How to Market a Book: a Launch Plan

Launching a self-published book requires careful planning and execution to ensure that the book reaches the right audience and generates sales. Here’s an ideal launch plan for a self-published book:

  1. Establish Your Author Platform: You should establish your online platform (long) before launching your book. Create a website about yourself that highlights your expertise and showcases your work (a website is also absolutely necessary in this day and age, just for general reputation management purposes). Use social media platforms to connect with your target audience and build relationships with influencers in your niche. I basically talk all about this in “Funny You Should Ask:  How to Market a Book.”  Author platform is key!  Do not proceed without it!
  2. Start building your email list. Seriously, the list is everything! Start your list right now!
  3. Build an ARC team: Build a team of people who will leave reviews for your book when it first comes out. Encourage them to share your book with their networks and leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. This is sometimes known as an ARC team, “ARC” being an “advanced review copy,” which you would send to people in advance.
  4. Choose Your Launch Date Carefully: Choose a launch date that is at least 2-3 months in advance, so you have enough time to plan your marketing and promotional efforts. Consider launching your book during a relevant holiday or event, or tying your launch to a news event or trend.
  5. Get Your Head Around Setting a Budget: Determine how much money you’re willing to invest in your book launch.  Plan your budget carefully and prioritize your spending on the most critical aspects of your launch. This is going to come in handy when you go to spend money on paid advertising.
  6. Get Reviews: Reach out to book bloggers and reviewers in your niche and request reviews for your book, or join Pubby to get reviews.
  7. Leverage Social Media: Use social media to promote your book launch. Create engaging content, share teasers, and host giveaways to generate buzz around your book. Use relevant hashtags to reach a wider audience.
  8. Monitor Your Sales: Keep track of your book sales during the launch period and adjust your marketing efforts accordingly. Use analytics tools to track your website traffic, social media engagement, and book sales.  We recommend KDPChamp for monitoring book sales on Amazon.

 

How to Sell Books on Amazon

This query is a little confusing to me, because like, are you asking how to sell other people’s books on Amazon as a reseller, or are you asking how to self-publish your own books on Amazon? Are you asking about the selling books to Amazon for cash through the (now defunct) textbook buyback program? Amazon actually does not buy back books anymore, but there are workarounds of course!

Whatever you’re looking to do with books, we have covered all the options here. Hopefully one of these concepts will point you in the right direction!

In fact, I now have an entire website dedicated to the self-publishing process!  Go on over to SelfPublishingChecklist.com, where we walk you step by step through the entire self-publishing process.

If you’re talking about selling other people’s books (like from a bookstore, yard sale, or thrift store), that is called reselling (or retail arbitrage) and that’s a whole different thing. I think the vast majority of people who are Googling “sell books on Amazon” are talking about their own books (i.e. self-publishing), but I did just want to provide comprehensive information to point you in the right direction, so here’s how you would go about that:

  1. Create an Amazon seller account: To start selling on Amazon, you need to create a seller account. You can either sign up for an individual account or a professional account. An individual account is free, but Amazon charges a fee for each item sold. A professional account costs $39.99 per month but has no per-item fee.  Selling books is a great way to get started with reselling (also called “retail arbitrage”).
  2. Find books to sell.  For this step, you’ll need to start with your own bookshelves, then hit thrift stores, garage/yard sales, and the clearance section of bookstores. Because of fees, you’re not going to be able to just buy full-price books from bookstores and sell the books on Amazon, so you’ll need to get creative with how and where to get the books that you’re selling.
  3. List books for sale: Once you have created your Amazon seller account, you can start listing your books for sale. You can list your books one at a time or in bulk by using Amazon’s seller tools.
  4. Set the price: When you list your book, you need to set a price. You can either set a fixed price or use Amazon’s pricing tools to set a competitive price based on the condition and demand for the book. Be sure to look at all of the fees involved and take into consideration the cost of postage or of shipping the books to Amazon when you set your price. Setting the price too low is the # 1 cause of losing money
  5. Fulfillment: You can either fulfill the orders yourself (this is called “merchant fulfillment) or use Amazon’s fulfillment service called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). If you choose FBA, you send the books in to the Amazon fulfillment center, then Amazon handles the shipping, customer service, and returns for your orders.
  6. Receive payment: Once you have sold a book, Amazon will deposit the payment into your seller account. Amazon pays every two weeks for sales made during that period.
  7. Get customer feedback: Encourage customers to leave feedback on your seller account. Positive feedback can help increase sales and improve your seller reputation.

