3 Unexpected Marketing Moves from a NYT Bestseller

Cristin Harber published 5 books in September 2013, sold 20,000 copies by that October, and had her first 6-figure month just a year later.

She’s a NYT and USA Today bestseller, and one of the smartest authors in the business.

We got on the phone with Harber to learn more about her story. She tried dozens of things early on, and we’re sharing three of the most unexpected ones that worked.

They’re bold and even counterintuitive, but armed with the right information, any author can give them a try (so we also share how).

Sell more copies by raising, not discounting, a book’s price

The cheaper the book, the more copies it sells, right? Harber’s experience paints a different picture:

“When I released my first five books, I priced the three novels at $3.99 and the two novellas at $0.99. But the two novellas were not selling as well, and I thought, ‘I have no room to discount or promote these because they’re just 99-cent books. I have nothing to lose.’ So I raised the price on them to $2.99 and sales picked up.”

Why? Harber doesn’t know for sure, but she has a guess: “I think in readers’ eyes, the $2.99 novellas were suddenly at the same quality level as the full-length $3.99 novels, and my sales went up.”

Publish more books…outside your genre

Genre authors will tell you that volume is key for building and maintaining your audience. What many don’t say is that sometimes stepping outside that genre can grow your audience even more:

“I also wrote a 50,000 word prequel to a book in my [Romance] series, explaining the backstory about how two characters originally fell in love in college. That prequel is New Adult, and I primarily wrote Romantic Suspense and Military Romance. So the prequel brought in a whole new contingent of readers who had never even considered reading my books before.”

Ignore some cover-design “best practices”

Until indie authors break through, they’re often advised to make their books’ titles more prominent on covers over their own names. Common sense says that a new name won’t attract readers now, so shouldn’t it be the title that stands out? But from the outset, Harber approached her covers differently:

“I had my name big, big, big. I wanted to be a bestseller and I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. I wasn’t going to be like, ‘Maybe one day I’ll earn big fonts.’ So I had big fonts. That’s my name. That’s my brand. I don’t care if you don’t remember the title of the book. I need you to remember me.”

This foresight had a big impact later.

And while we’re talking about best practices: in addition to a prominent name, the author requested that her original designer (Kimberly Killion) include unifying features across all covers, like stripes and men with similar poses. (“Even if you don’t remember my name or the series name, you remember the book.”)

Making this work for the rest of us

Harber made well-informed, business-minded decisions through hours of research and record keeping (we highly recommend her “C-Level author”presentation for more details). In the cases of price, genre, and cover design, here are the must-dos:

1. Know your genre’s pricing landscape

Survey the pricing landscape in your genre before publishing, and keep track as prices evolve afterward. Among “International Crime & Mystery” novels, for example, 64% of bestselling indie books are priced between $2.99 and $4.99, and only 13% of bestsellers are priced below $2.99:

With so few top sellers, a $0.99 price point might not drive more purchases than a $2.99 tag.

2. Look for categories where you can grow your audience

You should also examine all categories adjacent to your book’s topic, and look for popular or less competitive categories. Related to that same fictional crime category are true crime and criminal biographies. With less competition in those categories, a crime novelist might gain extra visibility (and bring in new readers) branching out into true crime, similar to Harber’s own extension into New Adult.

3. Scope out your cover’s competition

Finally, compare your cover to other books in your genre to make sure that it 1) fits in with genre conventions (and thus reader expectations), but 2) stands out among the crowd, and 3) fulfills any additional design requirements. Compared to other military-romance novels, the author’s name (and the rest of Harber’s cover) stand out:

All that said, there’s no one-size-fits-all plan for book promotion. With so many best practices thrown around in author communities, it’s easy to fall into the trap of zero experimentation. But experimentation works. And all indie authors have a huge advantage: they can be flexible and bold, iterate and adapt, just like Harber.