A while back I did a post on marketing explaining my own adventures. What I discussed there worked best for long term, and I plan to eventually write a companion with more data as I collect it (read: when I launch my next series and can compare actions and reactions), but sometimes you want a boost. You want sales that will increase your discoverability.
Enter book advertising.
Basics
If you want to get the most out of your ads, you want to take three things into account:
- Always, always promote the first book in the series. Even if you’re trying to launch book two, you want readers to get started on you and that happens with book one.
- Make sure you have something to give your readers after they’re done with your advertised books. You want to hook them, right? Give them book two so that they can discover you, love your work and move on to read the following title back-to-back. Give them a reason not to forget about you the moment they’re done with your novel. Don’t make it easy for them to list your title as “yet another free / deeply discounted book.”
- Advertise a free or deeply discounted book. The ad is targeted at people who’ve never heard of you before, and they’re unlikely to take a chance on you if you ask them to spend a lot of money. Give them a freebie, give them a 99 cents… don’t give them a 5$ offer because they won’t pay that much unless you’re a bestseller. And if you are a bestseller, this whole post is meaningless for you.
Where to put your ads
There are a lot of options. A LOT. I’m going to share with you just a few (the ones I’ve tried or am familiar with).
Attempt 1: The youtube video ad
You’ve seen it. You’re trying to watch something, and then and ad that might or might not be related pops out. Well, that ad can be yours. You set it through Google Adwords and it offers a lot of control: max expenses per day, pay-per-view costs, pay-per-click costs, target audience…
Before even trying though, you have to make sure you’ve a great book trailer that can work as your ad, and you’ve to upload it to youtube. That’s a problem because it can be an extra expense if you’re not a very skilled video editor, and even if you are you’ll have to pay for images or music or whatever. Another issue here is that Youtube will consider your ad “viewed” if it’s been watched for longer than 20% of its length. Since book trailers must be short, and you can’t skip the ad immediately, chances are you’ll paying for people who were actually annoyed by your trailer.
Verdict: NO
Tip: If you truly must try this, then be very careful when you choose who will view you trailer and try to make sure they’re your book’s target audience.
Attempt 2: Banner ad
We remain with Google adwords, but this time their static variety. You know, those banners that appear in lots of webpages you visit, and which have a terrible habit of actually reflecting your recent searches, visited websites and such? Your book can be one of those. It does require a bit of design skill to produce the images you’ll use, but Google has very nice templates for you to use and it’ll resize your ad to fit all the banners in a more-or-less straight-forward way. You can set where your banner will appear, how much you’ll spend for each click, and how much you want to spend each day. You only pay if there’s a conversion (if whoever saw the ad actually clicked through). The bad news? The ratio between people who click and people who buy is still very low, more so when the product is not on sale.
Verdict: BLEH
Tips: Don’t put just a picture of your book. Don’t try to cram in your whole blurb. Come up with a short, shocking punch line what will make the reader want to chek out what the fuss is all about.
Attempt 3: BookBub
A humongous e-mail list of people dying to read books in your genre. E-mails are extremely curated, so subscribers don’t get annoyed and don’t unsubscribe. It’s called the Holy Grail of book advertising and it’s for a reason: it works. That said: it is insanely expensive (can reach up to 900$ in some price ranges and genres) and they might not accept you even if you’re willing to pay.
Verdict: YES
Tips: Professional cover is no longer enough, now it needs to be AWESOME on top of that. And you want to have more books for your new readers to pick up, so perhaps wait until you’re in book two or three of a series to start requesting they feature book one.
Attempt 4: The Fussy Librarian
Having established the supremacy of BookBub in the e-mail marketing sector, this is all about alternatives that are more affordable for a new author and diversifying to make sure there’s no reader left unreached. The Fussy Librarian is a very new list, and as such it has one pro and one con: it’s very cheap, but the reach is quite short.
That said, they offer genre targeting and the service seems to be growing, so it could be worth a shot.
Verdict: YES
Tip: When I ran my ad with them, it was free to use. I barely noticed the increase in sales, but hey, it was free and any extra reader was a win. These days, the pricing ranges from free to 3$, so I think it’s still worth it, but always check pricing against e-mail subscribers before taking the decision (and remember that total number of subscriber is not equal to number of subscribers in your genre).
Attempt 5: Kindle Books and Tips
They feature your book in their blog and their Facebook page as well. It’s not genre-specific, but the place is huge so if your target audience is anywhere close to what the other books are aiming for, you should be good. There’s regular features and special: you sign up for an author list and the admin contacts you from time to time to let you know about spots and pricing. I found the pricing reasonable (25$), the admin nice to communicate with and the results pretty good. I had an important surge on sales for book one and some carried over to book two, which was at full price at the time.
Verdict: YES
Tips: The site only accepts first books in series (or stand alones, but we’ve already decided stand-alones don’t do as well with advertising, right?).
Attempt 6: Kboards discovery post
Kboards puts up an ad for books that are new or aren’t high up in the selling lists. This is important beause most advertising sites require you to have a number of reviews with a minimum average rating, and that’s hard to manage for newly-released titles. The pricing is affordable (15$) but for me, it didn’t work: hardly any impact at all.
Verdict: NO
Tips: If you must, make sure your title is on sale and is the first of a series. Otherwise, users won’t take a chance on you. Also, this seems to work better for authors who are active in KBoards community, so you might want to hang around there and make some connections instead/before putting up the ad.
Attempt 7: Bargain Booksy
Nice, targeted by genre, very professional e-mails. You have two separate services: one for free books and one for bargain books, so readers will know what to expect. There’s a paid version, guaranteed placement for 50$, and a free version where you fill up a form and hope they’ll choose to feature you. This service has grown a lot lately and some big shots are using it too. I hear it’s becoming part of a triumvirate, along with Bookbub.
Verdict: YES
Tips: Try for the free option first. Fill it in relentlessly. It’ll give you an accurate idea of what you’ll get if you do pay for placement.
Attempt 8: eReader News Today
This is the remaining member of the triumvirate. The emails they send are nicely formatted and genre-targeted, but I don’t much care for their website. Featuring is not guaranteed and there’s nothing to tell you if you’ve been chosen (which I understand) or if your form has gone through correctly (which bothers me a little). That said, it’s free. If anything, they will bill you a small percentage of the sales you’ve made through their affiliate links, which in my humble opinion is more than fair.
Verdict: YES
Tips: Do not despair.
Is this list exhaustive?
No. Not even remotely. It only lists the services I’ve tried myself and my experiences. If you want a more complete look, I recommed checking this post compiled by author C. Gockel (who rules, by the way–if you enjoy Norse myth, check out her I Bring the Fire series).
Also, feel free to share your own experiences in the comments! I’m always looking forward to new promoting ideas.