It’s also important to keep your inventory up-to-date and be responsive to customer inquiries and concerns. By following these steps and providing excellent customer service, you can successfully sell books on Amazon.

Oh, and just in case you’re curious, no– Amazon does not have a “buy back your books” program anymore. If you want to sell your textbooks on Amazon at this point, you would need to just do that on the seller marketplace, which I’ve outlined above.

Barnes & Noble DOES have a textbook buyback program, which you can find right here!

Book Publishing by Amazon: a Guide to Kindle Direct Publishing

I get this question alot (so much so that I wrote an entire book dedicated just to this topic, the Kindle eBook version of which you can buy for only 99 cents).  I thought I would also make a post about it, in case someone didn’t want to read an entire book on this subject.

In fact, I now have an entire website dedicated to the self-publishing process!  Go on over to SelfPublishingChecklist.com, where we walk you step by step through the entire self-publishing process.

Here are the basic steps to publishing a book on Amazon through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing):

  1. Write and edit your manuscript: The first step is to write a book and revise and edit the manuscript until it is in the best possible shape. It’s often helpful to get feedback from beta readers or professional editors to improve the quality of the manuscript.
  2. Start building your audience.  Whether this is your first book or your twentieth, ultimately you need to get those people on an email list (which you can do with the help of this book), but you can start with a website and some social media.
  3. Create an Amazon KDP account: If you don’t already have an account, you’ll need to create one. You can do this by visiting the KDP website and clicking the “Sign up” button.
  4. Prepare your manuscript: Before publishing your book on Amazon, you’ll need to format your manuscript to meet their requirements. Amazon provides detailed guidelines for formatting your manuscript, including recommendations for fonts, margins, and spacing. You can use Word or Pages for this, but the industry standard is to use something that makes it look more professional, like Atticus or Vellum.  I cover all of these options  at length in my book “Funny You Should Ask:  How to Self-Publish a Book.”
  5. Get your cover ready.  You can make a cover yourself using a graphics program like Photoshop, Affinity Publisher, or even Canva, or hire someone to make your cover for you.  Fiverr is an option for this, as is Upwork.
  6. Create a new title: Once your manuscript is ready, log in to your KDP account and click on “Create a new title.” You’ll be prompted to enter information about your book, including the title, author name, and book description. You’ll also need to upload your manuscript file and cover image.
  7. Set your price and distribution options: You can choose to publish your book in digital format only, or in both digital and print formats. You’ll also need to set the price for your book, and choose the territories where you want it to be available.
  8. Preview and publish: Once you’ve entered all the required information, you can preview your book and make any necessary changes. When you’re ready, click the “Publish” button to make your book available on Amazon.
  9. Promote your book: After your book is published, it’s up to you to promote it and drive sales. You can use Amazon’s promotional tools, like Kindle Countdown Deals and Kindle Unlimited, as well as other marketing strategies like social media, email marketing, and book reviews to reach potential readers and build your audience.

Overall, publishing a book involves a lot of hard work and dedication, but it can be a rewarding experience for authors who are passionate about their writing. Whether you choose traditional or self-publishing, it’s important to research your options, hire professionals to help you, and put in the work to build your audience and market your book to them.

Amazon Ad FAQ

Q: Why are my Amazon ads getting very low impressions?

A:You may need to up your bid amount for your keywords, especially if you are in a very competitive niche. Remember, you are not the only Author bidding on these keywords, so Amazon tends to show the highest bids first.

Q:My Amazon ads are getting impressions, but very little clicks?

A:When customers are scrolling through the results page, the only thing that catches their eye initially are the covers. You may want to reevaluate your own cover, as it may not appeal to potential customers…thus, very little click through rates. Also, you may have chosen the wrong or misleading keywords.

Q:My Amazon ads are getting good impressions and clicks, but very little sales?

