Selling Ebooks Case Study. How Anne Laurie Sold 130 Ebooks In 1 Week

Selling ebooks can be hard. We found this article on Medium written by Anne-Laure. It explains the process of going from idea all the way to promotion ending with 130 ebooks sold. We'll take each step and see what was done.

Results

Anne-Laure states the following:

The book was Make and Shine- an ebook to do with personal branding for indie makers. She wrote the book in a month and then within a week she sold 130 copies. But where did she sell?

Amazon got 29
Gumroad 106
Paypal 1

The Paypal was an oddity- someone emailed and asked to go through this payment processor. Here is the graph of Gumroad sales:

Thoughts:

We can see a few sales and then a spike then a steep decline. I hope this gets mentioned later on in the article. Amazons graph is exactly the same with a peek and then a drop off.
Did it really matter where she sold the book? Do people care. Did you have to hype up Gumroad due to the less familial nature
Any returns?
Reviews. It seemed like Product Hunt gave the book the boost. People shared information/ reviews through Twitter and they were "overwhelmingly good".

Starting

It seems like Anne-Laure gave herself a challenge. To write a book in 30 days. In this way she set herself a goal. She also intentionally told her Twitter followers what she was doing giving her a no way out clause.

She had a goal of 20,000 words and wrote on a topic that she was already familiar with- also knowing the audience that she regularly talks to know the subject as well.

Thoughts:

There is already a following. This is not done from scratch. Not many products launched are from scratch. If that is the case many people are driven there through other people the author knows, or they have done paid advertisements
There is a following part 2. The followers already now know something is coming down the pipeline. If Anne-Laurie wrote the initial Tweet right then you will find that people will be behind her, showing encouragement. They will also be receptive to the product when it comes out.

I also included a thank you page with all of the people and communities who inspired me, supported me, or contributed in any way to the creation of the book.

Ideas were thrown onto a document page then the bare bones were present.

Packaging

Her background is in branding so her book had to look good. Half the battle with selling ebooks is how they look on the front. She chose Canva as the template. Then chose to ask the community for input- looks, different designs etc.

Thoughts:

Getting the community involved is nothing new, but it increases sales enormously because people like to be part of something and will buy if they think they had a hand in its production.
Canva has had good reviews/ It can be free or paid. If you are no good at graphics then that is a nice way to go. However there could be a learning curve to make the design look good. You could also go to tons of freelancing sites and get someone else to do it- roughly $100.

Inside

People often use Canva for the internals of an ebook/ eproduct. However Anne-Laure chose Google Docs (probably because she is proficient in it). I use Word because I know it.

"I picked a simple, common font, used an accessibility website to make sure the colours made it easy to read for everyone, added a table of content, and voila!"

It is very easy to create a table of content in Word (especially ones that have hyperlinks so that mobile devices can use them well). As a side it is really worthy to note that you shouldnt put page numbers on the content page as mobile devices don't look at pages. That is who you need a hyperlinks to your table of content.

She discusses various file formats. The ones that you should use are PDF and Word/ Mac Equiv. If you are uploading to Amazon they do the converting for you- no need to buy/ freak yourself out with conversion. PDF has everything that you need just when you save it off- which Word does. Check out this article for more info.

Publishing

She goes through different publishing places and opts for Amazon- goes through some pros and cons. Then she also chooses Gumroad- which she really likes. I am really unsure why she chose both as that would reduce sales of one of them. She doesn't really go in depth but more after the fact.

The package on Gumroad (didnt realise she created a package at the moment, sounded just like an ebook and that was it) was more expensive than Amazon- but sold more. It also sounds like $9.99 is the cut off for 70% royalties from Amazon, higher cost gives you 30%. But again were these 2 different products?

Selling/ Marketing

So a list would be better here:

she built a website
notified her Twitter audience
notified her newsletter subscribers
told Medium subscribers
placed in email signature
created an affiliate program
started to create a print version
started to build a community around the book and title

This was done on a Friday. On the Monday she notified Product Hunt, then notified her followers again about the Product Hunt launch:

Thoughts:

asking people for thoughts and feedback
thanked people in the Tweet for the creation (landing page)
thanked people individually
again, there seems to be 2 versions- an extended version. So I am wondering how many the extended version sold vs the normal version. Or was Gumroad the extended version? Which is kinds a shame for Amazon.
became number 4 on Product Hunt

And thats it.

Selling ebooks tips tricks that Anne used.

Its nice that the post is all fluffy and warm. There is one thing that sticks out. If we want to be really technical about it- it took many contacts to start selling ebooks and upto the 130 ebooks sold.

Contacts?

This is not necessarily the amount of people you have on your mailing list. It is how many contacts with them that you have. One person put it this way:

The grass is always greener on the other side. You have a lawn as well. You just need to tend to it, nourish it and it too will become green.

Again, as we have always said most of these success stories have been cultivated over time. Getting newsletter subscribers, Twitter followers- they don't obviously just appear, you have to allow them to subscribe...and then tend to them.

When you are creating something allow them to be part of it (roughly once you are close to completion so you can add any additional info)

Did you notice something else?

The amount of sales reduced after the initial promotion. This might suggest that pass along is reduced in Gumroad. In Amazon they have buffers to limit quick sales over time but that book would have gone up the charts further putting it in the faces of more people. That is what Amazon is good at. The referral and pass along affect is what you pay for.

Want more info on eProduct sales? Check out the Jasonera blog. More ebook selling ideas? Check out the ebook article page.