How To Move A Million: The Strategy Behind The New Western Bestseller From George M. Goodwin!

Lately, a new hitmaker has emerged that Western readers seem to truly appreciate. His name is George M. Goodwin—and he was signed by Outlaws Publishing a few weeks ago. With a strong back catalogue, a strategy was needed that would make his books shine for the company. As you may already know, Outlaws Publishing has been having an extremely hot run of hits lately, with Mike Mackessy, C. Wayne Winkle, Gene Turney and many others pushing the company towards record breaking profit levels.

Back Catalogue

Presented with the Goodwin back catalogue, it was immediately decided that “Secondhand Colt” would be the focus of all promotions—it had that magic ingredient that was likely to make it a hit. So, we rushed the book to release and started our promotion.

Cover

The first thing was the cover. We wanted to try a completely black cover—something different to the yellows, oranges and blues that have been paramount to Western success in 2019. The second factor was the use of the yellow font on the black background. Our early research showed that readers could pick out the book as a thumbnail very easily. Going against the grain in this case worked out very, very well.

Quality of the Story

The third thing was the story. We knew the story was strong enough to please Western readers, and we knew that once they chose the book, they would enjoy their purchase. Our confidence in the quality of the product was proven when the book entered the charts at #76 and climbed into the top thirty a few days later.

Categories Maketh the Book

Categories. We decided to use a smaller Western-based category and a larger Western-based category to begin with. This is a common strategy designed to “gently” push a new book into the bestseller charts. It worked. The book topped the smaller category, climbed into the larger category on the back of that momentum and then excelled against the odds to become a top forty hit in the biggest of the Western charts.

Keywords?

Keywords and search terms were very important to this strategy as we needed to be able to position this book, especially as it was a new release, for people to find it. We needed it to be a highly visible release, relying on the cover to draw readers in.

Advertising…

We used small blocks of punchy advertising to diversify the audience and looked to get one out of three visitors to the book page to purchase. The strategy actually worked, and the book soon started to gain momentum. Again, the advertising worked so well because the cover stood out against the white background of Amazon.

End Result

And here we stand with a book by a brand new author in the top forty of the Western bestseller chart. Few folks knew who George M. Goodwin was a few weeks ago. Now, because of some sensible, cost effective promotions, the book is likely to be a top seller—and the other books in the George M. Goodwin catalogue will now become strong sellers off the back of this carefully promoted first release.

Linking the Catalogue

How we manage to create hits off the back of a hit is another blog post—perhaps I’ll write that one in the near future. It’s another very simple strategy that has to be planned out.

Goodwin Is a Hit

So—now you know how we made Goodwin a seller. Why not try that same strategy with your books? We know the readers are out there. We just have to give them the opportunity to buy your book! Don’t forget you can contact me through the form below too.