A:Your keywords and cover are probably spot on, congratulations! The next thing the customer sees is your description, so make sure that is spot on as well. Does it accurately describe your product? Is it too long, or too short? Is it a little confusing? Does it compel people to buy your book? Any of these reasons could result in less sales once someone arrives on your sales page.

Q:My Amazon ad dashboard reports that I made a sale, but I can’t find the sale in my KDP reports dashboard?

A:Amazon ads records the sale when the transaction is complete on their website. Your KDP reports only records the sale after the product is shipped, thus the lag/discrepancy.

Q:When running Amazon ads, what is ACOS, and what is a good number?

A:ACOS stands for Advertising Cost Of Sales (total ad spend / total ad sales x 100%). You will have to do a little math to find out what ACOS number is good for you, but, being that most no/low content KDP books have a fairly low profit margin, somewhere between 30.xx and 40.xx means you are probably breaking even as far as ad profit is concerned. A lower number than this and you are making money, higher, and you are losing money.

Q:How can I lower my Amazon ads ACOS (always a good thing)

A:Your Amazon ad dashboard is a wealth of knowledge, an entire article could be written on this topic alone. So, to over simplify this, pay attention to your keyword bids. If you notice a good amount of impressions with little sales (sales-not clicks), you may want to lower this individual bid. If you notice mediocre impressions, but good sales, you may want to up that keyword bid a little. Take the time to understand all of the information available to you in your dashboard and you will be able to spot winning, and losing patterns in your ad.

Q:I see some people are running Amazon ads at a loss, why?

A:The more books you sell, the higher your BSR (Best Seller Rank) will become. The higher your BSR, the more likely Amazon is to show your product on their results page. After a while, you will get more organic sales (sales without ads), so, conceivably, you can stop running ads, and rely on these organic sales. Remember, any sales you get without paying for them, is pure profit.

Q:When can I expect to see sales from my Amazon ads? How long should I run Amazon ads before I can assess/tweak them to become more profitable?

A:It usually takes Amazon 3 or 4 days to figure out where to place your ads, so you may not see much activity for a few days after your ad is accepted. When to tweak your ads depends on your comfort level, but usually, 2 or 3 weeks after the ad is live is a good time to evaluate its performance.

My Amazon KDP Advertising Campaign Strategy for Authors: Don’t Run Ads on Your Books Until You Read This!

I’m hoping I’ve caught you at that pivotal moment before you are running your first ad to your book on Amazon, because what I am about to tell you is going to save you SO MUCH MONEY.

When it comes to book marketing, you really can’t do any better than paid ads on Amazon.  They are cheap (if you do them right), targeted (if you do them right), and can really help your career and your book sales (again, if you do them right).  Amazon ads are not just the best way to advertise Amazon products.  They are absolutely the best way to sell more books.

However, here is my bold and somewhat controversial statement: your book is probably not ready for paid ads.

I know, I know. That’s not what you wanted to hear. But bear with me. I’ve seen countless authors pour money into ads, only to see little or no return. Why? Because their books weren’t set up for success in the first place. Before you dive into advertising, let’s ensure you’re not making some of the most common (and costly) mistakes.

Here are the most common reasons books aren’t ready for ads:

1. You Don’t Have a Reader Magnet / Email Signup Inside Your Book

This is my number one “do not pass go, do not spend a single penny on ads” rule.
One huge problem with the whole self-publishing industry is that no one tells indie authors about the “missing piece” of marketing, which is that you should 100% not be paying for advertising unless you have a means of capturing readers and making them your subscribers. You do that by placing a link (or a QR code) inside your book to a freebie you will give them in exchange for joining your email list. If you do not have that, please stop what you’re doing and get my free book on this very subject. Amazon will take your money any time of the day or night but do not give them that money unless you have this one piece set up. This is how you ultimately win with paid advertising— by using it to build an email list of super fans that will buy all of your books when they come out so you’re not starting over with every launch.

Here’s the reality: when you sell a book on Amazon, you’re selling to their customers, not yours. Amazon is never going to tell you who bought your book or give you access to their information. If you don’t encourage readers to sign up for your email list, you’re throwing away the chance to turn Amazon’s customers into your customers.

