Newsletter Swaps Outperformed Paid Ads

After disappointing results with traditional book marketing services, I want to share an alternative approach that’s working surprisingly well for me: strategic newsletter swaps.

I hired two different book marketing services for my previous launches. The first charged $1,500 for a “comprehensive package” that delivered roughly 300 sales. The second cost $1,200 and generated about 250 sales. Not terrible, but not great ROI either.

For my latest thriller, I decided to experiment. Instead of hiring book marketing services, I spent three months before launch cultivating relationships with 25 other thriller authors with similar audience sizes (my list has 3,800 subscribers). We created a coordinated swap schedule where each of us promoted the others’ books to our respective audiences.

The results were astonishing. My launch week sales hit 1,100 copies—more than triple what the professional book marketing services had achieved—and it cost me nothing but time and reciprocal promotions.

The keys to making this work where traditional book marketing services failed:

<ul depth=”0″>