report on consumer attitudes towards ebook reading says ebook
buyers are the same buyers as print. Same demographic and psychographic.
http://www.slideshare.net/digitalbookworld/consumer-attitudes-toward-
ebook-reading
• We know these people.
• 30-44 years old, urban, female, employed,
entered ebook market 7-12 months ago,
they buy weekly
• Free is key to this customer.
It’s the #1 contributing factor to a purchase.
Free chapter. Free print version.
Free value-add content.
flickr.com/photos/anaurath

8. That’s the good news. The bad news is ...
• It’s NOT a new, expanded market
• Unit sales of ebooks are on the rise, but this does not compensate for the lost
of revenue on print sales.
• $9 differentiates ebooks vs. print books
• As an ebook buyer buys more ebooks, they buy fewer hardcover and
paperbacks.
• Trading print dollars for digital dimes

9. How to Increase Discovery
• Book discovery is a traditional game. New channels of discovery and
communication are actually not very good conversion vehicles for buying
http://mashable.com/2011/04/27/social-media-retail-purchases/
• Twitter outperforms Facebook with marketing but neither deliver the number
of buyers to the store that traditional methods do, such as word of mouth
• All about reviews: Get as many copies as possible into the hands of your
influential readers. Those who have an audience and platform.
• From the moment of acquisition to 3 months before launch, those early
readers become the first people to connect to at the launch.

10. Discovery Myths
• The book business is unique.
No it's not.
• Book buyers are unique when it comes to their online buying behaviour.
No they’re not.
• I don't sell soap. I sell books.
It doesn't matter.
• Companies with millions of dollars have learned lessons in direct marketing.
You can learn from them.

11. Lesson 1: Think Direct to Consumer
• Harlequin is a leader in ebook marketing
and book retail.
• They use a ton of direct to consumer
tactics, including direct mail and email
• Cost-per-acquisition is highly important
• Search Engine Marketing
• Integrate direct to consumer elements
into broad campaign

12. Eg. Direct to Consumer

13. Eg. Brick Books
• Create the largest publisher-focused poetry performance archive in Canada
• Content that goes beyond the book
• Stories that can attract non-book media
• 160+ free recordings add value to the book (e or p)
• Entertainment value
• Audioboo provides listeners (event coordinators, booksellers, educators) the
ability to share and embed the podcasts
• iTunes subscribe. Serendipity of mixing poetry into music playlists.
• Excitement for authors, past, present and future.
• Puts Brick Books front of author’s minds for future works.

14. Lesson 2: Buy-in, Contribution & Commitment
National Geographic
• Use Direct Response to test every element
of the cover design

15. How they did it...
• If you answered the cover survey, your name went into a draw.
NatGeo does a quarterly draw for a $50 gift card to Amazon.
• Amazon pulls the best/draw of number surveys
• The “me generation” wants to provide feedback
• National Geographic had to go back to print BEFORE the book went on sale
• Spent 8 weeks on B&N bestseller list

16. Lesson 3: Local Matters
• S&S experimenting with
Groupon
• over million users who
spent $20 to get $40
worth books
• Blanket the market with
review copies
• Ran in multiple cities
and recorded the
uptake in sales

17. Eg. Local Matters
• Real Vancouver Writers
Series at W2 Woodwards
• Launched Zsuzsi Gartner’s
new book
• 200+ people
• Music, drinks,
simultaneous projections of
Jesus Christ Superstar and
the Sound of Music

18. Lesson 4: Author Brand
• HarperCollins US writes both genre and author newsletters
• The author newsletters out perform the genre newsletters all the time
• The author is the brand
• They create author-specific lists to build up the author’s personal brands.

19. Eg. Seen Reading
• Freehand Books has acquired the rights to
Seen Reading by Julie Wilson, a linked
collection of short fictions inspired by the
online “literary voyeurism” project of the same
name.
• Seenreading.com | #seenreading hashtag
• The Literary Voyeurs group blog

20. It’s critical to talk directly to your customers.
It’s critical to SELL directly to your customers.
• This is not to the exclusion or disadvantage of your retail partners
• It’s about gathering purchasing data and consumer intelligence
• When you do this, you become a more effective marketer, which lets you
drive sales through all channels.