Let’s crunch some numbers. Say you get super lucky and your book becomes a bestseller. You sell 25,000 books without a reader magnet. That’s 25,000 missed opportunities to grow your email list. With a strong reader magnet, you could easily convert 25% of those buyers into email subscribers—that’s 6,250 people on your list! A list of that size could help you launch your next book to bestseller status on day one. Without it, you’ll start from scratch every single time.

So, before you invest in ads, set up a reader magnet and link it inside your book. This step is free and invaluable.

2. Your Cover Isn’t Competitive

Your book cover is your #1 advertisement. If it doesn’t look professional or doesn’t meet the standard for your genre, you’re going to lose money.

Take a screenshot of your book cover and compare it to the top 5–10 bestsellers in your niche. For example, when I searched for “shape shifter romance” on Amazon, here is what I found:

My point with this exercise?  If you write shifter romance, your cover should look like this (or better).

What about your genre/ niche? Does your cover stand out in a good way? If not, allocate your ad budget to a professional redesign. Your book’s success starts with its first impression.

3. You Didn’t Do Keyword Research

Keywords are the backbone of Amazon’s algorithm, and if you skipped this step, your ads are likely to fail.

Why?  Because remember those seven back-end keyword boxes you filled out when you uploaded your book? They tell Amazon what your book is about.

Oh, did you not fill those in?  Well, that’s part of the reason no one can find your book, and paid advertising is not going to fix that problem.

Without proper keyword research, Amazon’s advertising engine might show your book for completely unrelated searches—wasting your money on clicks from people looking for bat spatulas or garden gloves.

Before you advertise, revisit your keywords using tools like Publisher Rocket or Amazon’s search suggestions. Make sure your keywords align with what readers in your genre are actively searching for.

4. You Didn’t Do a Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is critical. How does your book stack up against the bestsellers in your genre? If you didn’t do this step, you might not realize that your book is missing the mark in obvious ways. For example, is your pricing way off for your genre/ niche? Is your book much longer/ much shorter than other books in your genre/ niche? Do books like yours only succeed if they are part of a series? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you didn’t do a thorough enough competitive analysis. Please go back and do that.  Here’s a guide.

Advertising should build on a solid foundation. If your book isn’t competitive, ads will only highlight its shortcomings.

5. Your Book Doesn’t Have Reviews

Reviews are social proof, and they’re essential for converting clicks into sales. If your book has zero reviews (or very few), it’s going to struggle against books with hundreds of glowing ratings.

Spend time gathering reviews before you advertise. Send ARCs (Advance Review Copies) to readers or reach out to reviewers in your genre. Building this foundation will make your ads much more effective. Here’s a whole article/ resource guide about how to get reviews if you don’t have any (or don’t have enough).

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If you have made it all the way through this “your book is not ready” gauntlet, are not mad at me yet (chances of this seem pretty low), and you do, in fact, have all of these things in place, then hurrah!  Let’s run an ad.  I always start out with a “general/ automated targeting” ad for the first week, just to see what Amazon thinks my book is about and to see what they suggest.

Let’s go through the setup process together the first time, because I believe Amazon actually WANTS you to rush through the advertising setup for your book. When you rush, they make money. They are counting on the fact that you don’t even want to be paying for advertising (or marketing your book) in the first place, and that you are going to try to get through setting up paid advertising as quickly as possible. 

“Automatic targeting,” in case you don’t know, is when you  tell Amazon “You go ahead and pick the keywords/ products to advertise my book against.”

Here’s why this is a smart starting point:

  1. Simplicity: You don’t need to research keywords or analyze competitors right away.
  2. Data Gathering: Automated ads provide insights into which keywords and audiences perform well for your book, which you can use later in manual campaigns.
  3. Cost-Effective Testing: You can set a low daily budget and test how your book performs before investing more heavily.

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up an Automated Targeting Ad

Follow these steps to create your first Automated Targeting campaign:

1. Log into Your Amazon Advertising Dashboard and Find Your Book

Here’s an example:  this is my book, “How to Market a Book,” and this is where I would go to run the paid ads for it:

 

 

If your book is in KDP (which I’m assuming it is, since you are trying to learn about paid advertising strategies), click on “Promote and Advertise” as indicated above.  If you’re advertising the Kindle edition, it’s right there on the side.  If you’re advertising the paperback or hardcover, just click on the three little dots, then select “Promote and Advertise.”

