How to Revise and Re-Release Your Book

By Penny Sansevieri

Is Your Book Not Selling?

Do you feel like you've tried everything to promote your title but nothing is working? 

Do you have a backlist that isn't selling anymore?

Has your brand evolved and you're worried the disconnect is hurting book sales?

If you're struggling to sell more books it's time to stop stressing about it, because it happens to the best of us. The next step is to do something about it.

Let me present one of the smartest book marketing strategies out there – the re-release.

And I can show you how to do a re-release the right way – with smart and simple planning to revive lackluster sales numbers with minimal effort!

In this short and dynamic book I can teach you: 

•Why re-releasing a book has become such a lucrative marketing strategy
•How to read the telltale signs of a title that's a perfect re-release candidate
•How to tell if your cover needs some market-driven updates 
•How to determine if you need to make content updates 
•Special considerations for updating fiction and non-fiction
•How to make the new version stand out on Amazon 
•How to upload everything to Amazon the second time around
•How to work with Amazon to keep all the reviews from your original version
•How to properly price your re-release for maximum exposure
•Marketing tips for your re-release….and a special bonus offer! 

If the idea of re-releasing your book seems like too much work, I assure you it's not.

It's a lot less daunting than wasting time and money continuing down a dead end road, right?

Whether you're ready to consider a re-release in the very near future or not, I encourage you to read this title now so you feel confident in your options when problems do arise.

Be prepared to save yourself the heartache and frustration so many authors have suffered wondering what to do next!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penny Sansevieri
• Release date: Mar 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781723456954

Penny Sansevieri

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. She is the author of eighteen books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon, 5 Minute Book Marketing for Authors and How to Revise and Re-Release Your Book! 

Book preview

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Maybe you picked up this book because you’re ready to do something bold to reignite your title sales, or maybe you hate the idea of re-releasing your book, but your curiosity got the best of you.

First and foremost, let me explain what my definition of a re-release is, and what it isn’t.

In some cases, a re-release is the redo of the entire book or large sections of it.

In other cases, a re-release is adding a chapter or two, and for some, it’s just an updated cover.

No matter where you are in your process when you start reading this, don’t overthink the definition of re-release, because it doesn’t always mean you have a ton of work to do.

This book will help you determine the best re-release strategy for your book—so you’re working smart, not working overtime, the steps for getting your book back on Amazon, and then some key promotional tips for making the most of your publishing efforts!

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We all need a reboot from time to time, and our books are no different. Even popular television shows have seen a reboot. Will and Grace, The Gilmore Girls, X-Files, and the upcoming Murphy Brown to name just a few. Let’s face it, the reboot is all the rage these days.

Book relaunches can take a variety of forms. If done right, relaunches can really enhance your overall brand, as well as your book sales.

Before we dig into the hows and whys of this, let’s first look at some of the reasons you may want to republish your book.

Because having specific goals is key. Wanting to sell more books is understandable, but it can’t be the only driver—it’s too broad.

Revise and Re-release

Last year I met an author at a writers’ conference who published a science fiction book about five years ago. The book was long, 400 pages, and he said nothing really happened with it. He told me, If I had known then what I know now, my book could have done so much better.

And I said, Why not re-release it?

In his case, I recommended that he do an e-book only. I also recommended that he chop his 400-page book into approximately 100-page segments (like a serial, ending each episode at a suspenseful point), create new covers for all four, and then collect all four parts into a book bundle. This is also a great strategy to help you own the virtual shelf on Amazon, too. Plus having more books means you’re likely to come up higher in searches. Later I’ll share a lot more information about the how and why of book bundles, and the different kinds and purposes of each.

Getting Your Rights Back

In another instance, an author told me she’d just gotten the rights back to several of her books. The publisher didn’t seem to think they had legs anymore, but she did.

So I suggested that she republish them. Which she could do in print, e-book or both. Republishing them means she’s going to need a new cover, and probably redo the interior design (because the publisher may own both of these), but they’re easy and inexpensive enough to do.

Republishing books once you get the rights back is a really solid way to help build your library! We’ll talk specifically about reissues and how to handle having two books on Amazon with the same title later on in this book.

Your Book Needs a New Cover

Another example of a good time to update a book is if the cover needs refreshing.

Covers get dated, or maybe the cover wasn’t exactly what you needed the first time around. A cover refresh is a bit of a different animal, and we’ll discuss the hows and whys later in the book.

Still, if you have outdated covers, it’s a great idea to rebrand and reinvigorate a book!

My books tend to be outdated pretty quickly, as often happens with nonfiction.

When I do update my nonfictions, I usually redo all or a portion of the content and in that case either republish with a whole new cover or just update the book file and reupload it.

Updating the book file without republishing the book doesn’t constitute a