21. How to Drive Sales
• Pre-orders matter. Amazon sees 24% of sales before the street date
(Russ Grandinetti, VP Kindle at Digital Book World, NYC, 2011)
• Cherry pick the backlist titles to promote, in particular cult titles, series, an
author’s previous titles
• Put your backlist on Amazon, Indigo, Google Books

22. What Kills Forward Momentum?
• Non-functioning ebooks
• Missing metadata
• Unaddressed anxiety
• Easy entertainment

23. What’s in your control?
• Clean up your sales data
• Collect Point of Sales Data:
• Learn how your titles trend
• What categories are on the rise
• How do sales distribute across the week/day
• What number of impressions are served of your product pages
• What price do the books sell at best
• Where do you get the most awareness
• Where are customers converting, what parts of the site have the highest
conversion, downloads, traffic #, registrations, sales, margin, top titles, free
vs. paid, price points, platform/device, geolocation
• Know your authors’ social currency: how much is an author doing on the
social web and how can you compound the effect

24. Measuring Success
• Sales: Day by Day Comparison
• Sales: 7 Day Period compared to Previous 7 Day Period
(Everything changes in 2 week patterns)
• Customer analysis: Once a month look at customers’ length time on site, age,
source, buying preference, customer lifetime value, value per customer by
device
• Total reach: what channels convert
• Share of voice

25. Things that lead to sales
Twitter Followers Customer Feedback
RTs
Facebook Fans
Email Opens
Website Visitors
Press Mentions
Sales
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

26. Things that lead to sales
Acquisition Website Visitors, time on site
Number of pageviews, repeat visits,
Activation subscription (email, blog), account
sign-up (profile data), Fan/Follower
Email Opens, Click-throughs,
Retention Repeat visits
Press Mention, RT,
Referral Refers 1+visitors to the site;
Refers 1+ visitors who activate
Sales
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

27. Predictions
• Random House predicting 50-50 by 2015. They are already there in some
categories. Biggest fiction authors are already at 50-50.
• Source Books. An author’s online engagement will continue to be a key
factor. Social media effects really matter.
• Author effectiveness: don't take on too much at once, just do 1 channel at a
time if you're new. Don't forget to write books. Manage and timebox

28. Next Steps
• To be successful in the ebook marketing, it is vital to control your assets and
gain experience in merchandising and conversion optimization.
• Experiment. Publishing is “to make public,” this occurs in a lot of different
ways in digital. Through webinars, digital voice, career planning (long term
engagement, reputation building, credibility management)
• Connect your authors to more readers than they could themselves
• Leverage Partnerships

29. ECW Press
• Has partnered with
Joyland for an ebook
imprint
• Will publish three
ebook-only short
fiction collections per
year starting Fall 2011

30. Coach House Books
• The Coach House Books Coffee Room iPhone app.
http://www.chbooks.com/iphoneapp
• The app includes:
• A virtual tour of Coach House
• Browse by author and title
• Events, news, photo galleries,
reviews and book trailers
• Preview chapters, author
Q&As, unpublished works
• Buy books online

31. Books on the Radio
• Books on the Radio, founded by Sean Cranbury, is a blog, podcast and radio
show that showcases new voices and ideas in books and book publishing.

32. Resources
Merchandising SEM/Affiliate Marketing
• Econsultancy.com • VKIStudios.com
• ElasticPath.com
Direct Marketing • MarketingExperiments.com
• The-CMA.org
• MarketingProfs.com Business Intel
• Forrester.com
Inbound, Content, Email Marketing • Radian6.com
• Hubspot.com • Netvibes.com
• Copyblogger.com • Yahoo Pipes
• CaseStudiesOnline.com
Monique Trottier
@BoxcarMarketing

33. Ask me about this stuff.
• Download this presentation
Monique Trottier
@boxcarmarketing
monique@boxcarmarketing.com