 

I’m sure this goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway:  if you’re trying to be thorough, you’ll need to start all of the different ad types for each version of your book (and by that I mean Kindle eBook, Paperback, and Hardcover), because each one of those is a completely different book in Amazon’s eyes and each one has its own sales and BSR (bestseller rank).  Many authors choose to just start a set of ads on the Kindle eBook edition just to test the waters.

Here’s the first screen we see after clicking on “Promote and Advertise” for the eBook.  My book is not in KDP Select (the book itself has a whole chapter on why but I won’t bore you with that now), so I’m just picking “Run an Ad Campaign” and selecting the US marketplace.  Annoyingly, you will need to open an advertising account for each of the different markets where you want to run ads for your books, because despite being a multi-billion dollar company, Amazon has not figured out how to streamline this interface.

When I choose “.com” and click the yellow “Create an ad campaign” button, I then see this screen:

Again, not sure why Amazon makes it so annoyingly difficult for us to spend our money with them, but here we are.  You want “Sponsored Products” for the purposes of this example.   The other two options are a little more advanced and shouldn’t really be offered to you at this point, since you are just trying to get over the hump of running your first ad.  So, go ahead and click the blue “Continue” button under “Sponsored Products.”

Great!   Now we are faced with a bunch of other choices.   Hang in there!  We’re going to get through this!

2. Set Your Ad Format and Name Your Ad Group

This box defaults to “custom ad text,” which is weird because that forces you to write ad copy, making it even less likely that you are going to actually launch an ad.   I have tested both and have found absolutely no advantage to doing this, so I recommend you just set it to “Standard ad” and move on.  If you decide you want to test an ad with some custom copy in the future, you can start a new ad for that.

Name your ad group something that is easy to remember.  Yes, this is your very first ad, but if you love paid advertising you’ll be starting a bunch more, so you’ll need to be able to quickly tell them apart.

Next up is the “Products” screen, and if they didn’t select your book already, go ahead and find/ select it.

3. Select Targeting Type

  • When prompted, choose Automated Targeting. This lets Amazon decide which keywords and product pages are most relevant to your book.

4. Set Your Bidding Strategy

  • Amazon will suggest a default bid. Stick with this for now or slightly reduce it to stay conservative.
  • Choose one of the following bidding strategies:
    • Dynamic Bids – Down Only: Amazon lowers your bid if it determines the ad is less likely to convert.
    • Dynamic Bids – Up and Down: Amazon adjusts your bid up or down depending on conversion likelihood.
    • Fixed Bids: Your bid remains constant.

For beginners, Dynamic Bids – Down Only is a safe choice as it helps control costs.

5. Create Your Ad Group

  • Ad Group Name: Use something clear, like “Book Title – Auto Ad Group.”
  • Select the Book: Choose the book you want to advertise from your catalog.

6. Set Your Default Bid

  • Start with Amazon’s suggested bid. If you want to play it safe, you can lower it by 10–20% to control costs during your initial test.

7. Launch Your Campaign

  • Review your campaign settings to ensure everything looks good, then click “Launch Campaign.”

Monitoring Your Campaign

Once your ad is live, monitoring its performance is crucial. Here’s what to watch for:

  1. Impressions: This shows how many times your ad has been displayed. Low impressions may indicate that your bid is too low.
  2. Click-Through Rate (CTR): A good CTR (around 0.5% or higher) means your ad is catching readers’ attention.
  3. Cost-Per-Click (CPC): Monitor how much you’re paying per click. Keep your CPC in line with your budget and profit margin.
  4. Sales and ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale): ACOS is the percentage of your ad spend relative to sales. Lower ACOS means better profitability.

Tips for Success with Automated Ads

  1. Optimize Your Book’s Metadata: Before running ads, make sure your book’s keywords, categories, and description are optimized. These elements influence where Amazon places your ad.
  2. Set a Realistic Budget: Start small and scale up based on performance. It’s better to spend cautiously while you learn.
  3. Give It Time: Ads take time to gather data. Don’t panic if you don’t see immediate results—let the campaign run for at least 2–3 weeks before making major adjustments.
  4. Analyze and Adjust: Review your ad’s performance weekly. If your CTR is low, consider improving your book’s cover or description to make it more appealing.

