Designing Covers by the Numbers
By: Ginger | Posted on May 21, 2021
There’s a reason we keep circling back to the importance of a solid cover. It’s the first thing readers see when confronted by a sea of other choices, and if it can’t entice a click to your product page, it doesn’t matter how great your book is. I see it all the time with the ARC program as well, because readers are even picky about the books they get for free. Covers that fall flat end up with way fewer sign ups than similar books in the same genre with well-designed covers. Not only should a cover look like it was done by a professional instead of homemade, but it needs to contain the right genre-specific elements to sell the reader on the idea that this book is the one they’ve been looking for. So just as we argued last week in terms of using data to plan your ads,… Read More >
When it comes to your ads, don’t trust your gut!
By: Ginger | Posted on May 14, 2021
Often, the quickest way to fail when it comes to promoting and marketing your book is to make decisions on how you feel. Feelings are great when it’s time for writing, but only cold, clinical data can truly guide you forward after publication – or talk you off the ledge when you’re ready to quit. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, a billionaire, or an author looking to market your latest novel – numbers don’t lie! A few months ago, we published a blog about how to calculate the value of your advertising spend. Since then, I’ve worked with several authors who’ve benefited from a deeper dive into the subject, since it’s one of the biggest and most deadly stumbling blocks for those authors hoping to make a living out of writing. The Importance of Data Billionaires become so through fractions of a percentage. An increase of a… Read More >
Scaling your ads means thinking outside the box
By: Ginger | Posted on May 7, 2021
Any author who has tried to scale their book’s advertising campaign has probably experienced the pain of a corresponding drop off in ad performance. Unfortunately, simply increasing your advertising spend doesn’t mean your sales will also increase at the same rate. In fact, in some cases they may not even increase at all, you’ll just spend more money for the same results! Ginger explains why that is, and offers up some alternative ways at scaling ads up on the different advertising platforms. I hear the same questions from authors again and again when I do consulting sessions with them – and I’m painfully familiar with them myself, because they normally involve challenges I’ve also encountered on the path of self publishing success. One of the biggest is the issue of scaling your ad spend. Facebook, Advertising on Amazon, or BookBub, it doesn’t really matter where it is – the… Read More >
The Power of Defensive Advertising on Amazon
By: Ginger | Posted on April 23, 2021
There’s nothing worse then spending money on advertising, only to have the readers that land on your product page get distracted by someone else’s sponsored book and click through to that one instead. Even if they don’t buy that book, they might never remember to return to yours, and consequently you may have lost that customer and potential new fan of your work forever. To combat this, there are certain tips and tricks you can use with bids and keywords that will ensure that you own a lot more real estate on your Amazon product pages. It’s called defensive advertising, and Ginger is going to tell us all about it. One of the most frustrating things about Advertising on Amazon is the fact that the website is almost designed to drive people away from your products. On the product page of your book, you might have multiple competing ribbons… Read More >
Newsletter Promotion Sites deliver bang for your buck
By: Ginger | Posted on April 16, 2021
When it comes time to plan for your new release, if book promotion newsletters aren’t a part of your marketing strategy, you’re missing an important trick! Newsletters can blast out the details of your book to thousands of customers looking for their next read, which makes them almost as useful and important as Facebook or Amazon ads. There are plenty of newsletters to choose from, which is good because most authors use more than one per release, stacking them for even greater effect. Today, Ginger is giving the low down on these promotions, as well as some of his own top newsletters to try. In addition to my best-selling romance penname, I recently began publishing books under my real name – which presented me with a unique challenge. After having published 25 books and selling 65,000+ copies in the last few years on that romance penname, I was suddenly… Read More >
Facebook book advertising on a shoestring budget
By: Ginger | Posted on April 9, 2021
Book advertising has become an essential step to success, and when done right and with a desirable product, a bigger budget will lead to higher rewards and a faster path to success. But not everyone can afford to spend large amounts on ads, especially when just getting started. That doesn’t mean they should be ignored completely, though. There is still value in running small budget campaigns, and Ginger is offering up a few suggestions on the best ways to spend those dollars to get the most value in return. I recently blogged about how you need to have courage when you start advertising your book – and I specifically called out the temptation to start a $5 a day advertising campaign as ineffective, and ultimately unprofitable. However, what happens when you’re a brand new author and you don’t have $30 a day to spend promoting your book? How can… Read More >
The right mindset can lead to successful advertising
By: Ginger | Posted on April 2, 2021
Buying all the right courses, reading all the right books, and watching all the right YouTube videos still won’t guarantee a successful advertising campaign strategy for your books – so consider Ginger’s tips for dipping your finger into marketing without losing your mind (or the shirt off your back.) The Advertising Mindset Here’s something I often hear from frustrated authors. “Advertising doesn’t work.” And I know exactly how they feel. After you’ve conquered the initial challenges of self-publishing – namely just getting your book out there – it’s not uncommon to get even more frustrated when your book just won’t sell. With all of the changes Amazon’s made recently, a successful advertising campaign right out of the gate is a more elusive dream than it’s ever been – but even with great book ads, it’s not exactly easy to supercharge your writing career. That’s because writing books and selling… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part Three: Building an Audience
By: Ginger | Posted on March 19, 2021
So now that you’ve decided that Bookbub advertising is for you, and you have your creative figured out, the final step in the puzzle is targeting the right audience. Bookbub works a bit differently than some of the other ad platforms, which means you may need to alter your current strategy. In this final installment of our Bookbub ad series, Ginger outlines his steps for successfully figuring out who should see your ads. In our last blog post, we wrote about coming up with creative that could be effective on BookBub. Of similar importance is the audience you show this creative to – and that’s where BookBub appears ‘deceptively’ simple in its targeting. One of the incredible things about BookBub is that it allows authors to target their advertising to an incredibly granular level – by selecting specific authors who are included on their platform and targeting the readers… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part Two: The Creative
By: Ginger | Posted on March 12, 2021
If you’ve been thinking about trying to advertise your book on Bookbub’s relatively new advertising platform but aren’t sure where to start, this is the series for you. In part 1, Ginger discussed what the service offers and how to determine if it’s right for you, and this week he’s diving into what sort of images to use in your bookbub ads. What can, and should, you include? It’s all explained below, with a real example ad Ginger created and used for one of his own books to help illustrate his points. Last week, we pitched the idea of using BookBub to market your books. It’s an incredibly powerful serve-yourself advertising platform that has arguable advantages over both Facebook and Advertising on Amazon – but the interface is deceptively simple and a lot of authors get their fingers burned by jumping in without a strategy in place. Today, we’re… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part One: Getting Started
By: Ginger | Posted on March 5, 2021
When it comes to advertising, Amazon isn’t the only game in town. Facebook is still a familiar favorite for those trying to drive traffic to their books, and some authors have even ventured into using YouTube and TikTok to promote their work. But have you given Bookbub a try? Once just a hard-to-get newsletter promotion, Bookbub now allows authors to place ads in front of their large readership. In this first installment of a three-part series, Ginger gives you the lowdown on the Bookbub advertising platform and what you need to know to decide if it’s right for you. One often overlooked but surprisingly effective advertising platform is BookBub – with many authors unaware they even run ads. For most self-published authors, getting a BookBub ‘deal’ is the only feature they’re interested in – often considered the Holy Grail of book promotions. But for a fraction of the cost,… Read More >
