CASE STUDY - COLLEEN HOOVER
Today we are going to be exploring a few of the marketing approaches used by Colleen Hoover, and specifically look at how she was able to reinvigorate sales for her books years after they had been published.
This is really relevant to a lot of authors, who unfortunately make the all too common mistake of waiting to finish their book before they start marketing.
Colleen commenced her author journey when she self-published her debut novel Slammed in 2011. She self-published on Amazon (the book was free for the first week of release) and used her social media platforms to spread the word about her novel.
Amazingly, Colleen had over 4,000 downloads in the first two days of release!
This placed her on the Bestsellers List, providing further promotion and endorsement. This early attention landed her novel in the hands of book bloggers.
“…a blogger read the book and blogged about it. She had a huge following and the books received over 100 downloads that day. Since then, the sales have steadily climbed. I’ve noticed when a blogger reviews it, especially bloggers with a huge following, it really makes a big impact on sales.
I didn’t really focus on getting the books in the hands of bloggers in the beginning because I was really new at this and wasn’t sure what worked. Now that I know, you can bet I’ll be sending out those ARC’s of my next release.”
Before we go any further there a few points to make about Colleen’s approach to book marketing:
· Colleen published her novel at a time when Amazon’s Kindle Direct program was relatively new, and did not have a huge range of books available for download. If Colleen were to publish like this today, she would probably have very little downloads.
· Giving away her book for free was a game changer – we highly recommend authors consider this prior to release through advanced reader copies (ARC), offering a free copy of your book in exchange for a review.
· Working with bloggers is an excellect approach to book marketing. Bloggers can provide significant exposure to markets and, if you work with the right one, you can target your ideal audience directly.
For Colleen she was quickly picked up by an agent and publishing house and, the rest, as they say, is history…
Well, kind of.
THE IMPACT OF BOOKTOK
Colleen really hit the big time years later when her novel sales were re-invigorated, thanks to the social media platform Tiktok and the Book Bloggers that reach millions on the platform.
Despite being published five years earlier in 2016, It Ends With Us became one of the most talked about books in 2021.
Now this book was not a flop, in fact it had initially spent a brief period on the best-sellers list thanks to 21,000 copies being sold in its first month of release. A lot of effort was put into marketing the book, including a nine-stop national book tour. It was also awarded the Best Romance Goodreads Choice Award four months after its release.
However, the sales eventually levelled down as is normal with book sales.
But… years later, between 2020 - 2021, It Ends With Us experienced a resurgence in popularity through TikTok Book Bloggers.
There are numerous claims as to who started the ‘Hoover Tiktok phenomena’, but essentially a mid-sized book blogger (with a few tens of thousands of followers on TikTok) posted about the book, which inspired a few other book bloggers…all of whom were in the mid-tier influencer size (so not massive). The cumulative effect of these posts saw them go viral and began to really drive book sales up unexpectedly.
I emphasise that these influencers were mid-tier because it’s often easy to dismiss those with smaller follower counts (i.e. those in the tens of thousands vs in the hundreds of thousands) but the cumulative effect really drove the viral outcome.
Most of these bloggers also experienced positive outcomes, growing their followers to the hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, because of the viral videos!
For Colleen, the impact spread even further than the one novel. In 2022, six of Hoover’s books were in U.S. best-sellers list, but only two had been published that year:
It Ends with Us - Published in 2016
Verity - Published in 2018
Ugly Love - Published in 2014
November 9 - Published in 2015
Reminders of Him - Published in 2022
It Starts with Us - Published in 2022
So how do you follow suit?
How do you get your book to have a similar level of exposure? Well it is very challenging, but not impossible.
Ideally if you have already published a book, you could identify an occasion for it to be celebrated, such as its ‘5 year anniversary’, or perhaps a re-release with a new book cover.
Working with small to mid-tier influencers you can reach out and ask them to target posting reviews around this specific date.
You will need to decide if you have the budget and are comfortable with purchasing a guaranteed advertising spot with influencers, or you can reach out and ask if they would be open to recieving a free copy in exchange for an honest review (usually only very small influencers will do this).
Do remember that influencers are contacted a lot, so you have to pitch your book to them. Share snippets, share reviews, and really drum up excitement around your novel.
Social media is not a sure thing. If it was, you would see all of the major publishing houses connected to viral videos for their author’s books.
The idea of engaging and working with influencers should form one component of a diversified Marketing Plan. We have outlined the essentials for book marketing in our Ultimate Publishing & Marketing Plan for fiction authors and encourage you to check it out.
“The secret to my TikTok success? I have none. Any success of mine that came from TikTok did not come from me, it came from the readers who have made videos about my books and shared them on the app. I rarely post there, and when I do, it’s not always about my books.”