Final Thoughts

I’m 99% sure your book is not ready for paid advertising yet, but if it is, starting with an Automated Targeting ad is a smart way to ease into Amazon Advertising. It’s low-risk, beginner-friendly, and provides valuable insights that can guide your future campaigns. By letting Amazon’s algorithm handle the targeting initially, you can focus on learning the ropes and refining your strategy.

Remember, successful advertising is a marathon, not a sprint. Start small, monitor your results, and adjust your approach as you gather data. With time and effort, you’ll be well on your way to reaching new readers and boosting your book’s visibility.

If you’ve fixed your book and have run an initial automated ad, great!  Click here for the next part in the series, the keyword ad. 🙂

 

 

Your Author Website Checklist

Oh my gosh, it’s two of my favorite subjects in one post:  websites and books.  Lucky me!  Lucky  you!

I’m joking.  You might not feel lucky if you’re right at the beginning of the “setting up your website” process.  It’s hard to get your head around all that technological stuff, especially when you have a near-permanent headache from writing and editing (and possibly publishing!) an entire book.

We’re here to talk “what belongs on your author website,” so let’s do that.  By the way, if you have no website at all, can I please recommend my book “Funny You Should Ask:  How to Make a Website“?  It’s a little companion guide (with humor thrown in to make all the tech crap go down easier) on how to make a website from beginning to end using WordPress. I promise you will feel like a genius when you’re done with it and you have your own author site you can send people to.

Here’s what goes on that site:

1.  Your FirstNameLastName.com domain.   I don’t recommend websites for individual books anymore, because you are not going to want to do the maintenance on multiple sites.  Just get one “mothership” site that can serve as your center of your author platform, and move on.  Just get this from NameCheap and do not overpay.  If someone else has your same name and you can’t get the .com, try the .net or the .org.  If you can’t find any of those, try your name with your middle initial.  If those are still a no-go, add “author” or “writer” or “writes.”  Keep trying until you find a domain that is around $10. Use NameCheap.com for that.

2.  Your books.  This might go without saying, but I’m saying it.  Put your books on your website.  Use BookLinker to create the “my book with all the places to buy it” code.   Seth Godin is (of course) doing a great job of this right here.

3. Your email signup, preferably with a free giveaway.  You won’t have to read very far into this website to learn that I think your email list is the most important thing in a working author’s life.  Here’s a free book all about that so I can convince you and teach you how to set it up.  Don’t sleep on the list!

4.  Links to (or snippets from) your social media.   Some people will want to follow you on one or more social media accounts to see what you’re up to, and you should give them that chance by putting those links on your website (which can be easily handled with various WordPress plugins).  Just make sure all of your social media is appropriately branded and links back to that main author site (so people can get on your list, of course!).  This will depend on the social media platform on which you’re the most active, but it can be a nice addition and add energy to your author website to pull a feed of your social media through there.

5.  A contact form so agents and publishers can get ahold of you to offer you a million dollar book deal, or potential clients can reach you if you are some kind of consultant or freelancer, or readers can send you nice emails about how much they loved your books.

6.  Photos of you, just so people can put a face to a name.   If you’re setting up an author site for a pen name, you might want to use stock photos or a photo of a pet.

7.   Your bio.  Use this to build authority if you’re a non-fiction author, and to pique people’s interest if you write fiction.  Tell people a little about yourself, your experience, your background, and what you’ve written.

8.  Your blog.  This can be great for SEO (especially if you write non-fiction), but either way it is nice to give people free samples of your writing so they can like it, get on your list, and buy your books.  Did I mention I want people to get on your list?

9.  “Resources/ Tools”  This is where you would put links you mention in books, things you always tell people about in your real life, or things you use yourself.  You can also use this for a little affiliate marketing if you recommend things.  Joanna Penn does a great job with this on her website:  https://www.thecreativepenn.com/tools/

10.  Links to other articles you’ve written.   This can also help build your credibility.  If you write for any online publications, be sure to also try to link back to your main author website from there, because those backlinks are great for your website (especially if it is brand new).

