As I’ve stated, you’ll be promoting your book to people in various manners all along the way to publication. Once you get to the final stages of the book development process, there are some options you’ll want to consider for more targeted, free and paid advertising. At this point in my career, I very rarely pay money for display ads, mostly pushing my books to my author newsletter, Apprentices, Fans, past clients, and circle of writing friends. But, as a newbie author, you might not have these kinds of audiences and connections built up enough to make that a lucrative option just yet.
What does advertising entail?
Advertising generally means getting the book in front of complete strangers in the hopes they will purchase it. This is a tricky thing to try to do effectively. Many new authors think that the more money they spend, the more sales they’ll make. I’ve been an author with this mindset and my wallet was thoroughly emptied because of it (on multiple occasions!).
I don’t want you to make the same mistake.
When it comes to advertising, casting a wide net is a great way to go broke. You have a specific market that your book will appeal to. Before you pay a single cent to any advertising platform, understand who that market consists of. Is your book for children? Parents? College students? Teens? History buffs?
If you don’t know who you’re targeting, it makes advertising to them extremely difficult and disgustingly expensive.
Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Many people and companies will tell you they will advertise your book to X amount of readers. But just because a company claims (or actually has) hundreds of thousands of followers, that doesn’t mean that advertising with them is a good fit.
For example, let’s say I have a dark urban fantasy novel that I wrote for teens. BookSniffers.books has a newsletter with 300,000 subscribers. That number may catch my eye and make me excited to advertise with them. However, upon close inspection, it turns out that about 299,000 of those subscribers are in their late fifties and mostly read books about gardening or pain management. That means that only about 0.4% of that list might be in my niche. This is definitely NOT my target audience overall.
So, instead of paying to show my book to over a quarter of a million people who couldn’t care less about buying it, I use DarkDeeds.teen instead. They only have a subscriber list of 100,000, but every single one of those (100%) are teens who love dark fantasy and horror novels. In other words, every single one of those 100,000 subscribers is a member of my target audience. BINGO!
At DarkDeeds.teen I have a much better chance of my advertising dollars turning into sales.
Do this for your advertising as well. Find the places where your audience gathers online, in print, or in person.
Where they gather online, create display ads with your book cover and a tagline (“Secrets never live,” “Leave no human unturned,” etc.) or a testimonial from beta readers / editorial reviewers.
Where your target audience gathers in print, take out ads in that publication. Inquire about writing articles or being interviewed for it. These are just more opportunities to advertise and you can even be paid for them (money for writing an article), or at least not have to pay money for them (being interviewed about your book series).
Where they gather in person, speak with the owners of that venue to hold, or be a vendor at, an event there. Don’t be afraid to think bigger than a book signing. You could put together a small conference for authors like yourself, a workshop for readers who are considering becoming authors, or even a mini-festival (invite performers, food trucks, and other business owners as vendors).
Advertising Smarter, Not Harder
Wasting money on advertising is one of the easiest things in the world to accomplish. However, you can avoid this common pitfall by using a couple of simple strategies to make sure that your ad spending doesn’t bankrupt you.
Play the Minimums
Most ad services have a minimum daily or per-click amount that you can select. Do this. Every time. On every platform you decide to use.
Some people think that the more money they spend on advertising, the more revenue they’ll create. This is wildly inaccurate. In truth, the more money you spend on effective advertising, the more revenue you’ll create.
But it’s hard to know what’s most effective for your book, audience, and budget if you blow all your ad funds within a few days because you just picked a random set of parameters and ran with it.
Start with the minimum ad buys.
Use this as a low-cost way to test your targeting methods. If you’ve set up a campaign with a daily budget of $5 and a per-click cost of 5 cents, within a month or two, you’ll be able to see which keywords or placements are giving you some traction. Mind you, that “traction” will look abysmally low (like, three or four clicks versus one or two clicks, and you’ll pour more money into the creative / copy with more clicks). At that point, you could bump your spend for those particular placements / keywords to 10 or 15 cents. After a few weeks of observation, you can cherry pick the top performers again and increase your spend for them even more. Spend a little, observe a lot, adjust accordingly.
Impressions
Impressions are the instances in which your ad appears on someone’s screen. For instance, if someone is searching for “how to write a novel” and The 12-Month Manuscript is shown in the results, that’s a single impression for that book. One person may see the same ad 25 times. One impression does not mean one person. If you’re trying to track how many people have seen your ad, you’d want to know the ‘unique impressions,’ which is not data every platform provides for free.
When I am starting at low levels and trying to find out which keywords / placements are working best for me, I look at impressions first. With a lower budget, you may only have impressions to go on regarding the ad’s results because you haven’t discovered what’s going to be the best fit for you yet.
After a month or two, I cull the herd! First, I disable all keywords/ placements that have not received any impressions. That means this keyword / placement isn’t working for what I’m trying to sell, so it doesn’t need to be there any more.
Once I’ve removed the non-performers, I take a look at the top performers. The keywords / placements that have the most impressions.
I piggyback off of those keywords / placements to replace some of the ones I removed.
