More Than Ever Before: The Strategy Behind The Latest C. Wayne Winkle Bestseller!

 

The wonder of books is that there’s always something new coming onto the market. Be it a brand new story, a reissue of an old favorite, a box set or some other kind of product. Western readers today have the greatest choice of product—greater than ever before. President Eisenhower, a great fan of Westerns, would truly love today’s market filled with more Westerns than he could point a nuclear weapon at.

Take for example the new C. Wayne Winkle hit, “The Searcher.” We knew readers love his work— each of his regular books and box sets have been solid top ten hits. But his latest book, “The Searcher,” exceeded all expectations, rolling from the 100,000 mark to the number one position in three days. What caused such a glorious rise?

The thing with Mister Winkle is that he consistently turns out strong books. Readers know that if they get a Winkle Western, they’re going to get something they’ll like. So Outlaws Publishing and I had that working for us. The next thing is that his last hit, “Black Buffalo,” had been extremely successful and just left the charts as “The Searcher” rolled onto shelves. The third point was that the release of “The Searcher” was timed to coincide with the release of a second volume of greatest hits, which had been charting in and out of the top one hundred. The fourth point is that the use of categories and keywords made it possible for the book to make a graceful leap.

So “The Searcher” came out with high reader awareness—a good portion of the readership was likely reading one Winkle novel or another.

But how did we capture those readers?

Using advertising, we targeted folks buying older Winkle product, the new box set, and his Buffalo novel. These readers saw the new book and converged en masse on Amazon to purchase the new book. Rising like a bullet, the book has already achieved a sales award from Outlaws Publishing, his publisher. It became hot because of that capability of educating readers about new product as they purchase still popular older product.

Keywords came into play here also, as did categories. Using the right keywords and categories we were able to position the book to make a seemingly impossible climb a fast ascent.

Now the second part of the strategy comes into play. Mister Winkle completed the second book in the series and sent it in just as “The Searcher” started to climb. This second book should hit while the first book is in the top five.

The result? A likely second number one for C. Wayne Winkle, which will likely lead to the third book being the biggest hit of the series. This, again, is all about timing—timing those releases to hit while the going is good.

When promoting books, you’ve got to look at the whole picture. Winkle is a powerful seller in our genre, but by smartly timing releases, we managed to really capitalize and energize his readership. By having quality product, we knew that readers would love the book. Maybe you can do the same thing with a little bit of timing, advertising, solid product and some muscle. I think you can! Drop a line below if you have any questions.