When Revising and Re-Releasing is the Answer

by Penny Sansevieri

In a perfect world, book marketing would be flawless right out of the gate when a book is released. In reality, that is often not the case. But even if things didn’t go right on your first try, it’s never too late to figure out the right way to market your book.

To do that effectively, it’s important to take a critical look at what went wrong and have a clear understanding of what can be done to fix it. Often, the fix lies in revising and re-releasing your book; while that sounds daunting, it really doesn’t have to be too complex.

To help, I’ve detailed some of the most common reasons why revising and re-releasing might be necessary, and how to get started on that process.

The Original Book Promotion Fell Flat

Maybe you picked the wrong markets, or perhaps you focused on strategies that really didn’t serve you. Or maybe the book came out and you just didn’t have the time to market it; sadly, I hear this from authors a lot. Life gets in the way and you miss your window.

If you believe in your book and don’t want to give up on all the effort you put into creating it, but no one knows it exists, then a re-release is the best way to revive your title.

The Book Could Be Better

Did your reviews come in less than stellar?

Did readers comment on typos or editing problems?

Are you simply a better author now?

It happens to a lot of us, especially with our earlier books! We grow and evolve and get better at our craft, and we realize we have that backlist title that really doesn’t do us justice anymore.

If this resonates with you in any way, a re-release is a great way to get the best version of your book back out on the market.

Current Events and Industry Changes

Things change, and these days they seem to change quickly.

I once spoke to an author with a five-year-old book, and as luck had it her topic started trending in the news. While she certainly could have pushed the older title, she thought she’d have a stronger promotion by re-releasing it with a few updates to tie into current events.

If there’s a wave of something going on that’s pretty big for your topic or industry, it could make a lot of sense to re-release your book in order to make the most of that revived interest.

The other side of this is things get outdated.

If you’re looking to establish yourself as a thought leader for your topic or industry, you can’t rest on the one book you released a few years ago (or more). I’m faced with this with my Amazon books all the time, because not only does book marketing evolve, but Amazon is constantly evolving, and if I’m going to stay ahead of the curve, I need to make updates.

Suck it up and tackle that new edition. Yes, it’s work, but it’s easier than creating a brand-new book from scratch, so don’t miss out on an opportunity to re-release the same book as a new product.

Your Brand Has Changed

As we grow, and as our business grows, we also evolve and change–typically for the better–and this applies to both fiction and non-fiction authors.

I find it’s often much harder to get a cohesive book-promotion message or campaign going if there is no consistent look to the author’s brand.

If you look at your Author Central profile and see you have books with different looks and vibes and branding that don’t look like they even come from the same author and don’t match your website and social media branding, you could likely benefit greatly from doing an across-the-board scrub and re-releasing your books with updated and appropriately branded covers.

Your Cover Needs Work

It happens. Authors release bad book covers all the time. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but try not to take it as personally as it sounds.

We’re often too close to our own work to make cover decisions, so don’t create your own cover. Work with a professional cover designer who has a history of creating strong covers for your genre, and then enlist input from trusted friends and colleagues and take all their feedback to heart when deciding on the final cover.

It’s much harder (and often impossible) to do any kind of book promotion with a cover less than stellar.

If your cover doesn’t look like it belongs with the other books on the bestseller list, chalk it up to a rookie mistake. Get that cover re-done and re-release the book with a fresh promotional campaign.

You Just Got the Rights Back

If you published a book years ago with a major house, you may be in a situation where your rights have reverted to you. When this is the case, I strongly encourage you to republish it using the indie publishing model.

Getting Started

If one of the above seems to fit you, where do you start?

First, consider how much you’re going to need to update.

Some, if not most of the book may require a redo or an editorial pass. If you’re just changing the cover, you can skip over this.

What Happens to Your Original Book?

Will it stay there? Will it ever go away? And what happens with all of the reviews?

Some authors don’t care if the book stays up on Amazon. Other authors really want it taken down, or want their new book to be published “over” the other title. In other words, the old book goes away but the reviews stay intact.

Amazon’s guidelines vary, so I’d suggest giving them a call. However, a rep told me that if the book is updated in excess of 20%, it’ll be considered a new book and will have a new Amazon page.

This isn’t a consistent rule, because the rep also said that if the table of contents hasn’t been altered or the page count hasn’t changed much, you could possibly have it published over the original book. Which means you essentially retain all of your reviews from the previous book.

In basic book-promotion language, this means you’ll have a pre-populated list of reviews; depending on how many you have, this could be a very good thing, but there might be cases where you don’t want to keep those reviews.

The Advantage and Disadvantages of Keeping Reviews

In some cases losing all of your Amazon reviews could be a really negative way to start off. But other times, it could be a great boon to your book-promotion success.

Why? Because if you’re revising your book due to bad editing or a poorly designed book-promotion campaign, then the reviews tethered to your book probably weren’t great anyway. If you have enough low-star reviews that it’s dragging down your title, starting fresh might be a great idea!

If the reviews are plentiful, you want to keep them, but make sure you’re 100 percent clear on what Amazon will and won’t do in terms of replacing your old book with your new one. We all know Amazon is subject to change and often without any notice. As I stated previously, the guidelines are generally 20 percent, and in most cases, when a TOC doesn’t change, Amazon won’t consider it a new title and will easily replace the older edition with your new one.

There Are Always Options

If you really want to cover up your old book with the new one and it doesn’t happen, there may be some other options for you.

It’s a good idea to make the different editions very clear as part of their Amazon book description. So, something like: “Newly published July 2020 edition” or something like that, and then of course something similar on the original, instructing people to check out the new release on your Author Central page. If you have access to both books you can update the subtitles as well, to further distinguish between the two.

When it comes to book promotion, the chapter is never closed. Revising and re-releasing can be the ideal way to give a title a reboot and get it the attention it deserves. If you have a particular title you feel no longer represents you or is dragging down your author career, consider the ways a revision can breathe new life into it. The effort will be worth it!

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Penny Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. (AME) and an adjunct professor at NYU, is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns.