Flywheel in Action: A $1 Million Win for Backlist Titles
Flywheel is an innovative backlist sales and marketing service powered by Firebrand Technologies—open to all publishers, not just existing Firebrand clients. Powered by proprietary data analysis and machine learning tools, Flywheel helps our team of metadata specialists uncover hidden opportunities in your backlist to improve discoverability and drive sales.
In short? Flywheel helps you sell more books! Here’s how:
- Smart Title Selection with the Recommendation Engine
Flywheel’s intelligent recommendation engine uses data science and machine learning to identify which titles to enhance—and when. These recommendations are based on sales history, historic and current events, and predictive modeling to ensure our marketing efforts have maximum impact.
- Expert Metadata Enhancements — Done for You!
Our metadata experts use proprietary technology and tools to enhance your metadata, refining it over time based on real world results. We also use an iterative process to continue optimizing performance over time. Best of all, your team doesn’t have to lift a finger—Flywheel handles all the updates.
- Helpful Insights with the Results Dashboard
With Flywheel’s easy-to-read dashboard, you can monitor weekly progress, track key metrics, and compare actual sales to predictions and previous years. You’ll also see insights on discoverability rankings and sales conversion rates, and gain access to custom tools that your marketing team can use to expand the impact of the program.
Flywheel in Action: A Real Publisher’s 2024 Story
One of our publishers joined Flywheel in mid-July, 2024. Let’s look at what happened.
Before Flywheel:
- Sales fell 25.7% from 2021 to 2022
- Then dropped another 31.8% from 2022 to 2023
Based on this standard long-tail trend, they expected a further 28.75% decline in the last half of 2024—projecting 103,000 units sold (see graph below). After the Flywheel team started working on their titles, actual sales hit over 126,000 units, outperforming projections by more than 23,000 units.
Flywheel’s goal is to close the gap between expected and actual sales by reducing the natural decline that most backlist titles experience over time. Thanks to Flywheel, that downward sales trend significantly slowed and was almost cut in half—from 28.75% to just 12.5%.
Impressive Results Across the Board
This publisher’s story is just one example. Across just four publishers using Flywheel during the second half of 2024, the combined impact was:
- 46,121 more units sold
- Across 1,293 titles
- Generating $935,430 in additional revenue
That’s nearly $1 million more revenue than expected—in just six months!
Ready to Get Started?
Flywheel delivers measurable backlist growth and is just one of the many powerful solutions offered by Firebrand Technologies, the industry’s leading partner to publishers for over 35 years. Our mission is to guide more content into the minds of more readers with comprehensive technology solutions that positively impact the lives of thousands of publishing professionals every day.
Flywheel is open to all publishers—no need to be a current Firebrand client.
Let’s grow your backlist together. Sign up today!