Long time, no post. Didja miss me?
The only “real” update I have is that I am giving away two signed paperback copies of Reclaim on Goodreads! The giveaway is open through April 27th (U.S. residents only) and you can access it here.
This post will serve as my monthly check-in for April, but since I don’t have any earth shattering updates, I’ve decided to do a post about my recent “adventures” in marketing. And by adventures, I really mean me trying different marketing platforms to see what works.
So what works? The truth is, I don’t know yet, haha. 😉 I am still learning and exploring what options are out there. And I’ve only recently started toying with Amazon and Goodreads’ marketing tools. I know it will take more than a few months trial and error to see what really works, to figure out what I think works best. So this is more of a post that–if you haven’t played around with any of these tools yet or simply don’t know what’s out there–will hopefully give you somewhere to start. And, if you come across this post with experiences of your own you’d like to share, feel free to comment down below! 🙂
I’ll be honest with you: Although I loved Facebook when I was first starting out as an indie author, it’s slowly becoming one of my least favorite platforms.
Don’t get me wrong. I still like it for certain things. I still value it as a go-to spot to connect with friends and readers, to post links to interesting, book-related articles or to my own blog posts. But, ever since Facebook has started pushing its own advertising platform (and, as a result, decreasing the number of followers who see your posts unless you pay up), it’s become less of a fun thing to do.
And, believe me, I get it. I totally get that if you’re going to have your author page or whatever on Facebook, and you’re advertising a product (in this case, my books), that Facebook would like some compensation for that. The only thing is, I’m not super convinced (yet) that paying Facebook to advertise your books leads to tangible results (i.e., book sales). In my experience so far, it doesn’t, and–compared to the other options I’m going to talk about next–it isn’t cost effective, or any kind of effective. And at the risk of getting banned from Facebook forever (would they do that? lol!), I started to feel like the money I was paying to advertise on there would have been better spent getting flushed down the toilet.
Not that advertising on it is completely useless. What you’re really paying for is extending your reach on Facebook, so if you advertise the page itself you will see some new page likes trickle in, or if you boost a post you will see more likes on said post than you would have had you not shelled out $20. But as for any of those people buying your book…I am still skeptical. Maybe if you run it constantly enough and people see it all the time they might finally get curious and buy it or something. However, I’m not convinced enough of this yet to use Facebook for constant advertising, unless maybe it’s around the time of a book release.
Also, just as a heads up, you have to be careful how you lay out your advertisement on Facebook because it gets angry when there are too many words haha. Only a certain percentage of it can be text. As a result, you will likely get a warning message when you prepare an advertise for your book that includes the book cover. Usually it’s okay because book covers are one of the exceptions to this rule (Facebook will still approve the ad), but it’s something to be aware of. I think it’s kind of dumb, though. A LOT of authors are trying to promote their books via Facebook, and including the book cover is an important part of that.
Amazon
Although I will have to experiment more with Amazon’s, for me it’s definitely a more appealing option than Facebook. For one thing, on Amazon (and Goodreads, as you’ll find out next), you only get charged if someone actually clicks on your ad. So, even if they don’t end up buying it, at least they have to physically do something for you to get charged, and it feels a little less like flushing money down the toilet, haha.
Amazon Marketing Services offers two campaign types, sponsored products or product display ads. So far, I have only tried the former. You include a catchy tagline for the advertisement, and you select the start and end dates for the campaign, as well as the maximum amount you are willing to spend per day. So, for example, I ran a sponsored products ad for Reborn for about a month with a daily cap at $5 per day. (Sounds like a lot, right? Because over a month, if you actually reach that threshold every day, you could end up spending $150. But more about that in a second.)
You also choose what keywords may lead to your product getting display (for my book, I chose keywords like “paranormal romance” and “urban fantasy”). Amazon will have suggestions for you based on past searches that have brought people to your book. You can pick as many keywords as you like. You also choose a bid for each click…so, for instance, I could pick “paranormal romance” and bid $0.10, so I will get charged that amount if someone using those keywords happens upon my ad AND clicks on it. I would reach my daily threshold of $5 if 50 people clicked on my ad at $0.10/click.
Next time, I will probably up the bid (I think $0.25 or $0.50 are the usual suggestions). I *think* the bid has something to do with how often your ad is shown (that’s how it works over on Goodreads, at least).
The ad for Reborn, as described above, made about 49,500 impressions in the month it was running. It got 79 clicks, and I made two sales. I mean, now that I’ve put all that out there for you, it doesn’t sound super great (ha, ha), but in that month I only spend $12.70 on this, because not everyone who sees your ad will actually click on it. You may not end up spending anywhere near your daily max every single day of the ad.
That being said, I wouldn’t recommend picking a daily max you couldn’t actually afford if you did end up paying that much. I’m obviously still experimenting with this, and maybe if I said I was willing to spend $100 per day on advertising I would get better results, but that is not happening any time soon. Although I think people should be willing to invest both time and some money into their dream, I’m not recommending you splurge your life savings on it. (Please don’t do that.) This is the cheapskate’s guide to marketing your e-book.
Goodreads
By the way, I should probably have put in this disclaimer much earlier, but I do not work for or represent any of these companies. I am just hoping this post can serve as a source of helpful information that’s all in one place and giving my honest opinion about each of them.
Like the others, Goodreads’ usefulness remains to be seen, but so far it might be my favorite. It’s true that it will likely be a challenge to get a click on an ad on Goodreads to turn into an actual book sale, but it also seems like I will be able to run my ads for a much longer time on there while spending the least amount of money. Which is what I’m always aiming for. Like I said. Cheap. Skate.
Seriously, though. You can create ONE Goodreads campaign, with one budget, and run MULTIPLE ads simultaneously. I have one campaign running right now with a budget of $25, and four ads (one for each book/novella in the Reborn series) running at the same time. I chose to just end the campaign (I started it March 22nd) when the $25 credit runs out. In the meantime, it just keeps on runnin’.
On Goodreads, you can also choose a daily maximum so you can cap how much you are willing to spend per day. I again chose a $5 daily cap and this time chose a $0.50 cost per click. You can choose which genders, countries, and genres you want Goodreads to display your ad(s) to. You also choose a tagline and other info you might want displayed (number of reviews, a link to the preview, etc.).
This campaign is currently running and is obviously still an experiment-in-progress. Since March 22 when it began, it’s been viewed 10,556 times. Only one person has clicked on one of the ads, so I’ve only spent $0.50 so far. I think what I like about it is that it will just keep running, I don’t have to do anything, and, like on Amazon, I don’t get charged unless someone who sees the ad makes a meaningful action (i.e., clicks on it). This is opposed to Facebook, who just gets your $25 either way, ahaha. (I’m sorry Mark Zuckerberg. Don’t take it personally.) Talk about paying for people to “like” you.
Addendum 4/17: So, I wasn’t exactly correct about how Goodreads’ ad campaigns worked…namely about how/when they charge you. I’ll fix it above later (when I have more time), but for now I’m adding this. It does charge you when it creates the ad, but only takes money off the credit when someone clicks on it. BUT…but…this still means that your original credit could still go a long way.
*****
It is too soon to tell what my feelings on all of this will be a few months from now, or a year from now. I will keep you posted. For now, I hope this has been an informative post for those of you who have yet to try any of these things out. I know there are other avenues out there I haven’t explored yet. So far, the results of these ad campaigns haven’t been crazy successful. I guess I’m also hoping there is some value in just seeing the ad (in addition to clicking on it) that may prove useful in the long run…that it will, in time, lead to an add on a Goodreads to-read list and, eventually, to a sale.
Only time will tell.
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