For examples, if one of my top performing keywords is “books on writing,” I might try “writing novel book,” “books about books,” or “how to write a novel.” I plug those keywords into my campaign and let it run for a few more weeks to see what comes of it.
Clicks
Clicks are the number of times your ad was clicked on by a user. This means that they were searching for something, saw your ad, and then decided they wanted to learn more.
Clicks are exciting. If at a few cents per click, someone is clicking on the ad, I know I have a placement or keyword that is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Once you start seeing clicks appear on your dashboard, you’ll also see that you have a new “CTR” or “Click-Through Rate.” A CTR is the percentage of impressions that turn into clicks.
If your ad was served 100 times on a site, that means you received 100 impressions (your ad was displayed on a screen 100 times). If those 100 impressions resulted in 1 click, your CTR is 1%. This means that, in general (remember that this figure will fluctuate), at the moment, about 1% of the people who see your ad decide to click on it.
The average CTR for paid display ads is about 0.46%. That’s right, not even half of a single percent. So don’t expect rates in the double digits (though, if that happens, pat yourself on the back!).
Conversions
Conversions are the sales that come from the impressions you receive.
If your ad is served 100 times (100 impressions) and 2 people click on it (2% CTR) and 1 person buys a book, that means your conversion rate is 1%. Of the people who saw your ad, 1% both clicked on the ad and made a purchase.
When you get your first sale (yay!) you will see something besides a “0.00%” for this measurement.
This is the most important of the three when it comes to figuring out which keywords, displays, or placements to use for your ads.
Basic Display Ad Troubleshooting
In general, your results are always going to decrease as you move from impressions to clicks to sales. Your ad is going to be viewed a lot, but clicked on less, and result in a purchase even less often than that. This is just the natural pattern of a sales funnel. Nothing to be concerned about.
However, there are some times when you will see sudden and / or drastic drops that can tell you that some basic issues have gone unresolved.
No Impressions
If your ad is getting no, or very few, impressions (based on the amount of traffic you’d expect), the issue is likely one having to do with when your ad is displayed, such as the keywords or the parameters you have set for the audience you want to see the ad. For instance, if I narrow my audience to teens who love horror on BookSniffers.books, I probably won’t get any impressions simply because there are no horror-loving teens on the site to show the book to. Therefore, the ad is never triggered and shown to anyone. Zero impressions.
Once I move my ad to DarkDeeds.teen, I would likely start seeing oodles of impressions within a day or two of the ad going live because there are so many users on that site who are part of my target market.
Lots of Impressions, No Clicks
Much like my earlier example about BookSniffers.books, this happens when your ad is being shown to an audience who doesn’t match your content. A display ad for my teen dark fantasy would likely see this kind of result. I may have 1,000 impressions and 0 clicks, simply because everyone who is seeing the ad has no interest in the kind of book I’m selling. The issue here is getting the ad in front of the right people.
Lots of Clicks, No Sales
If you find yourself getting a lot of impressions (lots of people being shown the ad), and a lot of clicks (lots of people clicking on the ad), but no one buys, this is likely because there is a disconnect or unpleasant surprise between what they see in your ad that moves them to click and where they end up after they click.
For instance, if I create an ad on BookSniffers.books that claims to have ancient gardening secrets for herbs that heal body aches, nearly everyone visiting that site will probably click on that ad. Great! But if they click only to be shown my dark fantasy novel for teens, they will leave my book’s sales page confused, angry, and empty-handed. Or, if I advertise a book at a certain price, but when a person clicks through, the price on the landing page is higher, they might not buy (again, the mismatch causing disappointment and irritation).
If your erotica titled Chef’s Kiss is popping up under “cookbooks,” people aren’t clicking on it, even though it’s being shown, because their intent was to find a book of recipes, not a spicy, culinary coupling!
An Example
On Facebook, there are readers. That’s a given. However, within the subset of readers who use Facebook, you’re looking for people who like the genre that you write in and, more specifically, the niche that you write in. So, when selecting an audience, this will be part of the characteristics you’ll want to choose from.
If you write lesbian historical romance, you don’t want to only target people who have an interest in romance novels. That’s so broad that you’ll eat up your ad budget without seeing any sales, most likely. Romance is your broad genre, but your niche is going to be in the lesbian or LGBTQIA+ community.
This puts a beautiful bottleneck on your ad spending. Now, your ad will only be shown to people who fit in this much smaller category. This means that every impression or click becomes exponentially more likely to result in a sale or a pre-sale engagement such as liking your author page or sharing the ad with a group of people who read lesbian fiction.
An Analogy
Think of advertising like fishing with a net in a triangular lake.
One corner is mostly trout, another corner is mostly perch, and the third corner is mostly bass.
In the center of the lake, the boundaries are blurred, and you’re likely to find a mix of the three kinds of fish.
You’re on the hunt for trout. It’s the only kind of fish anyone will buy from you in the village market because it’s the only kind people in the area like enough to pay money for.
You have a large net and a small net.
You can cast the large net in the center of the lake and get a mix of all three kinds of fish, even though the perch and bass are of no value to you.
