Launching a new author is one of the most difficult projects a publisher can undertake. In a crowded marketplace it can be very difficult to make an author stand out and to help them connect with their audience.

Increasingly publishers are realising that building a direct relationship between authors and their readers is the key to building a profile in this new online environment. More and more publishers are grasping the fact that the SEO and Social Media skills we offer are invaluable tools that can help them achieve their goals.

In this instance, after talking at length with the publisher and the author, we decided that a hybrid Seo/Social Media campaign would be the best way to ensure high visibility for this debut novel by a debut author.

There were 3 main strands to the campaign:

1. We set up an author website and an accompanying Twitter account.
2. We used SEO to optimise the website for popular Google Keyword searches centred around crime fiction and other crime authors
3. We data-mined Twitter to target followers who were crime fans and pivoted them towards our new website

During the duration of the campaign...

• 38.8% (15,837) came from Twitter.

• 14.4% (5878) came directly to the site (probably returning visitors who had bookmarked)

• 53.2% (21,715) came via Google Search (SEO)

In total, over this period, as a result of the Website SEO + the Twitter account 39,272 people visited the book’s page on Amazon.

This book became a No.1 best seller on the Kindle charts and stayed in the Top 20 sellers for 122 days.

One year after his debut, this author this author now has 3 books in print and sales well in excess of 100,000.

Project : To reinvigorate the backlist of a medium sized non-fiction publisher.

This medium sized non-fiction publisher had always had a relatively robust backlist but over several years there had been a marked change in the proportions of sales between frontlist and backlist titles and therefore the profitability of the list.

Front List Titles: 120 Back List Titles: 440 New Titles: 80 per year Turnover: circa £1.2 million Website Visitors: 6000 per month

Some research into the list revealed that the subject areas of concern matched up with growth areas on the web, (property, personal finance, small business advice). It seemed a natural leap to conclude that backlist sales were being lost to people gathering the information they wanted from internet searches.

In response we took chunks of content from around 150 titles on the backlist and optimised this content using various SEO techniques.

The results were astounding. Within 6 months visitor numbers to the website had increased from around 6,000 per month to over a 100,000 per month. After 12 months this figure had risen to over 200,000 visitors per month.

This wasn't just an exercise in awareness raising. Over the 12 month period there was a knock on effect on sales.

There was a 12% (£146,000) increase in sales year on year, almost all of it centered around the backlist titles with content optimised on the website.

This is a perfect illustration of how applying a well thought out SEO strategy can have a direct effect on a publisher's bottom line profitability.