Make Money with a Backlist

Diana here

Do you have a backlist?

Are you indie pubbed, traditional or both?

Are you using an automation sequence?

Feel like you should be making money and you aren’t?

I kept hearing there is money in the backlist but couldn’t figure out what that meant. Of course, it means the more books you have the more you sell right? But how did readers know about them? If you’re traditionally published, you can link to your newsletter and website but that’s it. You can’t add a chapter of another book that isn’t published by that publisher.

But…

If you are building your newsletter list and you have an automation sequence set up it doesn’t matter who publishes your books.

If you have a reader magnet—a free book, novella, short story to give away to those who sign up for your newsletter you are on your way to getting a fan for life.

For years I had a magnet but once a newsletter subscriber downloaded the free book they only heard from me when I sent out a newsletter.

Now, they get the book and a series of emails well-spaced out. Those emails ask questions about what they like to read, anything to get a conversation going.

Then this is where the backlist makes money. You space these out! Send an email about the next book in a series or a stand-alone book and you tell them how you came up with the idea, something about the characters, or maybe even photo of the setting that inspired you. Do this for every book in your backlist.

I know this works because I use readerlinks.com to track the links to those books so I can see who clicks. I don’t know if they buy that book but since my sales are going up some books are being purchased. By using readerlinks.com I can even track my traditionally published books and see if they are getting any interest.

A great book to help you with this is The Newsletter Ninja  https://amzn.to/2VRGG9L that’s an affiliate link because I wanted a short link in this post, not one that stretches to another country.