So– now you know what goes ON your author site.   How are you going to put it all together?

That’s where my book comes in.

Here’s the thing. I know that no one really WANTS to learn this kind of technical stuff, but I tried to make it fun with some Culwell-like humorous writing thrown in there to make you laugh along the way. This marks the first time I have ever mixed technical writing like this with my “humorous” writing, and it actually turned out to be fun! I hope it is well received, because I have the next book in the series all planned out. Maybe my new niche will be “teaching people boring-ish technical things while entertaining them along the way.”

I know I have told many of you over the years that you definitely need a website. This is still very much true, and now is your chance to have me walk you through making one!

 

Anyhow, real talk: if you need a website, this book is worth the price of admission. Even if you are not going to do the whole site yourself, you will learn enough by reading through it to save yourself hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars.

 

Get the book!!

Amazon Advertising KDP– Worth It?

I hang out in a lot of Facebook groups and sub-Reddits for self-published authors, and one of the most seemingly eternal debates is “Is Amazon Paid Advertising Worth it?”

Well, that depends.  Are you Jeff Bezos?   I’m sure it’s always worth it for him!

Kidding!

Paid advertising on Amazon is totally worth it, but you have to have a few things in place to make it pay off for you.  The first thing you want to do is read this post, because it’s going to help you avoid giving Amazon an all-access pass to spend your money however they would like. I have a four-part strategy for Amazon advertising that I have (begrudgingly) evolved over many years of writing and publishing, and it works well for me.  Before authors start randomly throwing money at Amazon Advertising, though, I strongly recommend they put links inside all of their books that leads to a landing page (either on their site or their email service), giving the reader something for free.  This “incentivized signup” strategy is really effective because readers are already reading your book and liking your work, so there is never a better time to offer them something for free.

If you don’t have that part set up already, that is fine, but don’t run ads yet.   Alot of authors are holding out on setting this up because they don’t have websites yet, which I get, but you can set up a landing page through your email service, and I’ve covered three email services that offer free introductory accounts in this book.  It’s free!  What do you have to lose?

So, yes– Amazon Advertising for books is totally worth it, but you have to make sure you put the legwork in first, to make sure you (and your career) are getting the value out of it.  One good thing to remember is that Amazon Ads are best used when you’re using them to scale a business, not just to sell single books.   If you’re doing that, you’re likely to fall into the trap that this unfortunate person experienced with their book (and the ad that went with it):

Yikes!  This is rough for many reasons!

I’ll tell you why.

First off, this person has spent $41.09 to make 2 sales, totaling $19.98.  That’s already terrible, but it gets even worse when you consider the fact the the sales” number that Amazon shows you is the GROSS amount of money THEY made, not the royalty you earned.  They don’t care about that!  This person makes approximately $3 in royalty per book, so they paid $41.09 to make $6.

Ouch.

The biggest problem with this is (obviously) the bid, which is just way too high.   NEVER take the “suggested bid” that Amazon shows you when you are setting up the ad, or you will end up here, screaming at your computer screen and posting frustratedly in Facebook groups, asking for advice.  This person actually got a lot of clicks for 2,903 impressions, which means their cover is appealing and on-target for the market, but since it took them 27 clicks to make one sale (really that number should be closer to 10), that cost per click would have to have been no higher than 10 cents to make that profitable (27 clicks X 10 cents = $2.70, which is still under the $3 royalty earned per book).

The other story this report is telling me is that something is wrong with the book itself.  I didn’t actually see the book so I don’t know what it is, but if 54 people clicked the ad (the book cover) and only two of them bought the book, that could mean the description sucks, there’s a typo somewhere in the title/ subtitle, or the book’s subject matter could use the “Look Inside” feature (or some A+ Content) but neither of those are present.

Another thing I would speculate about this book is that the keywords are maybe not targeted tightly enough, so maybe those expensive clicks are from buyers that are not targeted enough.  By that I mean that they are sort of interested in the subject matter (thus the click), but when they got to the actual book listing, the book either wasn’t specific enough or was too specific, but either way was not what they thought so they left.

Overall, this ACOS is terrible (even against the gross sales number), so this person has some work to do to make Amazon Ads worth it for them.

