Tips on Running Promotional Discounts

Your book has been published! Congratulations! You’ve made it to the point where you’ve released your book out into the world for others to enjoy. We’ve tackled so much of our book marketing plan already and there is still more to cover. You’re ready for the next step in the Book Marketing Planner and that is to work on your promotional discount plan.

If you’re new here, my name is Jenn and I’m the author of 3 (soon to be 4) YA novels. I’ve also written the Book Marketing Planner – a workbook to get you from your first draft to post publication. You can find previous posts from this series under the Book Marketing Planner Category. And you can find the Book Marketing Planner in Paperback on Amazon and as a Digital Download in My Shop.

This is the first time we’re discussing your book after publication which is pretty exciting. Even if you’re working through the plan and haven’t even finished your book this is still something you should think about and plan ahead. Once your book is released, you will feel so much better for having a promotional discount plan in place.

What is a Promotional Discount?

A discount is a promotional tactic that provides customers with a cheaper price than your normal listing. This can look like a percentage off or a fixed dollar amount.

When Should I Run this Promotion?

Take the time to consider when you want to promote your book. Is it something you want to do around release day? Or maybe around certain holidays? Think about how you can attract sales by using this discount to your advantage.

Where Should I Run this Promotion?

Depending on how you publish your book will affect the options you have for running a promotional discount for your book. Look into the options your publisher offers and if you sell books on your own site consider what you can do there.

What Should the Discount Be?

This is something you will need to consider when planning a promotion. Consider the formats your book is offered in and which ones you will want to provide a discount. As mentioned before, you can offer percentage or amount discounts. This is probably where you’ll have to do a bit of math to calculate how much you’re willing to discount your book.

For example, I like to run price discounts for my eBooks published through Amazon. I’ll usually offer the eBook for $0.99 USD or $1.99 USD depending on my reason for the discount.

How are Discounts Covered in the Book Marketing Planner?

There are 2 pages dedicated to Promotional Discounts. On those 2 pages, you have 4 opportunities to plan discounts for your book. Everything discussed above is carefully laid out so you can visualize your plan.

Creating a promotional discount doesn’t have to be hard. Planning ahead is to your benefit because once your book is released there is a lot to focus on, including your next project. The benefit of using the Book Marketing Planner is that you can plan out as far in advance as you’d like.

For example, if you want to run a discount close to your book’s first anniversary, plan it out! That way when it comes time to implement, you’ve already done the work. Let future you have a breather by planning for the future now. You will appreciate it!

Let’s continue to work on our book marketing plan together, as next time we’ll be discussing giveaways. I look forward to talking with you next month! Happy planning!