Big Bulk Sales; Small Individual Sales
Individual sales have been slow since the launch of the book. Most of our 1,000 purchases have come from bulk purchases. On the one hand I think it is great to get so many bulk purchases from organizations and conferences because these purchases can potentially be repeated as new students come in. It wouldn't be a bad thing if we had thousands/tens of thousands of books being sold to high schools, colleges, organizations, and conferences yearly. At the same time, I was really picturing the book spreading more through word-of-mouth among students.
Moving forward, we're really going to have to think about how we can get more students to do two things:
- Purchase the book
- Read the book
I think one major key to getting more purchasers and readers will be market research. Some questions we need to answer are:
- Why do people who are aware of the book choose not to purchase it? How can we influence these people to do so?
- Why don't more people who purchase and download the book read it right away? How can we influence them do so?
- What readers like the content of the book the most? How can they be targeted?
- How can I get feedback from people who've read the book, but just think it's o.k. or don't really like it?
So far I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people who've really enjoyed the book. While that feedback is great, it certainly doesn't provide the full picture. Once we're able to get a fuller picture by answering the questions above and probably some other important questions we haven't thought about yet, we will be able to alter our marketing campaign and spend our marketing dollars more effectively.
Posted at October 12, 2003 01:37 PM
