The 14th Annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale begins Sunday, March 5 and runs through Saturday, March 11.
Draft2Digital and Smashwords invite you to enroll your ebooks now in our Read an Ebook Week Sale. For Draft2Digital Authors, you can enroll through the prompt on your My Books page. Authors publishing directly to Smashwords will sign-up through the Smashwords Enrollment Link.
If you’re not familiar with Read an Ebook Week, it was founded by Smashwords author Rita Toews. It’s the longest-running international celebration of ebooks and the readers who love them.
The discount levels you set for the sale are for the Smashwords Store only and do not impact your retail prices at other stores.
When the sale begins March 5, readers will find it on the Smashwords home page by clicking the “Read an Ebook Week” tab. We’ll also display a promotional shelf on the top of each book category’s main page to draw more readers into the sale.
When readers visit the sale’s promotion page, they’ll be presented with the following shelves: “Featured Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Deals”, “25% off”, “50% off”, “75% off”, “100% off”, “More Free Ebooks”, “Recent Read an Ebook Week Purchases,” and “Recently Added”.
Readers can use the Smashwords multi-dimensional search tools to filter participating titles by category, sub-category, price range, and word count.
Marketing Checklist: How to Reach More Readers During the Sale
Although many authors will sell books during the sale without any proactive promotion, the authors who perform best promote. They invite their readers to join them in this international celebration of ebooks and the readers who love them.
Here are seven marketing ideas proven to raise visibility during our sales:
- Enroll Now – Enroll before the sale begins on March 5 to benefit from our email marketing. During the first three days of the sale, over one million Smashwords members will receive an alert about the sale, along with category-specific hyperlinks they can use to jump directly to their favorite categories.
- Celebrate Read an Ebook Week – This is more than a sale; it’s a celebration. Celebrate your participation across social media and on your private opt-in email newsletter, if you have one. Share a direct hyperlink to your author profile page which serves as your personal author bookstore.
- Amplify Peak – Peak sales days for this one-week sale are typically the first two days and the last two days. Plan to launch your first wave of promotion on the morning of Sunday March 5, and a second wave on Friday March 10 as customers prepare to top off their carts before the sale’s conclusion on the evening of Saturday March 11.
- Improve Discoverability With Smart Categorization – Unlike a physical store that might organize its shelves around a dozen or two high-level categories, an online store such as Smashwords supports hundreds of micro-specific shelves catering to every sub-category. Along with our reader-powered algorithms, this creates discoverability opportunities for every author. Although it’s exciting to see your book featured on the shelves of the sale’s home page, placement there is not necessary to drive sales. It’s equally if not more important (and much easier) to achieve shelf visibility within our micro-focused shelves where you face less competition. Before the sale begins, make sure each of your books is accurately categorized in up to two of the most specific sub-categories for your title.
- Each Paid Sale Triggers More Promotion – For most of the themed shelves, each paid sale provides an incremental boost to a book’s shelf rank, thereby making the book more discoverable to the next reader. A paid sale also lands the book a brief feature on the “Recent Purchases” shelf that appears on the Smashwords home page and on the front page of the dedicated Read an Ebook Week sale catalog. Customers browse this shelf to see what fellow readers are buying.
- Collaborate with Fellow Indies – Like all Smashwords super sales, this is a collaborative, author-driven event. In addition to celebrating your participating titles, be sure to celebrate the titles of your favorite indies too. If you have author friends who write in the same genre or category, consider cross-promoting each other’s titles to your respective reader bases.
- Download and Share Our Sharable Images – Draft2Digital has created several sharable Read an Ebook Week images you can use to promote your sale participation on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, website, or wherever else you connect with your readers online. You’ll find these images at https://smashwords.com/ebookweek
The official hashtag for this year’s Read an Ebook Week is #ebookweek23
We hope you’ll join us for our 14th annual Read an Ebook Week sale!
Have fun!
Best wishes,