Or, you can cast a small net in the center of the lake and get a small mix of all three kinds of fish. Again, all you want is the trout, though.
These two methods are how many authors “fish” for sales. There is no targeting, so you take what you can get and expend a lot of time and energy casting those nets in the middle of the lake over and over again, hoping to gather enough trout to pay your bills.
But, if you use a targeted approach, you can make much more money, with much less effort, even though you’re using a smaller net.
If you take the smaller net and cast it in the corner where the trout are already gathered, you can pull up a full net of fish and every single one of them will be trout—the fish you can actually make money off of. And you only have to cast the net once to get a decent haul of trout, so there’s no need to wear yourself out (i.e., deplete your budget) by casting the net (activating a new ad campaign) over and over again.
If you use the larger net in the middle of the lake (leave your targeting parameters wide open so that any and everyone will be presented with your ad at some point), you’ll gather a lot more fish. But if only a third of those fish are the kind that you want, you’ve spent three times as much effort as you need to, and only got a third of the result. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Remember to treat your ad campaigns on any platform (Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) with the same strategy. I would rather promote my book to a thousand people who are nearly guaranteed to want to buy my book, versus trying to convince 500,000 people who have no interest in anything I have to offer. Advertising is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it even more of an uphill battle by trying to advertise to the wrong people.
Target Market
Who
For books, a target market isn’t usually that difficult to pinpoint. Just consider who you wrote the book for (your Person) or who might be most interested in the book.
If you wrote a children’s picture book about being an orphan, you’re likely marketing to children who are orphans or their adoptive parents.
If you wrote a memoir about overcoming your sex addiction, you are going to be marketing to people who have, or are recovering from, sex addiction.
If you wrote a cookbook for people with Type II diabetes, your market is generally going to be people living with Type II diabetes (or their family and friends).
Where
So, now that you have an idea of who you’re trying to advertise to, you’ll need to figure out where to advertise. This should be based on wherever these kinds of people can be found.
For young orphans, look at orphanages directly, social services agencies that may deal with orphans on a regular basis, or online support groups for parents who are fostering or have adopted young children.
For people suffering from sex addictions, you may tap into psychotherapist conferences, sexual addiction recovery pages on social media sites, or local adult toy stores in your area.
For people living with Type II diabetes, you could connect with endocrinologists who need reading material for their offices, a walking club for people with diabetes of all kinds, or even a social media profile for parents of children with juvenile diabetes.
No matter what you’re writing, it is likely that you can find a central location of some kind where people who might like your book gather. Once you do, approach the leader of that group, organization, or institution to discuss promotional opportunities they may be able to help you with.
Understand that promoting a particular book may not always be something an entity is ethically, legally, or even physically able to do. However, closed mouths don’t get fed. Don’t be afraid to ask the question. Bring your own ad plan to the table if you know this would be something new for the institution you plan on partnering with.
Consider a small financial investment or donation. You may find that people are a bit more open-minded when you’re offering to help them from a financial standpoint by paying for the privilege of advertising to their audience.
Platforms
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to advertising. What I’ve described to you in this lesson is what has worked best for me. Stay open and flexible when it comes to trying new methods. Just make sure that you keep your spending low until you’ve seen how a particular method perform well for you. Someone else having luck with a particular platform or strategy does not guarantee that you will.
Here is a list of links to some of the most popular online advertising platforms and profiles, as well as some lesser-known favorites that give me great ROI. There are many more out there in the world, so I hope you’ll explore what’s on the market to help with display advertising and gather a list like this based on your custom needs as an author!
Amazon Advertising: With nearly 151,000,000 global users (compared to Walmart’s 77 million), you’ve got a great shot of finding new readers here.
AwesomeGang: A smaller outlet with only a few thousand subscribers, but I’ve made surprisingly good sales from every ad I’ve taken out with them, so I’d be remiss not to mention them. The ROI is insane since you can promote your book for as little $10!
Facebook Advertising: With 2,910,000,000 (yes, “billion,” with a ‘B’!) users, Facebook is definitely a “big pond.” However, their interface to date still isn’t as purchase-oriented as platforms like Amazon. But, with careful targeting, you can gather readers for a book or garner more likes and followers for your author page.
Instagram Ads: Instagram is great for sharing illustrations and video clips (60 seconds or less). You can share your cover art or concept / character art, screenshots of your sequel-in-progress, videos of you reading a short excerpt, and the like. Once you post something, you can choose to promote it across the platform with some limited targeting options.
BookBub: I’ve had modest success using their display ads. Just follow the low-and-slow strategy and you should be fine.
Goodreads Advertising: Of all these options, Goodreads is special because it is entirely focused on readers, but it offers more sophisticated targeting options than BookBub or Instagram.
Now that you’re pretty much done with all of the book development and publication steps, promoting your work is how you’ll continue to gain new readers and make consistent sales. Keep these ads running while you’re writing and publishing subsequent pieces. Remember to set the ad up, let it run at the lowest possible cost for a while (at least a couple of weeks, if not a couple of months), cherry pick what’s working well, and invest more funds into your top performing ad types, keywords, or placements.