Ninety days ago I began posting to social media every day to improve my book sales. Turns out, selling books on social media isn’t that simple. From there I started to revamp my entire marketing strategy, from how my book’s sales pages looked to how I planned to market them online. Along the way, I’ve documented the entire process and shared my results with you in this YouTube series. Today we’re 90 days into the experiment, and it’s time to see if all the hard work has been worth it. Let’s see exactly how many books I’ve sold.
Watch this video series from the beginning, check out the entire playlist:
→Book Cover Design Courses:
→Book Formatting Course (print & ebook formatting):
→Writing Stickers:
→Merch & signed books:
→Newsletter:
PLANNERS – – – – – – – – – –
→My Writing Planner:
→My Novel Outline Planner:
→My Book Launch Planner:
→2026 Writing Planner (paperback):
→2026 Writing Planner (printable):
NON-FICTION BOOKS – – – – – – – – – –
→How Your Book Sells Itself:
→Grow Your Author Platform:
→Book Sales That Multiply:
→Secrets to Selling Books on Social Media:
→Plan a Profitable Book Launch:
FICTION BOOKS – – – – – – – – – –
→Read a free book, Change of Flight:
→Sparks in Iceland:
→Meet Me at the Summit:
→Let the Rubble Fall:
→The Trail to You & Me:
→Essence:
→I am Mercy:
→She's Not Here:
→Mr. Moon's Big Move:
FIND ME ONLINE- – – – – – – – – –
Content for writers: @mandilynnwrites
Content for readers: @authormandilynnbell
MY FAVORITE TOOLS- – – – – – – – – –
→Find KDP keywords and categories, PublisherRocket:
→Send ARCs on NetGalley:
→eBook Formatting, Kotobee Author:
→Social media graphics, Canva:
→Music in videos, Epidemic Sound:
→Email software, Kit:
Mandi Lynn published her first novel when she was seventeen. The author of multiple books, Mandi spends her days continuing to write and creating YouTube videos to help other writers achieve their dreams of seeing their books published. Mandi is the owner of Stone Ridge Books, a company that works to help authors bring their books to life through cover design and digital book marketing. She is also the creator of The Book Launch Planner, a planner designed to help authors publish and market their books. When she’s not creating, you can find Mandi exploring her backyard or getting lost in the woods.
DISCLAIMER: This video and description contain affiliate links. By purchasing a linked product or service, Mandi Lynn will receive a small commission at no additional fee to you.
#bookmarketing #indieauthor #bookpublishing
Title: Did Changing My Book Marketing Strategy Improve Book Sales? – BOOK MARKETING ESP 5
Search terms: indie author marketing, self publishing tips, book marketing for authors
I’d love to see a graph of how things have changed over the three months for you.
Something I`m trying for the next 30 days is placing my own ad video that I created for one of my books either at the beginning or the end of my YouTube videos. As I see it as free advert
I have zero expectation of making money writing so I give my stories away for free on Royal Road and as audiobooks on YouTube, I’m just happy writing them and a few hundred people read or listen to them. I also do zero promotion.
Thanks for making this video. Very cool to see the raw and honest numbers and maybe some realistic expectations. Between newsletter swaps and Amazon ads, I’d personally love to see more on Amazon ads. Both interest me though so I’m curious enough to learn about either.
I think amazon ads is good to help people just see what currently they are. I do some manual but I mostly just have my auto ad running and it took a few weeks to even move XD
Long time viewer here and I don’t recall you ever mentioning this: Have you ever tried putting your books in local shops on consignment? As an author myself I have books for sale in small local book stores and a comic book store. I make a small amount of money on sales every month.
I know this isn’t what this series is about, but I want to see you succeed and make money from your books so I’m offering this thought.
Amazon ads! I’ve never done them and don’t know if they are worth it (I’ve found that if you find 9 good hooks that work really well those hooks last about 6 weeks on TT before TT wants you to make new content. Just my two cents.) Coming up with 9 new hooks for every one of my books every six weeks is exhausting. The churn is so real. I think if you lean into the non-spicy that is going to work well for you especially if you are… a little sassy about it? Internet loves controversy. Not saying you have to be mean or over the top. But people are going to flip over “OMG don’t you HATE all the spicy books?” (I say this because I write spicy books and talk about how ‘annoying’ it is when the door is closed in my face.) My point is that people love something to rally behind on both directions!
Maybe just my opinion, but I would have no idea what a closed door romance is. I would understand wholesome romance, though.
“Wholesome”, like “clean” (and I would argue “sweet” as well), unfortunately has the connotation that s*x is immoral or dirty, and that s*xual relationships can’t be sweet and wholesome too. So this is something to be mindful of both as a reader and as an author. Closed door, fade-to-black (or no spice even though this is my least preferred one) are preferrable options. Also the language in general is something to be mindful of—there are readers out there who have no preference over open-door or closed-door, but language that insinuates open-door romances are inferior or bad, tends to put these readers off (and can foster a negative reputation in both reader and author spaces).
Personally I’d like a video about amazon ads. I’m sure a lot has changed.
YouTube shorts. Just this year, YouTube added better controls for throttling how many shorts you are exposed to. That may be the change. You can reduce the number of shorts you see thrown at you, and now parents have robust parental controls for reducing their kids exposure to and viewing of shorts. I’d be curious about the demographic data about who is actually viewing your shorts.