, and is currently working on its sequel,

Book sales skyrocket when author adds social media images

By Randi Lee

Recently on this site, Sandra Beckwith discussed the importance of using social media images in  your book marketing campaign. She informed us that tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets—that’s how powerful they are!

I’m visiting Build Book Buzz today as a success story, showing proof of this strategy. I’m here to show you how a visual addition to your campaign can have an amazing impact, leading to increased sales, exposure, and recognition—almost instantly.

My story

During the months of July and August, my sales for Affected were on a steady decline. My e-book sales rank on Amazon dropped from 75,000. The paperback sales rank was even worse: I stood at #4,187,643.

Here’s the June 21 ranking:

And here’s the September 3 ranking:

My small publisher requires authors to do their own marketing. If my book sales for Affected were going to increase, it was up to me to make that happen. In an effort to raise sales even slightly, I decided to post daily “image-teasers” for the book—images with book quotes and facts—on my Facebook, Twitter, and blog accounts. My first teaser went up on September 1.

Examples of images to create and share

Each day, I spent five to 10 minutes creating and posting one of these teasers. I used the opportunity to spotlight different themes, characters, and plot elements from the book.

This is an example of one of the first “image-teasers” I released:

Here’s another one:

Sales began to climb

I began doing this on September 1. Two days later, a new trend in my rankings emerged. Here’s the September 4 ranking:

Sales remain consistent through September 7:

Sales remained consistent through September 12:

As you can see, my sales rank exponentially increased once I introduced a visual “kick” to my social media campaign. Sales skyrocketed and remained consistent—for only five to 10 minutes of work per day!

My sales rank wasn’t the only thing positively affected by my image-teasers, though. The media took notice of my efforts and I now have a live television interview scheduled with the local news to discuss my book and marketing strategy. I’ve also been contacted by a radio station for an early October interview.

The why and how of images in book marketing

Readers actively respond to visual stimulants. It helps them see your book’s world more clearly and allows your words to resonate with them on a new and engaging level.

Putting an image-teaser together is quite simple (get the instructions on this site here). This small amount of effort can lead to big results: Affected has also been named a top 50 e-book in three categories on Kobo’s website.

Add image-teasers to your social media marketing campaign today. For a small daily investment of nothing more than time, the results are well worth it.

What book promotion tactics are working for you? What’s helping you get traction?