DAY 30. LAUNCH WEEK – PART TWO – PAID PROMOTIONAL TOOLS
Sometimes organic reach is not enough and you have to pay to reach out and get the attention of the ideal reader for your book.
There are three main types of paid advertisements used by authors:
- Facebook Ads.
- Amazon Marketing Service Ads
- Book Promotion Websites
Facebook Ads
My opinion, based on what I have read and seen, is that Facebook adverts are great when you have a series of at least three books already live. The high promotional costs for books one and two are offset by the sales of all of the other great books in the rest of the series plus page reads on Kindle Unlimited. Right now I have two books live and the third being written.
In addition, to me Facebook ads are a form of interruption marketing. Readers come onto Facebook to be social and interact with friends and followers, and will ignore ads for books or get annoyed by them.
That’s why I am also totally against using Facebook Messenger marketing. I’m sure that I am not the only one who has received messages from authors asking you to buy their book. This is spam, spam, spam = unfollow, block and report. Of course, this is just my opinion and there are people who use these systems very effectively.
So I am holding back on Facebook ads until all three books are live and then plan to evaluate whether they are worth it or not to give a boost to sales post-launch.
Amazon Marketing Services
Amazon ads offer a really exciting opportunity for self-published authors. In contrast to Facebook, readers come to Amazon actively looking for books to purchase.
They want recommendations and may at least click on your book, and take a look. If you have a great cover and book description, there is a chance that you could covert that browser into a buyer.
These are 99cents books, so I have to decide whether it is going to be cost effective to pay to promote a book at that price. The only way to find out is to experiment with low daily budgets and monitor the results.
My experience so far, with other books, is that I can usually break even or make money from book sales with Amazon ads.
How to Use Amazon Ads.
The author Mark Dawson has a very useful free guides on how to use both Facebook ads and Amazon ads which you can find here> https://selfpublishingformula.com/spf-resources/
These guides are also available as free downloads on Amazon.
Learn Amazon Ads: Use AMS to Find More Readers and Sell More Books. http://amzn.to/2nvbKx5
Mastering Simple Facebook Ads For Authors: Find Readers and Build Your Mailing List. http://amzn.to/2nAabgm
Mark’s free video training on Facebook ads is excellent and I would recommend it.
In addition, Amazon Marketing Services have good tutorials which you can find here> https://advertising.amazon.com/lp/authors
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads are cost-per-click, meaning you only pay when shoppers click on your ad. The minimum budget to run an ad is $1/day or $100 per campaign, depending on the ad type you choose.
Most authors prefer to use Sponsored Ads.
Be prepared to experiment and check the results in hard sales/ranking/clicks. You can start with a few dollars a day for a week and change the keywords until they perform well.
The two common criticisms of AMS are that the reporting is poor and unreliable, and it can very difficult to budget, since Amazon is unlikely to spend the amount you have allocated. On the flip side, you can several campaigns and compare the results using the keywords that Amazon suggests, with your own chosen niche keywords. If you are looking for ideal readers in a specific niche – then this is the option to select.
Book Promotion Websites
There are many options available in 2018, but some of the more popular sites include:
Bargain Booksy. https://www.bargainbooksy.com/sell-more-books/
ENT. http://ereadernewstoday.com/requirements/
The largest and most expensive is BookBub.
For example; Book Bub Cozy mysteries has 2,940,000+ Subscribers worldwide.
A 99 cents mystery book – costs £611 to be added to their list with average 2,760 sold.
Free Book – costs £305 with average 46,200 downloads.
USA ONLY
A 99 cents book – costs £517 with average 2,670 sold, but that would take you to the top of the bestseller lists on Amazon and increase ranking and sales for a long time – especially if you have 3 books in the series written and for sale.
A Free Book – costs £259 with average 37,800 downloads
Featured Deals may be booked up to 30 days in advance at the prices currently displayed, and they are well known to be very picky.
Bookbub deal could work really well for a promo of the first 99centsbook in the series when I have at least 3 books written. The acceptance criteria make it clear that they are looking for books with good reviews, so it is not designed for book launch for the first book in a series.
Other Paid Options
These are only a few of the more popular PAID promotional opportunities for authors – they are many more available, both online and off-line. For example; If you have created a paperback book, you can buy author copies and hand sell at events or gift them to reviewers.
Write More Books
You have invested so much time and energy and probably money creating, crafting, publishing and promoting your work. For me, the best way that I can leverage that investment, is to write more books that readers will want to read and then share those books with the largest audience possible.
So that is what I will be doing for the rest of this month – writing Book Three in the Kingsmede Cozy Mystery Series, Murder and Morello. Wish me luck!
FINALLY
THANK YOU to everyone who supported this 30-Day Launch Challenge, bought one of my books and/or agreed to leave a review in the next few days.
I think you will agree that this writing lark is a risky business where there is no guarantee of success, so it can make a huge difference if we are all supportive of one another.
Thank You. And best of luck with YOUR writing.
Now back to the writing cave. Nina.
