How to Set Up Amazon Attribution for Facebook Ads
By: Ginger | Posted on December 16, 2022
If you’ve ever tried to advertise your book on Facebook, you are probably already aware of how difficult it is to judge their effectiveness and whether any of the clicks you’re paying for ever really turn into sales. Well, Amazon has finally rolled out a feature that can give you all that information, and it isn’t even that hard to start using. Ginger talked about it last week, but today he’s back to tell you just how to set up Amazon Attribution so that you can track not only your sales and other clicks, but your KU page reads as well. As he mentioned, this is a game changing feature that can really help authors improve their ad performance, so it’s definitely something you need to start using right away if you aren’t already! It’s finally here. After years of struggling to track the effectiveness of our Facebook ads (and… Read More >
How Amazon Attribution Changes the Game for Self-Published Authors
By: Ginger | Posted on December 9, 2022
Selling your books these days means advertising them, and up until now, if you were advertising an Amazon book on a platform other than theirs, you had to use a lot of guesswork to determine whether or not your ads were converting into actual sales. Recently, however, the retail giant has provided a method that allows you to track what happens when a customer follows your ad from elsewhere, and when used properly, this can be a game changer for self-published authors. Here’s Ginger to tell you all about it, and next week he’ll go through setting it up in more detail. Writing and self-publishing a novel is often only half the battle for self-published authors. The next step is to market that book to a receptive audience – hopefully one willing to reach into their wallets to support your work. That’s why advertising has become such a vital part… Read More >
What can Jack Carr teach us about writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 2, 2022
Despite following in the footsteps of Lee Child, there is still much to learn from the meteoric rise in popularity of former Navy Seal turned author Jack Carr. Carr is a relative newcomer to writing, with only about five books to his name so far, but he’s been a chart topper since his debut, and his first book has already been turned into a streaming series on Prime. That’s why it makes sense for Ginger to examine what it is that has led to Carr’s quick success and what it can teach us that can be applied to our own writing, in this latest installment of his informal writing lessons series. Right now, there are two deadly badasses on my Amazon Prime menu screen – Jack Reacher and James Reece. The former is played by Alan Ritchson, who takes the role of the eponymous star of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher… Read More >
How To Create a Facebook Lookalike Audience
By: Ginger | Posted on November 25, 2022
As Ginger pointed out in a recent blog post, creating a Facebook lookalike audience is a powerful way to use your own mailing list to build an audience of likeminded readers more likely to buy your books than a more generic group. After reading that article, one author left a comment asking for more details on how exactly they would do that. Well, ask and ye shall receive. Today, Ginger is providing step-by-step instructions on not only how to create such an audience, but how to make sure you’re pulling the best people from your own list as the source. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog entitled Is Your Freebie Lead Magnet Costing You Money? That was a post about how the source of your mailing list subscribers could be impacting how effective they are at marketing your book – and how it’s more valuable to gain subscribers… Read More >
How to Mine Your Email Mailing List
By: Ginger | Posted on November 18, 2022
There’s a good reason why most authors start working on an email mailing list as soon as they can. Having a list of readers that love your work is not only a great ego boost, but can be an invaluable marketing tool. There are a variety of different ways to build your list, but the different techniques lead to different sorts of readers, each of whom provides a different value, assuming you know how to tell the difference and how to use each type. That’s exactly what Ginger will be going over in this week’s blog. Not only how to identify and separate your subscribers into the types of benefits they can provide, but how best to attain those benefits without alienating anyone on your list. Last month we posted a blog called Is Your Freebie Lead Magnet Costing You Money? The post addressed my belief that the source of your… Read More >
Ian Fleming Publications Quietly Revolutionizes the Publishing Industry
By: Ginger | Posted on November 11, 2022
In yet another blow to traditional publishing’s quickly loosening grip of an industry they once entirely dominated, the estate of Ian Fleming recently announced they would be taking back control of the James Bond books and publishing them on their own. Self-publishing may have taken off by giving a voice to smaller authors that couldn’t (or chose not to) go the traditional route, but moves like this are a signal that the tide has changed, and it is quickly becoming the self-publishing path that is the more desirable one to follow – for both small time authors and big names alike. I expect that it won’t be long before we start seeing more examples of popular traditionally published authors and franchises making similar moves. On October 5, 2022, the world recognized the 60th anniversary of the celluloid James Bond – marking six decades since the first movie in the franchise,… Read More >
What Can George R. R. Martin Teach Us About Writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on November 4, 2022
Once again, Ginger is looking at another great writer for inspiration and lessons, boiling down what makes them so popular into little tidbits we can use and apply to our own writing. This time the author is George R. R. Martin, best known for his ongoing series of books and the hit HBO show based on them, Game of Thrones. Even though his world is made up of countless characters and each novel is hundreds of pages long, there are key elements that Martin sticks to in his books. His enormous and ever-growing fanbase is proof that his formula is popular among readers, which is why it’s worth digging into what it is he does so that we can determine if his techniques could work for us, as well. But be warned, for anyone that hasn’t yet read the books or watched the show, there are some minor spoilers ahead…. Read More >
Use Tropes to Your Advantage
By: Ginger | Posted on October 28, 2022
What’s a James Bond movie without 007 using his high-tech gadgets? What’s the point of a western unless there’s a quick-draw showdown beneath the noonday sun? One highly overlooked attribute of successful books, shows, and movies is a reliance on tried-and-tested tropes that audiences like to eat up time after time. As Ginger points out below, learning and using the tropes of your genre can work in your favor by scoring an instant connection to your ideal readers. The word ‘trope’ is used a lot when people dissect popular culture, and its generally not in a flattering way. The dictionary defines a trope as “a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression” but fans of science fiction movies, horror films, or any other popular genre will more generally think of them as repeated scenarios that have become part of the furniture for their favorite books and TV shows…. Read More >
Lee Child on the Flexibility of Point-of-View
By: Ginger | Posted on October 21, 2022
One of the first decisions you have to make before starting to write a novel is which perspective, or point-of-view (POV), will be most effective in telling your story. The most common ones are first person and third person, and while I think most authors prefer one perspective over another, there are occasions where you at least want to consider the alternative. Most readers have a preference as well, and traditionally authors tend to respect this when writing series by keeping the whole series in the same perspective. But that doesn’t mean switching it up can’t be done. Lee Child is one example of an author that not only switches POV between books in his Jack Reacher series, but has even gone as far as to switch from first to third person within the same book! This week, Ginger delves into POVs to try and explain not only which one… Read More >
Is Your Freebie Lead Magnet Costing You Money?
By: Ginger | Posted on October 14, 2022
Generally when you advertise your book, you’re paying to show your ad to people in the hopes that they’ll be interested enough to click and buy it. That’s why you have to be very careful to show it to the right people, otherwise you’re simply throwing your ad dollars away. Ad platforms like Facebook let you build your audience from an existing list you provide, and many authors instinctively turn to their own mailing list of fans as the source for that. In some cases, that may very well be the best list to use, but depending on how you drew people to sign up in the first place, it may actually be just the opposite… Advertising your books on Amazon is a complex process. It might not seem like it, but there’s a veritable Rube Goldberg Machine going on behind the scenes that you can only hope will convert… Read More >