How’s that for a long-winded example?  Ha!

To make Amazon Ads worth it for you (meaning they either profit or break even/ get you a new subscriber), you would need to do the following:

— Never take the “suggested bid” for any Amazon ad, especially for a brand-new book.  This is a recipe for disaster!   Again, read this post for my whole argument against taking any of Amazon’s “suggestions.”

— Start your bid at something super low, like 10 or 20 cents.  Pay close attention to how much you make per book, and do not go over the “bid X 10” number, since your ad (or your book) is likely going to take some refining before it starts achieving that metric.

— Make sure your book has an email signup/ link to a freebie in it.  That is the whole topic of this book, which is free and please go read it.  If you’re going to pay for advertising, make sure it’s to build your business, not just for a one-off sale!

Thank you for coming to my Amazon Ads TED Talk.  Remember, if you don’t keep an eye on your ads, it is almost guaranteed that you will pay the “Amazon Ad Tax,” as the person above has.  That tax sucks, because while they should be happy that they sold those two books, they are actually sad because they lost $36 doing so.

The good news is, once you get the hang of Amazon ads, you can use them to scale up not only your book sales, but your whole career as a working author.  Who doesn’t want that?!

How I Did It by Brittany Geragotelis

rsz_brittoption1How I Did It, by Brittany Geragotelis

Rejection. That was what my writing life was full of for a solid 8 years. So when my big break finally happened, it seemed like it all happened very suddenly. But the reality was that success only came  for me after 17 years of hard work, dedication, perseverance and ego deflation.

When I moved to NYC in 2001 after graduating from college, I decided to start seriously pursuing my goal of becoming a published author. At the time there was really only one way of doing this: You got an agent, who found you an editor who convinced their publishers to take on your book. Only then were you found worthy of being a published author.

Luckily, I got an agent after only a few months of looking and he began to shop around my books. But after three failed attempts (and a few close-calls), he decided to drop me as a client. At this point, I’d been at it for over seven years and started wondering if it was what I was meant to do. It takes so much time and work to write a novel and if no one was ever going to read it….well, what was the point? So I took a hiatus from writing.

For six months.

But then I got the itch to write again and so I sat down to reevaluate my goals. I asked myself why I was writing. If I was being honest with myself, I write because I love it and I feel compelled to do it—and to hopefully get my books into the hands of readers who will be able to enjoy them.

If this was my ultimate goal, then sitting around and waiting for a publisher to deem my stories worthy of reading wasn’t working. It was around this time that I discovered Wattpad. Wattpad’s an online community writing site, sort of like a YouTube for writers. Anyone can join the site and users can either post or read original content for free.

So, I decided to give it a try, by writing an original story for the website, called Life’s a Witch. On January 1, 2011 I posted my first chapter of the book and followed each week with a new chapter. After six months, I’d finished writing the book, and had garnered 6 million reads of my book. At nearly a year of having it up, I had 19 million reads of LAW and kids were acting out scenes from the book in public and asking where they could buy the book.

At this point, because there appeared to be a demand for it, I decided to self-publish. Around this time, a lovely reporter at Publisher’s Weekly decided to write a story about me and my success on Wattpad, and because of this, the traditional publishing world came calling. Just a few weeks later, we went into an auction between four publishing houses for the rights to the series. In the end, I ended up going with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in a 3-book, 6-figure deal.

My first book in the series, a prequel/spin-off called What the Spell? came out Jan 29, 2013. A new and improved version of Life’s a Witch will debut July 9, 2013, followed by the sequel, The Witch is Back in Jan 2014.

 

Author Bio: Brittany Geragotelis, a former Olympic-bound gymnast and magazine editor, is a self-professed pop culture junkie turned author. Her paranormal action book, Life’s a Witch, received 19 million reads on the writing site Wattpad, before she sold the series to Simon & Schuster. What the Spell? is her first published book in the series. Brittany currently lives in New York City with her fiancé and two cats, Murray and Cohen. Visit her at www.brittanygeragotelis.com.

 

FIND HER ON:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BrittanyGeragotelis

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TheBookSlayer

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/TheBookSlayer

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/TheBookSlayer

Wattpad: http://www.wattpad.com/BrittTheBookSlayer