From the Mailbox: Advertising on Facebook Questions
By: Ginger | Posted on August 20, 2021
Our weekly author blogs cover topics to do with writing, marketing, and advertising books, but sometimes authors send us specific questions that we like to address. As we’ve done for Amazon related ad questions in the past, this week we’ve rounded up some of the most commonly asked questions about using Facebook for advertising, and Ginger has put together some answers which might will be useful to many of you. Question #1 I was running a Facebook ad at $5 a day and getting a cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.19. I decided to double my spend, but my CPC immediately rose to $0.39. That means I’m paying twice as much for the same number of clicks! What did I do wrong? One of the most frequent problems I hear about authors is that they just can’t scale their advertising. Every time they increase their ad budget on Facebook, the CPC… Read More >
My Radish Experiment – Part 2
By: Craig | Posted on August 13, 2021
Now that the final book of my Radish series is fully published, I wanted to go over my latest numbers one last time so that others can use it as an example of how this platform works and performs. Of course, every author’s experience will differ, but the more information you have about something you haven’t tried before, the better the decision you’ll be able to make as to whether you think it’ll be the right fit for you. To help with that, I’ll also give some of my own thoughts on this whole experiment and which sort of authors or books I think it will benefit the most. Not long ago I began an experiment with Radish Fiction by publishing an old 3-book romance series on their platform to see how it would do. In part 1 of this article, I published the sales numbers and my analysis of… Read More >
Befriend other authors for support and collaboration
By: Ginger | Posted on August 6, 2021
I’ve mentioned before that I attribute much of my success as an author to being part of an online writing community where I could ask questions, get support, or just talk to others that were dong the same thing I was doing, and going through the same sort of experiences and challenges. Even though that community is no longer around, I’m still friends with many of those authors, Ginger being one of them. Befriending another author directly is essentially the same thing, the two of you just make up a smaller community, but it’s no less important or beneficial. Just remember that while you might do your writing alone, that doesn’t mean that you’re alone in writing. Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life,” but uncharacteristically, I don’t agree with Papa on this one. The most successful authors that I know are surrounded by… Read More >
Eliminating blank page guilt – part 2
By: Ginger | Posted on July 30, 2021
As Ginger noted last week in the first part of this article, writing isn’t just the act of physically transferring words to paper. After all, before we can even start on that we first have to craft those scenes and characters in our heads. That’s why it’s just as important to sometimes relax the pressure we have with regards to hitting arbitrary word counts and instead allow ourselves to live and experience the world, as that is what we all use as inspiration for our stories. Last week, we broke rank and the golden rule of ‘write every day’ and suggested that it was okay to give yourself permission to embrace the blank page until a book was ‘ready.’ Now, that’s all well and good – but what happens when the book is ‘done’ in your head. What are some healthy ways to get back into the swing of… Read More >
Eliminating blank page guilt – part 1
By: Ginger | Posted on July 23, 2021
The writing process is more than simply typing words onto a paper and coming up with a masterpiece. Well, unless you happen to have infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters… but for those of us that don’t, it’s important to remember that in order to put those words onto the paper in the first place, you first have to think them up. You have to mentally plan your story, breathe life into your characters, design your world – most of which initially takes place inside your head. Many non-authors don’t understand that there is more to writing than physically adding new words to your story, but as Ginger explains below, those other things are just as important. There have been so many blog posts about the importance of writing every day that we made a conscious decision to chill on those for a while (although I still maintain that writing… Read More >
Is self-publishing success easier or more difficult on Amazon these days?
By: Ginger | Posted on July 16, 2021
I’ll admit that I’m guilty of occasionally reminiscing about the “good old days” of writing, back when you could spend more time in your author hat than all of the other hats you have to wear to achieve self-publishing success these days. But I also recognize that we can’t live in the past, and we have to deal with the here and now – which is why so many of our blogs are focused on the skills and tools you need to succeed as an author TODAY. Much has changed over the years, but different doesn’t necessarily mean better or worse. That’s why we thought it would be interesting to look at the question about whether or not all of the changes Amazon has made to self-publishing have made things easier or harder for authors. Writers are nostalgic. It’s in our DNA. While regular people remember birthdays and anniversaries,… Read More >
From the Mailbox: Amazon Advertising Questions
By: Ginger | Posted on July 9, 2021
Our Friday blogs aim at helping self-published authors by covering broad topics to do with writing, marketing, and advertising their books. Sometimes authors send us questions via email as well, and one of the most asked about topics is Amazon ads. So this week we’ve rounded up some of the most commonly asked Amazon advertising questions that we’ve recently received, and Ginger has put together some answers that will be useful to many of you. Question #1 I’ve followed all your advice about generating keywords and setting your bid – but my ads aren’t getting any impressions! What am I doing wrong? Advertising is elegant in its simplicity. Normally, there are only three variables you need to worry about, and impressions is one of them. Impressions refers to the number of people who see your ad – and when it comes to Advertising on Amazon, if you’re not getting… Read More >
Can authors use song lyrics in their books?
By: Ginger | Posted on July 2, 2021
Unlike traditionally published authors, self-publishers don’t have the benefit of a design department to create their covers, a marketing department to handle their advertising, or a legal team to tell them what they can and cannot do. Some of these things are easier to manage than others, but usually the legal questions are the thorniest. We’ve actually covered a few of these in the past, at least in broad strokes, but this time we’re drilling in a bit to discuss a more specific question. That is, whether or not an author can use someone else’s song lyrics in their own book. If it’s something you’ve ever considered yourself, it’s vital to understand how to do it properly because if you don’t, even just a dozen of somebody else’s words interspersed within 70,000 of your own could end up really costing you. Working in self-publishing, it’s often crazy how much… Read More >
My Radish Experiment – Part 1
By: Craig | Posted on June 25, 2021
A little over a month ago I decided to experiment with the Radish Fiction reading app, using a 3-book romance series that I wrote years ago as the guinea pig. The reading app model is a fairly new one, but with even Amazon getting into the game with Vella, it seems like the model may be sticking around for a while. Radish looks to be one of the biggest players, so I thought it was worth walking through to see what the process was like from an author perspective. I’ve been providing regular updates to the authors on my weekly newsletter, but now that I’ve started to get some results, a bigger more detailed analysis is warranted. I’m calling this Part 1, though, as not all of the data is in yet so I’m sure there will be at least one more future update. What is Radish and how does… Read More >
How the writing career blueprint has changed
By: Ginger | Posted on June 18, 2021
There’s no doubt that the self-publishing landscape has changed a lot in the last few years, and it will undoubtedly continue to evolve. When I first started publishing back in 2013 or so, the rapid release/high volume strategy was definitely the most reliable path to success, and that was without any sort of advertising at all. But as more books started to fill out the digital shelves, it became harder to get noticed. At that point many of us pivoted to using ads, which at first were wildly successful for very little spend, but as competition grew, so did ad prices even as their results became less impressive. Still, many self-published authors continue to earn a living with their writing, but simply having the ability to tell great stories isn’t enough anymore. As Ginger points out, you also need to be willing and able to not only formulate a plan… Read More >
