Advertising a Book

If you wish to sell a book, one of your avenues to sell will be advertising. The question now arises: how do you know which, if any, marketing efforts are working? You certainly don’t want to spend money on ineffective marketing efforts.

Where can you market a book?

Amazon is probably the most obvious of places. I recommend that you read Alex Strathdee’s book on Amazon advertising, for the process is complicated and if you don’t know how to promote on Amazon, you are going to lose a chunk of money.

Another obvious outlet is Facebook. They claim that they can target an appropriate audience for you. You determine how much you want to spend, and then you boost your post. From authors, I have heard mixed reviews of the results. It is worth a try, though, but keep good records so you can see if Facebook is worth advertising on.

There are over 100 different promoters of book sales through their newsletters and social media accounts. Prices vary for the different services they offer as well as the size of their audiences. (I will be offering a freebie list of these in May. If you are interested in getting my writing goodies, please subscribe to my occasional newsletter which comes out about once a month.)

Don’t forget about local outlets. Everyone likes to meet an author, and you will be the best salesperson for your book. Book signings, a speaking engagement, even a craft fair can prove to be lucrative outlets for your book. Have good signage, and try for radio or television coverage prior to your event.

Keep your eyes out for podcasts, guest posting sites, and other opportunities to pitch your book—and some of these will be free. Nothing better than free advertising!

Record those sales!

To begin, you will have to keep accurate records on your sales, and this record-keeping must be on a regular basis. You need to track your book sales from the very beginning. Even more importantly, you need to track those sales before, during, and after any of your promotions. Excel works well for this, or even just a simple hard-copy spreadsheet. The important takeaway here is to keep good records and relate them to what you are doing.

If you are using one of the book promotion sites for sales, note which day your “ad” became public. Do you see an increase in sales on that day or several days following? From your sales, figure your profit, then deduct the cost of the promotion. Frequently, the cost of the promotion will exceed your sales net. Some gurus tell you not to worry about this. Consider it the cost of business. To an extent, that is true, but you do want to get the biggest bang for your money that you can.

SEVEN Rules the Advertising World

Even if your ad does not create profit, there is benefit to advertising. You have exposed your book (and yourself) to thousands of readers. Experts in advertising claim that a potential customer must see your name and/or product at least SEVEN times before they are ready to buy from you. That can be an ad in a book-selling newsletter, your social media post, a tweet, a podcast interview, sharing content, and a myriad of other ways to connect. Your book (and face) must be out in the world if you plan to sell any books. Don’t be afraid to create publicity for your book, if you wish to sell it.

Is your promotion effective?

An average consumer is exposed to over 10,000 ads per day. How can you figure out if your ad has been seen and appreciated by your target audience? Below is a list of the online data you need to collect to ascertain if your promotion has been effective. Not all of this data will be pertinent to what you are doing. Be sure to gather the date you need for your particular circumstance.

1. Impressions: how many times has your ad been shown?

2. CTR or Click-through-Rate: how many times do viewers click on your ad?

3. CPC or Cost per click: This is what you are paying per click through. It will vary according to the platform you are using.

4. Conversion Rate: how many times do you get a sale from your ad?

5. ROI or Return on Investment: By getting the data on the above steps, you can now figure out how much money you are earning for each of the dollars you are spending on ads.

Google Analytics can be a good place to collect this data, as well as receiving it from the advertising platform you are using (such as Facebook, YouTube, etc.).

I know, all you want to do is write, but keeping these records is important for the future of your book and your writing career. Simplify the process as much as you can, evaluate what you are doing, and then apply the knowledge you gain to your next promotion. “Oh, using XXX Book Newsletter didn’t sell more than two books last time. I am going to try another type of promotion.” You had the data to see one site did not work, so move on.