The 15th Annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale begins Sunday, March 3 and runs through Saturday, March 9.
If you haven’t heard, the last few Smashwords store sales have been very successful. Record-breaking even! You can enroll your books now for the next one, which is the Read an Ebook Week Sale.
- Draft2Digital Authors: You can enroll through the prompt on your My Books page.
- Smashwords Authors: If you haven’t yet migrated your account over to Draft2Digital, you can sign up via the Smashwords enrollment link.
If you’re not familiar with Read an Ebook Week, it was founded by Smashwords author Rita Toews in 2004 and is the longest-running international celebration of ebooks and the readers who love them. It’s also longest-running Smashwords sale, going all the way back to 2009.
Since Smashwords store sales are coupon-based, the discount levels you set for the sale are for the Smashwords store only and will not impact your retail prices at other stores. You can set your discount levels to “25% off”, “50% off”, “75% off”, or “100% off”.
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 the best are usually the ones who promote the best. We know that not every author enjoys marketing and promoting their books, or even has the time. So, here are 7 stress-free ways to get the word out about your books being on sale:
- Enroll Now – Enroll before the sale begins on March 3 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 3, and a second wave on Friday March 8 as customers prepare to top off their carts before the sale’s conclusion on the evening of Saturday, March 9.
- 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. 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. This makes the book more discoverable to the next reader. A paid sale also lands the book a brief feature on the “Recent Purchases” shelf. That means appearing 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 Authors – 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 authors 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 Social Media 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 #ebookweek24
We hope you’ll join us for our 14th annual Read an Ebook Week sale!
Have fun!
Best wishes,
The Smashwords/Draft2Digital Team