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Writing Crime

Adjusting your Marketing Plan During Covid-19
By Tonya D Price
Posted: 2020-08-04T02:10:00Z

The stay at home order came. After we got my family settled, we figured out how to buy groceries over the Internet and where to buy household cleaning products. (We never were able to buy any of them. Thank goodness a month earlier my husband had purchased some things from B.J.'s trying to save money before we had a clue we would need to have enough Lysol and hand soap to last several months.) 

I'm a writer. Self-isolating should not be a problem, I told myself. I never go anywhere anyway. 

I have to admit I have been more worried about my elderly friends and my daughters, who lived in downtown Boston than I have been about making money or selling books. Like so many authors, I have been working years on my career, and things had just started to take off a little bit for me. After I got used to my new routine with my husband home all day with me, I wondered, would I lose all that career momentum, I worked so hard to build?

Some people speculated that people wouldn’t buy books anymore. I'm not one to believe what I read unless I see statistics, so I went to MarketWatch and read that book sales are up, both in traditional publishing companies and for indie and self-publishers. My indie sales records confirm that.

Here are the topics that are selling best: Academic books, study aids, outdoor survival skills, and cooking books. Non-fiction is doing well also. People made fun of me when I bought my husband a book on the Pandemic of 1918 for his birthday, but he is finding it fascinating. In the U.K. 31% of British citizens are reading more since the lockdown began with readers age 18-24 reporting they are buying more books. Readers are also buying fiction books for entertainment! Apparently fiction books about pandemics aren't doing so well, but everything else seems to be enjoying increased sales.

MarketWatch lists a Rakuten Intelligence report as saying in the U.S. book market sales were up 14% the week of April 11, and online book sales reportedly jumped 777%. As you might hope, kids' books are way up too. 

The question is, will this trend hold up long term? We need to anticipate not just current sales but what sales will be like six months or more into the future. Will they become life-long readers if kids are reading more now as a result of living through the Pandemic? 

We don't know the answer, but that should not stop you from reviewing and revising your marketing plan. The great thing about a plan is if it doesn't work out, you can always change it, as long as you monitor the market and review your plan from time to time.

Here are the questions I asked myself when I reviewed my marketing plan. Hopefully, it might give you a few ideas for evaluating your writing business plan too:

Do you need to change your advertising strategy?

  1. If you are paying for ads, check them, and make sure that your readers will well receive the message in light of the COFID-19 situation. Masks, social distancing, and stay at home orders are so divisive what might have been an endearing line previously may be upsetting today. If you do find anything you are uncomfortable with, make your changes. Should you keep advertising? Track your results and see. Book buying is up, but only you know if you should be more conservative with your expenses, given the economy.
  2. Check your sales. Have they gone up or down during the stay at order started? 
  3. Compare your sales plan before, and after, the stay-at-home order started. Do you see a trend for different series? 
  4. Several agents reported the number of inquiries they are receiving has increased, leading to longer response times. 
  5. Review changes you had wanted to make to your marketing plan before COVID-19 hit? Do those changes still make sense? 
  6. Revise the reader profiles you made before COVID-19. Now redo the profile of your reader while at home. What changed? How will that impact their likelihood of buying your book? You don't want to write to market preferences, but you do want to market to reader preferences once you have written your book.
  7. Investigate if your readers' tastes have changed as a result of the stress of the Pandemic? I had planned to release a paranormal romance that involves a pandemic. I think I'll hold on to that one until later.
  8. Update your website. Review your Search engine optimization (SEO.) Try out Ubersuggest, a free tool offered by Neil Patel. You will be amazed at the information you can get about your website. Review your Google Analytics information to identify your highest converting web pages and how readers are finding your site. Ask friends and family to look at your site and let you know their experience. How easy is it to find information? What did they like about the appearance? Was anything confusing?

Optimize your site’s SEO and user experience flow.

You may get a lot of time back in your workday if you decide to shift your focus away from your paid digital channels. Why not take that extra time to take a good hard look at your website?

What can you do for your readers?

Your readers are at home. Why not talk to them? Some writers are taking advantage of Facebook Live or Zoom to host one-hour "reader fan events" once a week. Another idea that authors are trying is to schedule a one-hour-a-week Q&A session. (Remember if you do these sessions people will be watching from around the globe. State the time and time zone of the meeting. Include this time converter to enable people in other time zones to calculate when you will be on. https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/?continent=namerica)

Use this time to build your marketing and sales skills.

  1. Identify new skills you want to develop so you can create a new revenue stream or redo your website or create an online course.
  2. Learn a new software product that will help you analyze your sales data or catch up on all those free marketing pdfs you received this past year when you attended those free marketing webinars.
  3. Write future blog posts and newsletters.
  4. Write more books or short stories!

Don't be afraid to experiment with your marketing plan. Try different approaches, but don’t risk much money. Try two different methods. Compare the results and look for ways to lower your risk. Once you find something that works, then ramp up or if your sales are doing well, don't be afraid to reduce your advertising. 

Whatever choices you make with your marketing plan, keep writing. We may be at home for a while, and people will continue to look for a great new mystery to read.


Tonya D. Price is a multi-genre published short story writer and the author of the non-fiction series, Business Books for Writers. Her thriller short story, "Payback," in the Fiction River anthology, Hard Choices, was selected for inclusion in The American Best Mystery Stories of 2019. She holds an MBA from Cornell University in Marketing and Finance. You can follow Tonya at Business Books for Writers and Tonya D. Price or on Twitter: @BusBooks4Writer.

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