About a year ago, Torchflame Books officially launched marketing packages to help fill in the gaps and to better serve our authors in boosting book sales. We know from past experience that marketing books at a discount increases the number of books sold. But the question we wanted to answer was how many sales were to be expected when running similar campaigns across genres, and the overall effect on sales of continued marketing through awareness-building campaigns.
We now have data we can share to help showcase why we began offering these packages and to highlight some success stories—especially as it relates to books in our catalog that were published before 2024.
Understanding this Data
The below graph indicates the reported ship quantity over time for six of our books. To maintain our author’s privacy, and due to the fact that we are sharing actual sales numbers, we cannot be more specific about which titles are represented here. For this breakdown, these books will be referred to by their line color.
These books represent different genres, different publication years, and different levels of marketing plans but they all showcase the effectiveness of marketing an ebook. This data does not indicate print book sales and is only indicative of ebook sales through retailer platforms. This data does not include free copies given away through giveaways, but does include data from ebooks included in price drop campaigns (such as daily or monthly $0.99 ebook discounts).
The data point furthest left shows sales for December 2023-March 2024. Over that 4 month period, the book with the highest sales of these titles sold 22 copies. The books with the lowest sales over that period sold 4 copies. The final data point shows sales only over two months instead of four.
Chart showing sales numbers from December 2024-May 2025
As we compiled this data, we were pleased to see the expected outcome in most circumstances, and a better than expected outcome in other campaigns.
About Our eBook Marketing Packages
Our marketing packages feature a variety of top email blasts for discounted ebooks in various combinations ranging between Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Bronze features only email blasts. Silver includes a book giveaway through Goodreads, and Gold includes multiple giveaways and online ads through BookBub or Facebook.
Comparing the Results
We were not surprised that the largest increases in sales came after or during Gold Package campaigns. These campaigns are designed to hit as many interested readers in as many locations as possible (such as their email inbox, Goodreads account, and through social media ads).
Also as expected, running a marketing package leads higher sales for the following months and then leads to a drop off in sales when the marketing is not continued. This drop off is most visible for Brown, as this book returned to it’s average sales numbers after the campaign ended and then continued to decrease in sales.
The variation in effectiveness of these campaigns for different books is impacted by the age of the book and by the genre. This is most easily seen in the difference between the Silver Package for Yellow and the Silver Package for Purple. Purple had a much more general target and has a much more niche audience than Yellow. It is more similar in genre, audience, and campaign to Green, which is also visible in the graph.
The data that most surprised us as we ran these numbers was the consistent positive impact on sales of Goodreads Giveaways. While not comparable to running a marketing package with the book at a $0.99 discount, the increase in sales following Goodreads Giveaways is undeniable when looking at this data. This is represented by both Burnt Orange and Green.
Overall Findings
Are overall findings indicate that sales jump between 30 and 200 sales in one month, varying by genre and intensity of marketing. More email blasts from quality companies correlates to higher download numbers.
We will continue to gather data as we continue to run these marketing packages, but we are pleased to share the data we currently have.
Other overall impacts from our data for all of the marketing campaigns include a majority of books (11 of 14, 78%) reaching bestseller status in their Amazon categories during the discount and in correlation with the email blasts delivery, often lingering in the top 100 for the next few days or weeks. The odds of this depend on the saturation of those categories.
Continued use of Goodreads Giveaways also correlates to a slow increase in reviews and ratings, adding one or two new reviews or ratings on the Goodreads platform every few months.
Final Notes
Our marketing packages contain a mix of discounted ebook email blasts, advertisements with Meta and BookBub, and Goodreads Giveaways—all of which are marketing activities available to authors individually as well as through their publisher.
This data has been compiled and reported by our Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Jori Hanna. She is also the coordinator of these marketing campaigns.
These marketing packages are only available to authors published through Torchflame Books. To see if you would be a good fit for our publishing house, please see our submissions guidelines.
